Singapore Daisy

🐛GARDEN CHALLENGES🐛

Our site has some challenges. Every property does.

But one that is a difficult invasive plant to get on top of is Singapore Daisy.

It is around one of our natural spring-fed ponds and quickly moving down the hill to the lower paddock.

Singapore Daisy is considered a category 3 invasive plant species.
Which means:

• Native to tropical America, Singapore daisy is a vigorous ground cover that spreads rapidly and out-competes native plants. In Queensland, it also invades lawns, irrigated areas, and areas around drains.

• You must manage the impacts of Singapore daisy on your land.

• You must not give away, sell or release Singa
  pore daisy into the environment.

  Note: THE HARDEST part of this plant is that it propogates so easily - any shred or fragment of leaf, root or stem will produce a new plant. It is IMPERATIVE that you DO NOT MOW over it, otherwise you are sending hundreds of thousands of new plants ready to grow.

How we are managing it:

We are NOT using sprays or chemicals

We are using Biodynamic Peppers and a lot of firm boundaries when setting intentions while is distribute the BD pepper. To find out more on BD pepper click here https://thedelectablegarden.com.au/biodynamic-peppers/

I purchase all of my peppers from Rohan from The Delectable Garden. You can make your own but I'm not quite there yet!

I do the BD pepper on a full moon each month with a weed tea made with the Singapore daisy. When you are asking a plant to vacate you must give something back. Energetic growing works this way.

So, in addition to the weed tea preparation, I also do a biodynamic soil activator application to encourage new growth of native plants and grasses with a prayer of sorts.

I am 4 months into this process, and it could take a year or more with BD pepper. A lot of energy has to be shifted.

In addition, there are micro plots of it cropping up that i am pulling out and gathering all runners, leaves and roots to dry in the sun or bag it before composting. Once I clear a patch I use heavy rubber mats to block the sun.

OTHER NOTES

Some advice for control is to fold it back on itself like a carpet to block the sun. I haven't tried this method yet. I think this is if you had vast areas covered with thick mats.

A lot of the government advice is to use chemical sprays, but in anecdotal notes i have read on that method is that it essentially drinks the poison and comes back stronger.

We did have a working Bee in the winter last year and we cleared a huge section, but with all the rain and warm weather it has come back.

An article here has some data on folk medicine and traditional medicinal uses for Singapore Daisy, prior to us living here, an elderly couple lived here. In the esoteric communities, I have heard that the plant you need most, grows nearby. So perhaps that may be why the lady before us had such a difficult time removing it. If you are curious, you can read more about the folk remedies here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378874120330099

Now that I am in a rhythm of BD full moon applications and the clear and suppress method, i hope to see some success!

I will do a future post of what is going right and any pivots we had to do for this challenge.

Have you ever worked with Singapore Daisy? I'd love to hear your experiences with it.