Use Bamboo & Invasive Plants to Your Advantage!

the honeybee that's an invasive species but it's so useful that nobody's complaining I don't hear anybody complaining about this bringing honeybees oh you're gonna you're gonna start a beehive that's terrible you know how irresponsible of you you don't have that attitude because they're useful all right that's what I'm saying bamboo is that hey guys welcome back to the channel today I'm back with Daryl I think it's an he's a new channel favorite uh back to talk about bamboo some more with him and about invasive species in general and just more it's a very complex topic so we really wanted to touch on that more for you guys and help you to understand that better and why we shouldn't be so scared of invasives you shouldn't be planting bamboo we don't don't bring that bamboo into America you know that belongs over in China you know don't be bringing here it's invasive and all that well that argument right there is about 140 years too late okay in 1882 is when we started importing bamboos from all over the world and we've been doing it ever since we have hundreds of species you know in America growing in lots of locations so it's a little too late to say it doesn't belong here it lives here now it's part of it's part of our ecosystem and where we ignore it it's spreading and maybe doing damage taking over some things we'd rather not do and that that is the Crux of the problem it's only bad invasive when you ignore it okay so that's what needs to be changed and you know people say it's irresponsible to to plant bamboo because because of its invasiveness well I say that since it's already here then we're going to have to deal with it what's irresponsible is refusing to learn about it and refusing to do things with it you know there's so many things so many new businesses could be started up and you know kind of like with hemp you know I think cannabis and bamboo are probably the two most valuable plants that we have okay and and we've suppressed and ignored both of them and things are changing now you know we're starting to use hemp and there's medicinal cannabis and all that and we're starting to make use of a very valuable plant and bamboo is becoming more popular and so we're opening up to it a little bit but we need a big education program so that Americans who so far have been kind of willfully ignorant about bamboo can get the education they need so they're not afraid of it and they see the advantages of growing bamboo let me just talk about paper production in our country because because I hear people say you're going to plant these invasives they're going to take over the natural habitat and and we're going to lose our hardwood forest because the bamboo will take over them well where are you people at complaining about do you know what's going on right now to make paper in this country we used to do it out in the Northwest and cut all the trees down that you know but now they've moved into the southeast and and what these big companies do if you're not aware of it is they come in and they totally clear-cut the entire Forest every single tree down to the bare ground and bring bulldozers in and scrape it clean and now what's that going to be in the future it's a pine tree farm they plant them in rows they grow them for 15 to 20 years then they'd send them to the pulp Mill to make paper and they replant and scrape it all up again so you have erosion happening in between each stage you have you know by doing it with trees making our paper from trees it makes us vulnerable in a lot of ways because we got a 20-year investment 15 to 20 year investment in time before you can make use of it well during that time there could be insects come in and kill the trees that's happened recently you could you could have a fire in in your 14th year it wipes out the whole forest and now you've got to start over from scratch so you get nothing for those 14 years if it was bamboo that we were using instead of trees to make paper and there was a fire well it comes up again the next year start all over again uh you know and and it's okay here I'm going to give you a few statistics because this is going to blow your mind all right in America we kill we Harvest 15 million trees every year just for toilet paper that's just toilet paper that's not all of our paper okay if we talk about for all paper 200 million trees a day are cut down that's 2.5 every second just to make paper okay that's that's huge and and here's some worldwide statistics check this out 36 of all trees being harvested are for paper okay 36 and uh four to eight billion trees around the world are killed every year just to make paper okay we also cut trees for lumber and things like that you know so but just this paper thing all right here's now here's what really this blew me away the amount of acreage that we have set aside in America to make our paper out of trees we could cut that back to 10 percent of that amount of land and devote that to paper production with bamboo that means the other 90 percent that we already cut down didn't have to be cut down we've already done it you know we're still doing it I mean we're still on this thing we're cutting down our hardwood forests sir how can you not complain about that and then you complain about a bamboo being planted near a forest and yeah it might go in there and cause some problems but they're cutting the whole thing down it's gone you know the squirrels the deer the turkeys nothing