People who don't rejoice in a riot of dandelions blooming yellow across a yard either live in a place that doesn't have winter, or don't have souls. Seriously, what could be more joyful than the brilliant, saturated yellow of dandelions coming up as a celebration of spring?
I would also add that dandelion wine is probably about one of the easiest wines to make at home. You use a lot of sugar, so you've got a pretty predictable must, and you let it do its thing. You'll want to ferment it in something with a lot of headspace. The petals trap the escaping carbon dioxide and rise up bringing the mist with them. It'll messily overflow if you haven't made an allowance for this.
My partner and I are pretty lousy brewers, but we've made a couple outstanding batches of dandelion wine. It's got a little bit of bitter and a little bit of pepper, and on a winter evening, it's a reassuring reminder that spring will return and bring its celebration of life and color.
Roll the head between your thumb and finger to separate the petals from the green sepals.
Reading essays by Aldo Leopold [0] really changed my perspective a bit. He has an essay from 1943 called "What Is a Weed?" [1], and I don't think before reading it that I'd ever contemplated that question in any depth.
He argues that it is a false premise "that every wild species occasionally harmful to agriculture is, by reason of that fact, to be blacklisted for general persecution [1]." He also argues that it's backwards to focus so much on weed control rather than weed prevention--many times weeds are the effect of some underlying cause (land misuse, etc.).
Anyway I really dig Leopold and his philosophy, if you've never heard of him give A Sand County Almanac [2] a try.
My understanding is that they aren't nearly as problematic as some other non-native plants though, like veldt grass, pampas grass, English ivy, sourgrass (African wood-sorrel), ice plant, Himalayan blackberry, cotoneaster, periwinkle, etc.
iirc the Dandelions we know are are native to Eurasia and are considered invasive across the US. They were brought over by early settlers for their health benefits
i have heard they were a garden plant but i dont know if that was an informal "spread the seeds and harvest where they pop up" or more of a row crop kind of thing...
The whole disdane for this plant, is rooted in the lawn mania.
It should be noted that most sod grasses are also an invasive species in most places. And in the western US, where water is not as available as it is in South Carolina, sod lawns also require a lot of water from the Colorado River that could go to much better use.
They also, uinlike sod, don't require mowing since they don't grow to multiple feet in height if left unattended.
The US concept of a sod grass lawn as a standard home feature is another example of the US's arrested development in Happy Days.
People who don't rejoice in a riot of dandelions blooming yellow across a yard either live in a place that doesn't have winter, or don't have souls. Seriously, what could be more joyful than the brilliant, saturated yellow of dandelions coming up as a celebration of spring?
I would also add that dandelion wine is probably about one of the easiest wines to make at home. You use a lot of sugar, so you've got a pretty predictable must, and you let it do its thing. You'll want to ferment it in something with a lot of headspace. The petals trap the escaping carbon dioxide and rise up bringing the mist with them. It'll messily overflow if you haven't made an allowance for this.
My partner and I are pretty lousy brewers, but we've made a couple outstanding batches of dandelion wine. It's got a little bit of bitter and a little bit of pepper, and on a winter evening, it's a reassuring reminder that spring will return and bring its celebration of life and color.
Roll the head between your thumb and finger to separate the petals from the green sepals.
Reading essays by Aldo Leopold [0] really changed my perspective a bit. He has an essay from 1943 called "What Is a Weed?" [1], and I don't think before reading it that I'd ever contemplated that question in any depth.
He argues that it is a false premise "that every wild species occasionally harmful to agriculture is, by reason of that fact, to be blacklisted for general persecution [1]." He also argues that it's backwards to focus so much on weed control rather than weed prevention--many times weeds are the effect of some underlying cause (land misuse, etc.).
Anyway I really dig Leopold and his philosophy, if you've never heard of him give A Sand County Almanac [2] a try.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold
1: https://books.google.com/books?id=-StPpe04gS8C&pg=PA306&lpg=...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac
I wonder if this is like clover?
I read somewhere that clover was a part of lawns, until "somehow someone" decided it had to go and chemicals were designed to eradicate it.
now lawns are philosophically grass, without clover.
Apparently the shift happened around mid-century: https://gazette.com/life/clover-lawns-colorado-expert-shares...
Clover isn't fun to deal with, it really likes to migrate off the lawn into my flower beds, and hide under plants until it's substantial.
Note that in the author's area (San Francisco Bay) dandelions are an invasive species.
My understanding is that they aren't nearly as problematic as some other non-native plants though, like veldt grass, pampas grass, English ivy, sourgrass (African wood-sorrel), ice plant, Himalayan blackberry, cotoneaster, periwinkle, etc.
iirc the Dandelions we know are are native to Eurasia and are considered invasive across the US. They were brought over by early settlers for their health benefits
i have heard they were a garden plant but i dont know if that was an informal "spread the seeds and harvest where they pop up" or more of a row crop kind of thing...
The whole disdane for this plant, is rooted in the lawn mania.
It should be noted that most sod grasses are also an invasive species in most places. And in the western US, where water is not as available as it is in South Carolina, sod lawns also require a lot of water from the Colorado River that could go to much better use.
They also, uinlike sod, don't require mowing since they don't grow to multiple feet in height if left unattended.
The US concept of a sod grass lawn as a standard home feature is another example of the US's arrested development in Happy Days.
Go mow the lawn Richie!!!