Feeding Milk Thistle

[mattymeischke]

Great topic, fascinating subject more broadly too....

Our grandparents would have known that milk thistle, dandelions and sorrell are weeds as well as being invaluable greens when there was nothing else, as well as knowing that dandelions can be used as a diuretic (hence the old english name pee-in-a-bed) or to settle the bowels. I myself use dandelion leaves on pizzas and in salads sometimes (take young hairless leaves from the true dandelion (see below)): a sort of poor man's rocket. Our modern lifestyles have left alot by the (literal and figurative) wayside, including an intimate familiarity with the weeds we see every day.

When you start to apply to hard lens of modern science, though, it all gets very confusing. For example, there are about 20 plants which look like dandelion in my area: of these, at least three have toothed hairless leaves and unbranched flower stalks, and only one of these is Taraxacum officinale, the common dandelion.

Milk (or sow) thistle is a common name applied variously to weeds which resemble thistles but have milky sap, soft thorns and those dandelion-like flowers. Various different species fall under this umbrella, of which some are smooth and some spiky. My birds love all of them, as well as their resident insects. They are wild cousins of lettuce, like flatweeds, and are good for soil and other plants as well as animals.

There is, however, a useful simplfying principle here: natural plant toxins are almost always accompanied by offensive odour and taste cues. If there is sufficent quantity and variety of plant offered, most animals will not eat poisonous plants. The problems with (for example) Patterson's curse occur when there is no or minimal other feed available and the animals are obliged to eat it. Rhubarb and many other plants can cause similar problems, and even our Phalaris canariensis. Though a staple of improved pastures and the source of canary seed, there have recently been some numerous cases of the "Phalaris staggers" in livestock in the tablelands and into the North West (of NSW, that is).

This priniciple doesn't apply to man-made poisons, however, hence the danger of feeding roadside weeds which may have been sprayed.

This post is already too long (thank you all for your indulgence), but I would suggest picking wild weeds and offering to your birds and then watching. As long as they have sufficient choice, then are not going to poison themselves by selectively eating offensive, lower-value foodstuffs.

[nirep]

On the subject of dandelion it's coming to life around where I live and I actually have a patch of garden where I grow my own.My issue is keeping the house sparrows away as they attack the flower heads before I get to harvest them.Fancy having a net to protect weeds growing!As for eating the green leaves I would put it in my salad it's just trying to explain the concept to my family.

[Diane]

Maybe those cheap food nets? They look a bit like a net tent, supposed to go over food plates at BBQ's. You can move them from flower head to flower head that way.

[mattymeischke]

Cultivating plants which other people call weeds is a funny old game: my neighbour didn't understand why I put nets over the most feral part of our garden, but I was protecting the plants I was exerimentally cultivating.

If we accept the common definition of a weed as any plant growing well where it is not wanted, then we have redefined milk thistle as a crop, rather than a weed.

For those who wish to grow these things, a general rule is that weed seeds should be scattered on the ground and not covered, and like other plants if they are thinned sufficiently to allow each plant to freely develop, the results are much better. I have occassionally covered 'weed' crops with bird netting spread over star pickets with caps on them (to stop the net tearing). This was quite effective until the rosellas got interested in our white peaches and She Who Must Be Obeyed insisted that the food was more worthy of protection than 'your bloody weeds', so our limited supply of good nets was reallocated.

Milk thistle is a useful weed to grow with vegetable crops, too, as the deep tap root provides cracks in the soil for the less vigourous roots of our dometic varieties to exploit.

[nirep]

I am lucky in "she who must be obeyed" don't care much about what I grow and I have a lot of netting at my disposal.Just frustrating as it is something else to think about and deal with.Call me weird I actually think once in flower and planted together dandelions are a nice addition to the garden.Time to fertilize

[Nathan Morleyy]

Forum members,
This is my daily green feed routine http://www.youtube.com/user/finchbreeder?feature=mhee" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; that’s a video of it. A diet consisting of green feed every day dramatically increases my breeding results and therefor is very much worth it and the best part about it is that it only takes 2 minutes to pick so is therefore not very time consuming at all
so if you are interested check out my green feed feeding routine.

Thanks Nathan