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> Still, the institute’s research has some potentially useful findings. Jackson’s research on seeding milkweed (the host plant for monarch caterpillars) in road

> Still, the institute’s research has some potentially useful findings. Jackson’s research on seeding milkweed (the host plant for monarch caterpillars) in road ditches with existing vegetation showed abysmal results without applying herbicides, such as Roundup, prior to planting. “You get precisely no plants,” Jackson said. “You use Roundup once, you get a few more, and, if you round it up a couple of times, you get a few more.” Yeah right. People are doing no dig gardening now by simply putting a layer of cardboard over grass or whatever below you want to get rid off, and placing a layer of compost on top and guess what it works fairly well. But sure, we need Roundup for everything so spray it liberally for "nature". And it's "science" based. Horrific.

numbsafari 2y ago
Note that she was talking about roadside plantings. As in along the ditches next to highways. There’s a scale problem. I’m not saying roundup is the way, but you can’t scale up cardboard to that level. For one thing, most at home gardeners are recycling their pile of Amazon boxes. For the highway system, you’d need to start manufacturing cardboard for that purpose, which would have its own consequences. Personally, I’m a fan of using those roadsides to do grazing. Intensive grazing. It has its own downsides, but using an animal system to manage a plant system can be very effective. See also the bison on the plains. Ed: fixed missing sentence break.
- goda90 2y ago
  You could mow the roadside really low, then till it and immediately put down seeds. Machinery would let that scale up more.
- locallost 2y ago
  That's like saying we can't build Empire State Building because techniques to build dog houses don't scale. Sure you need different methods to scale, but if something should be a future epitaph on societies worldwide it should be that we messed everything up because it was the easiest thing to do. I mentioned the cardboard method simply because it's the most primitive thing people do and it still works.
  - dang 2y ago
    Sorry for the offtopicness, but please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 regarding a flamewar that happened over a week ago. It's important that this not happen again.
    - locallost 2y ago
      You're right. I wondered at one point why we didn't get banned, or if we did but didn't notice. I don't know, I like to discuss things, and I'm not sure what's the exact point where I should've called it quits, although it's clear the discussion got derailed somewhere and became pointless. Maybe you should ban me, and I mean this in a completely non combative way - if I can't figure out when to stop, maybe I should spend my time somewhere else. Or spend my time on something else - that the whole thing didn't bring anything is at least one thing that's obvious.

numbsafari 2y ago

Note that she was talking about roadside plantings. As in along the ditches next to highways. There’s a scale problem. I’m not saying roundup is the way, but you can’t scale up cardboard to that level. For one thing, most at home gardeners are recycling their pile of Amazon boxes. For the highway system, you’d need to start manufacturing cardboard for that purpose, which would have its own consequences. Personally, I’m a fan of using those roadsides to do grazing. Intensive grazing. It has its own downsides, but using an animal system to manage a plant system can be very effective. See also the bison on the plains. Ed: fixed missing sentence break.

goda90 2y ago
You could mow the roadside really low, then till it and immediately put down seeds. Machinery would let that scale up more.
locallost 2y ago
That's like saying we can't build Empire State Building because techniques to build dog houses don't scale. Sure you need different methods to scale, but if something should be a future epitaph on societies worldwide it should be that we messed everything up because it was the easiest thing to do. I mentioned the cardboard method simply because it's the most primitive thing people do and it still works.
- dang 2y ago
  Sorry for the offtopicness, but please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418629 regarding a flamewar that happened over a week ago. It's important that this not happen again.
  - locallost 2y ago
    You're right. I wondered at one point why we didn't get banned, or if we did but didn't notice. I don't know, I like to discuss things, and I'm not sure what's the exact point where I should've called it quits, although it's clear the discussion got derailed somewhere and became pointless. Maybe you should ban me, and I mean this in a completely non combative way - if I can't figure out when to stop, maybe I should spend my time somewhere else. Or spend my time on something else - that the whole thing didn't bring anything is at least one thing that's obvious.