Gardener's Bane

At last, we have an invasive broadleaf weed that is nutritious and that the sheep like to eat.  The Chamber Bitter weed (Phyllanthus urinaria) is a warm season annual weed native to Asia, but that has spread across the tropics.  It seems to have become quite prevalent here in the past few years, growing in with the bahiagrass, in various bare spots and especially in areas that I sprayed with herbicide to kill cogongrass.  Unfortunately for gardeners, it rapidly establishes itself on bare earth and will become a dense matt choking out less vigorous plants. 

As described in Health Benefits Times.com the plant is considered to be an outstanding medicinal herb, especially for the treatment of kidney stones.  They list many other medicinal uses as well.  Scott Allen Davis in his Wild Edibles site calls Chamber Bitter a natural detoxifier with the plant  used: to remove kidney stones; for urinary tract infections; to treat liver problems, diabetes, flu, tumors, headache, and fever.  He says that it is a proven antihepatotoxic, antiviral, antibacterial, and hypoglycemic.

Chamber Bitter (Phyllanthus urinaria) is closely related to Phyllanthus amarus in its appearance, structure and constituents as reported in Phytochemical screening and nutrient analysis of Phyllanthus amarus .  They find P. amarus to have a crude protein content of 10.5%.  So, I expect that Chamber Bitter will have a similar composition.  While not as good as the protein level of clovers, it a bit better than the 8 to 9% protein of well grown bahia grass and probably double the protein level of poorly growing bahia grass, where it would most likely be found.

Health Benefits Times.com provides detailed descriptions of the growth characteristics and habit of the Chamber Bitter plant.  It grows in a variety of environments, rapidly establishing itself on bare patches and in the bare spots within weakly growing bahia grass.  It reproduces by means of the green to reddish fruits hanging underneath the leaf stems that you can see in these pictures I took in the southeast blueberry field to the north of our house.

This dense patch of Chamber Bitter is growing in the shade to the east of a large sweet gum tree in the SE Blueberry field.  The sheep have been fenced off from the area so far.

This shows a typical stalk of Chamber Weed before being exposed to sheep.

Once the sheep have been in a field, the Chamber Bitter stalk looks more like this.  Notice at each leaf node, a small leaf has sprouted.  If the sheep are rotated through a field, just as the grass has a chance to regrow, the Chamber Bitter looks like it will sprout out and regrow.

Herbicide

Sprayed out 100 gallons of imazapyr herbicide solution on cogongrass and Chinese tallow trees today.   Used the boomless nozzles and the hand spray wand.  Everything worked well.  Nice for a change.

New Moms

Four new ewe moms are trailing their lambs (2 sets of twins and 2 singles) down the alleyway towards the pen designated for ewes with lambs. There, they and their lambs will get supplemental feeding.  These ewes were separated from the main ewe flock when that flock went to a new pasture.   The ewes with lambs stayed behind and were diverted onto a new path.

Porch Dogs

Niobe and Whitie, on the left and right respectively, guard the porch.   To be fair, they do patrol around, bark and howl to let the coyotes know this territory is occupied.  Blue mist flower is blooming in the foreground with a couple of red cardinal vine flowers.

Zeus with Ewes

Zeus is in with the very pregnant ewes grazing the middle field.   Lambs should be coming any day now.

Getting Feed

Went to J&B Feed in Lucedale to get feed for the sheep.  They prepare a special blend of soybean meal and soybean hull pellets for me in 14% and 20% protein mixes.  Today I picked up 4 tons of the 14%.

Kratos

Kratos seems to enjoy sitting around with the sheep, the sheep are also relaxed around him.  He is one of our best guard dogs.

Feeding Lamb

This lamb is about a week old and is already starting to eat grain with the mom.  They are getting supplemental feed to help both the mom and the lamb.  No other ewes have birthed yet, but many look close.  They are getting molasses supplement tubs until they birth.

Fence End Posts

Today we put in nine end posts to finish constructing the alleyway fence going along the north side of the south field.  Auger on the John Deere 2955 drilled an 8 inch diameter hole about 4 feet deep.  Jeffrey used the manual clamshell post hole digger to clean out the hole and to deepen it to 4 1/2 ft to 5 ft deep.  

