Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm pretty certain everything around my house is a weed, on account of me never planting anything.
However my wife has defended this plant and before it gets much larger I was hoping for a definitive answer as to whether its a weed, or blown seed from the neighbour's yard:




I will try to upload some pictures soon too. I hadn't realised how bad the video was until I uploaded it. The plant has a kind of red or purple colour in the stems, and the 'fruit' are very spikey. It reminds me of a thistle, but the leaves and stem are a lot less spiky.

Dog was probably not a great size reference, he is quite large himself.

the leaves are curled up so it's hard to know for sure but to me it looks like a castor oil plant - ricinus communis.
The seeds contain one of the deadliest poisons ricin.

actually on a second look , I think it is a thornapple , also poisonous

http://lrm.nt.gov.au/weeds/find/thornapple#.UQN_VfIqvMo

I think this is a weed.....?

Can't be a weed Charlie, you have a police officer tending to it.
And unless she is a midget, why would you grow weeds that tall?

Its my understanding that the police have had enough of the public not regularly weeding and letting things get out of control...in their lounge rooms..... hence the interception here in the photo I suppose.

I thought he was calling HER a weed and was going to say, while short, she is clearly an attractive kind of plant...

She does look like she's admiring it all doesn't she?

Some pictures:





It actually looked really healthy before that week of 40C weather..

EDIT: Yep, Thornapple. Google images matches up with what Im seeing out the back.
Its amazing how many different kinds of weed I get. Every year its something new. Oh sure there are the classics- Thistle, Patterson's Curse and Skeleton weed; but each spring its something new. There is this one that has very soft leaves, almost like felt. It grows really tall (if I let it) and has little green flowers at the tip. I think the stem is hollow. Anyway, those were last year. They didn't do as well this year because another weed came along to take their place.

Roundup time me thinks

Give those weeds enough time and you could cover the cost of quite a few AP systems though...

don't use roundup, it will kill everything

handpulling weeds is better, dry them in black plastic to denature the seeds and drop them in the compost

(from a professional weed advisor)

+1 to Jaymie.

Roundup is an absolute last resort for me.

I tried the black plastic bag thing and i ended up with weeds growing in my compost. i use roundup on weeds growing between the cracks on my pavers and there's one type that just gets a bit sick then shrugs off the roundup and keeps growing - takes 2 hits to kill it. mabye i have super weeds?

the only tactic for week control is to kill them early before they seed. and don't waste time on the "pet and environmentally friendly" weed killers, they are salt water and lactic acid, terrible for your soil. and they don't work.

I pour hot water on the weeds which pop up between my pavers. Doesn't take long for them to disappear.

Having dogs, chooks, fish, a rabbit and children I don't like using poison if I can help it.

Yeh, I have too many animals around to use poisons. I dug out some weeds today with the hoe. As I was leaving the area I noticed my ducks chewing on patterson's curse leaves. So I can't trust that an insect wont ingest the poison then make its way through a chicken and into my omelette.

I don't make a big effort to try and make my land permanently weed-free. Wont happen when I'm downwind of a major highway and a bunch of properties used for sheep and horse agistment. I can't even keep the beer bottles, macca's packaging and chocolate bar wrappers out.