These cute goats help native plant revegetation | Australian native plants | Gardening Australia
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- čas přidán 24. 07. 2024
- Colin Arnold has about 40 years’ experience as a horticulturalist and nurseryman for the past 40 years and is passionate about been using goats in revegetation situations.
He has been working in revegetation - trying to remove weeds and replace them with indigenous plants along waterways and other bush reserves - but after several decades he found nothing much was changing.
“Our waterways were still infested with weeds and we need to use a lot of herbicide, but I’d like to see that change.”
His solution was to try using goats. They’re flexible creatures are renowned for eating just about anything and they proved him right by chomping through all manner of introduced plant species.
“Angled onion is a major problem along the Dandenong Creek,” Colin said. “The goats love the flowers and eat the foliage too at certain times.”
They also eat other local weeds: privet, English ivy, pittosporums, blackberries, hawthorn and even prickly gorse.
“Gorse has seed that is viable for 25 years, but goats will find those seedlings and eat them, too,” he said.
Colin put the bigger goats in areas where there are larger bushes, such as blackberries and tree regrowth.
Other areas, where they have been working for eight years, have already developed thickets of native grasses such as Poa and Lomandra species, so they only need to be visited by smaller goats for a few weeks each year, just to keep down a few smaller weeds.
He has found the goats won’t eat certain native plants, such as Cassinia, so that complements the native grasses well. “They flower at different times and attract different insects, so form part of landscape we want to restore,” he said.
Colin points to a weeping grass (Microlaena stipoides) that has reseeded on its own and the goats leave alone; right next to it is the weed fumitory, which the goats will eat.
Finally, he shows a native mint (Mentha australis), which used to be in the area but is rarely found now because the microflora and microfauna in the soil is struggling due to weeds. By protecting the soil and maybe even inoculating with microflora and fauna, these plants can thrive again.
And local volunteers can spend time doing more useful things, such as planting and putting in nesting boxes, instead of weeding.
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Well done Colin. Glad to see this project was successful and that you are getting noticed for your sustainable ecological approach.
Awe
Great to see Rivermint is getting another chance in the wild as it has been killed off with feral weeds. One of the nicest mints you will every smell and taste.
I love this so much! This needs to me a normal thing!!
Happy goats, happy humans!
Your an absolute legend!
Thanks for the facts.
Gonna start my own army of goats
That is interesting. I was thinking of getting miniature goats to keep down the weeds. This is good to hear.
Great work
Keep up the great job you are doing 👏 👍 💪 👌
Awesome!
thats wonderful ..need more goats lol
Fantastic, so inspiring.
Amazing! 🐐
Really enjoyed watching a natural method to overcome weed control, esp. designed for regional areas. I assume that the reduction of introduced weeds that cover the bushland floors would also reduce the fuel load on the ground during bush fire season. Has this process had any noticeable effect?
Keep up the good work
Good show, well done
👍
Plus goat fertilizer!
I've got blackberries running amok in central west NSW. Are these goats the answer? Cheers.
Will they eat lantana?
First 👍
Beautiful farm 😍😍
Any idea how to contact Colin? I’d love to pick his brain about doing this to my property!
Do a search for "colin arnold goats”, seems like he has a Facebook page.
If only everybody felt and acted in this vain. Lets hope. In real terms modern people are very well off today. Addressing degraded ecosystems could be one of the main focuses now although a very careful, thoughtful approach is needed. A scientific approach with explaining and testing ad nauseum...and quality long term record keeping. Most will assume its easier to understand and influence ecologies in desireable ways than what it actually is and much wasted time and resources will occur. We can only try to minimise them.