Trap Cropping

I have a few areas of our lawn which are overrun with weeds. The main weed I am concerned about is black medic. Reading on the internet suggest this weed thrives in heavy compacted soil. The fix is loosening the soil via aeration. Many people in our area/region aerate via plug aerators. This is said to help roots breathe and allows water to infiltrate our clay soil better. The machines can be rented or alternatively hiring someone to do it. The going rate for the service is $50-$75. Renting a machine is in the same range.
I have a small but heavy duty roto tiller so I decided to till a strip of lawn that was overrun with weeds. I added several shovel fulls of compost to the area and incorporated with the tiller.
I am a big fan of natural remedies and have plenty of seeds saved from previous years of gardening. So I decided to sow cover crops into this area. The seeds I chose were amaranth and broomcorn. Knowing that the amaranth can get top heavy and lodge (fall over), I planted that in the center with a ring of broomcorn around it.

The slight purple tint in the center is the amaranth (Hartman's Giant Amaranth) starting to sprout. This picture was taken, June 13, about a week after tilling and sowing.

The broom corn sprouted a little slower than the amaranth.Here is a shot from July 6 (1 month after sowing).

At this point the broom corn, which is actually a type of sorghum rather than corn, is starting to overtake the amaranth.

Another month later, August 7th, (2 months after sowing)

Its all really taking off. There were a few seeds in the compost as evident by the sunflower (Helianthus) and a cucumber plant (not shown). What we discovered was the amaranth leave were getting chewed. I feel the planting density and the leaf chewing was limiting the amaranth growth.

Discovery:

There are actually three hoppers in this image. The one in the center. One to the left and down from the first. And a third, to the right of the first ringed by the yellowing leaf that is out of focus.
There were lots and lots of grasshoppers in the small patch and almost none at all in the main garden just dozens of feet away.
George, our french bulldog, loves grasshopper hunting. He eats most of them, but also enjoys playing with them. This past summer he would do this for hours each day.

As the summer progressed the plants continued to grow. George really appreciated having me or the missus flush out a couple onto the lawn for him to pounce on. He would literally eat a dozen some days.

September 3rd (3 months after sowing):

Sunflowers and amaranth seed heads clearly visible.

A couple of weeks later( Sept 13th). A strong wind blew over the outside plants:

At this point the plants were getting messy and I decided to cut everything down. I used the weed eater (string trimmer) to cut this "grove" down then ran the lawn mower over to get the rest to near ground level. I gathered up all the trimmings and moved them to the compost pile. I then ran the rototiller over the strip and sowed winter rye and hairy vetch into the area. Both of those do really well in low temperatures. Fall growth survives the winter and takes off in the spring when the temperature gets to about 40°F.

Summary:
I started with the intent of clearing a weedy area from the lawn but was really happy with the results of a "feature area" of the lawn. The grasshopper breeding area was great for George and with his help we kept them all out of the vegetable garden.

Amaranth harvest

I like to grow a new plant in the garden each season. Last year it was Hartman's Giant Amaranth. I got the seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and felt a bit jipped with the small volume of seeds I got in the package. The seeds are tiny, like poppy seeds. I planted them in a row about 6 ft long. I'm still a big Baker Creek fan. The package did grow from a few grams to over a pound of seeds.
You can eat the amaranth greens, like spinach, or wait for the seeds. The bugs, I suspect earwigs, and sparrows were relentless on the early greens, but the plants did amazingly well. These plants seemed slow to take off, but when they did they grew about 7 ft tall with very showy flower heads. The wind and weight of the seeds bent the plants over and staking may be required to keep the plants upright should that be desired. The mix of red flower heads and sunflowers (foreground) made a display that generated accolades from the  neighbors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early amaranth seed heads

The taller amaranth in the above picture are about 7 ft tall. They only got slightly higher due to the additional seed head weight bending the plants over. Several of the seed heads coupled with some wind grew heavy enough to break the stalks. I harvested all the seed heads that didn't bite the dust. And placed them in the garage until I could get to them to process the seeds.
As it turns out they just sat in the garage until spring when I needed the plastic tray some of them were in for germinating my current year's seeds. Here is picture of one of the dried seed heads.

Dried amaranth seed head

I used leather gloves and rubbed the seed heads between my hands to separate the seeds from the rest of the plant material.

Since these seeds are known to get weedy growing all over. I just threw away the stalks rather than compost them.

 Here is what I got separated from the seed heads / stalks with leather gloves. There wasn't enough wind to winnow the seeds so I used the box fan to blow away the red flower pedals and remaining twigs. To do this I turned on the fan and repeatedly grabbed and dropped hand fulls in front of the fan.
 

This was kind of a pain in the you know what. I'm not sure how many thousands of  these tiny seeds are in the lawn. What I found was that getting the last bit of red (flower pedals) out was the hardest. After closely inspecting the red parts still in the container, it turns out that they still contain seeds and are therefore almost the same weight as the black seeds. By rubbing what remains through gloved hands once again I was able to separate (thresh) most of the flower pedals off the seeds.

Here is a close up of what you are dealing with. The plastic container also generated some static which didn't help me out much.

 

I crushed up some of the what I winnowed out to seed how much seed was being lost in the process. Its hard to see in this picture but there are some seeds that you lose in the process. Lets just say that the bird's share. The rubbermade container show the seeds I kept. I did get a little more of the red bits out by pinching out by hand and shaking the container in front of the fan.

George the french bulldog 7 mos

See, the chickens like it.
This took a couple of hours to get done. I don't see how one could do any serious amount of this by hand to make it worth while. Maybe if you had chickens or hogs you could feed the entire seed head to them without the need to clean the grain off the plants prior to feeding it to them.
I check with Google and found a small scale grain separator: Grain cleaner Maybe that will be a project for the future.