After dropping the post into the hole (Jeffrey did that), we filled it with sand and water, tamping as we put it in.  Sand is in the front end loader, water is at the back of the Fiat in the water tanks with an on demand pump that we use for fire suppression during prescribed burns.

In the first picture, Jeffrey is digging out a spot to put the concrete "dead man" that helps brace the post against the fence wire pulling against it.  Second photo shows Jeffrey finishing tamping the sand and adding water.  By adding water to the sand as we shovel the sand in, it settles and packs hard.  The sand around the post helps drain water away and preserves the post better than if dirt/clay were packed around it.  It is also a lot easier to shovel in and pack sand with water than to try and scrape up the dirt and clay the auger dug out and scattered around and pack that pack in the hole against the post.

Jeffrey is wearing the nice broad brimmed straw hat he got at Buc-ee's in Texas.  It does a nice job keeping the sun off.

Weekend update.   Put in 10 more posts on Sunday.   A total of 19, a record for us.

Kratos and Anneika

Kratos and Anneika, finished with breakfast, are in the lone pine field with their flock of sheep.  These ewes are either not pregnant, or not too far along.   The more ready ewes are in fields closer to the house, where we can more readily watch them.  We are switching to only Fall lambing and not all the ewes were able to get in sync with the program.   So far we have one lamb, with many of the other ewes near to term, looking ready to burst.

Geese

Canadian geese are back, either resting or grazing on the oats in the south field.

Fall Flowers

Fall flowers mark the end of the summer heat.  There are quite impressive displays in many of the fields.  Joy needs to help identify some of these.

Narrowleaf sunflowers around a young longleaf pine.

Narrowleaf sunflowers grow tall and surround a beauty berry bush.  I don't know the white flowers.

The fields are ablaze with yellow narrowleaf sunflowers.

I don't know this next one.  It provides some rare pink, non-yellow color.

A "foundation planting" of blue mist flowers came all on its own.  All I did was not mow it.

Its not a flower, but I thought the sun behind this cloud was a quite stunning effect.

Cardinal vine grows rapantly, I would almost believe feet per day.  It has a bright red flower that attracts hummingbirds.

Where it gets started, cardinal vine rapidly covers any tellis type of structure.  Here on the east side of the chick barn it is growing over a chain link fence gate.

Cardinal flowers have deep nectaries that the hummingbirds like.

The gulf coast fritillary butterfly is attracted to this frilly purplish flower.  I don't know its name.

Here there is a type of yellow goldenrod in the background.  Seeing this, I am reminded that I did not get a picture of the masses of yellow goldenrod blooming this time of year.

This butterfly posed for me.

Oats

2019-09-8:  In preparation for planting oats for winter forage in the fields where we had planted cowpeas for the summer, I sprayed weeds coming up after mowing a couple weeks earlier.  That same day, after spraying, Jeffrey followed with the Grassfarmer seed drill and planted Coker 227 oats.

2018-09-24:  Seed germinated rapidly, 2-3 days after planting.  Here a little over 2 weeks later, the oat plants are several inches tall.

This is the south field about 2 weeks after planting.

2018-09-25:  Some Canadian geese stopped in to rest and graze on oat seedlings.  This is in the south field again.

2018-10-05:  Here I am towing a fertilizer buggy around with the John Deere 2955.

This is the south beaver field getting a fertilizer application.  I fertilized all the oats and put a half dose on the the east and west bahia fields (we cut hay off these fields earlier).

There has been plenty of rain for the oats to grow, it would have been better to get the fertilizer on a couple of weeks ago to get them going better.

Another view of the oats in the south beaver field.  One problem with having to fertilize these young plants is mashing them with the tractor and buggy.  They will recover, and in general be better off than if we did not give them some fertilizer.

Gator brake cable

The brake cable broke on the Gator a couple of weeks ago.  To replace it I needed to take off the front tool rack, hood, seats and passenger compartment cover.  The gator needed a good pressure washing and cleanup anyway, lots of hay had worked its way down in between the various parts.  So it was a good time to do that.

Also while threading the brake cable in, I also threaded some wires back to the battery to install a power point for running an herbicide pump.  More on that later.

The cable needed to be threaded through the square access hole in the front shown below.

Broken cable