can live there and and do like they did we ruined it it's ruined and after you know they they plant their pine trees they might get about three sequences of that before so much soil has eroded away and they just they're not gonna it's not gonna work for them I don't know what'll become of that land in the future we could grow bamboo there would be a good idea but because bamboo would be okay and it holds the soil and the erosion problem okay let's talk about Kudzu for a second everybody knows how invasive Kudzu is if you if you're from the south eastern United States and just driving around on the highways you'll see places where it's giant sculptures out there it kind of looks interesting you know in the summertime when it's alive and growing but it's not so interesting when you realize what it really is I mean they have covered over the vines have climbed up and covered over entire giant trees and and they're killing the forest eventually it'll all fall down and there'll be a kudzu field out there okay and and so we brought that in here thinking it would be a good thing for livestock and and all that but it it's so invasive and and it didn't work out so great for livestock so um people aren't making use of it and it's a problem invasive but I'll tell you what what if this is just imaginary now let's say they discovered one day that you can make a little Elixir from Kudzu leaf and it reverses the aging process okay just some I made that up okay but let's just say something that Kudzu suddenly is very useful for do you realize there wouldn't be hardly any Kudzu around anymore it wouldn't be a pain it wouldn't be a problem it wouldn't be invasive people would be out there pulling it down from the trees we'd be harvesting it all and making use of it okay and that's why it's such a problem we brought it here and it wasn't what we thought it was and now nobody pays attention to it and it's just taking over okay and that's kind of what we've done with bamboo but there's no reason because I don't have to come up with a magic elixir made up thing bamboo is incredibly useful and we have other invasives Asian carp and the zebra muscle and things like that that come in here and and are causing problems because we don't people don't like to eat the Asian carp you know or you know we're not eating all those mussels and so they're causing trouble you know honeysuckle is an invasive plant that was brought in here and some people hate it and it spreads and all that I have I have some on my property and I love it because the smell it puts in the air is just intoxicatingly beautiful so I love having honey starkle so you know that kind of thing is just it's up to different people whether it's a good thing or a bad thing but um let's talk about for a second two more invasive species that were brought into America a long time ago first one the earthworm the common earthworm the night crawlers that we did not exist on this continent we had other worms those smaller worms and things like that but we did not have what we all know is the earthworm okay that we all want in our Gardens and improves our soil and all that it was brought over accidentally when the Spaniards and and other people that came with horses you know settlers that brought horses across and all in the hoof of the horse was mud impacted from whatever country they came from and there's little egg cases in there for earthworms and then the horse when it dries out they're getting dropped as they walk around and so we now have earthworms all over the place and I don't hear anybody complaining it's an invasive species it may have even competed out some of our smaller worms and you know took over I don't know the history on that so you know it's like that's a useful invasive and and then here's how about this one the honeybee I was gonna say that the honeybee is an invasive species it spreads like crazy it has probably wiped out a few smaller bees that were native to this country but we're not going to get rid of the honeybee look how useful that is or we can't even do agriculture without them you know we've set it all up around the honeybee does our pollination so once you know how useful it is then it's like a honeybee we would be welcoming it like like Asian countries that have had it for a long time and use it a lot that's how they feel about it and the last thing I'll mention America went to Vietnam I can't believe what we did over there I I can't believe that we did stuff like that but okay they dropped Napalm and all kinds of chemicals they totally burned out whole forests and Villages it was denuded landscape it was a the scorched Earth policy okay we went over there and did that to a very beautiful tropical country I mean okay and and so they had bare soil over vast amounts of acreages and when the rains came the soil was washing away they're they're losing you know their their topsoil it's a bad situation so what did they do once we finally left and quit burning them out and they had time to repair well they already had bamboo growing in Vietnam it was one of the plants that was common there but they went all out with bamboo because they knew that it would quickly take over and the rhizome system would support that soil and keep it from eroding away and so they planted all kinds of bamboo to fill up that denuded land and now Vietnam they have so much bamboo that it's a huge industry for them now they make a lot of bamboo furniture that you see a lot of that is coming from Vietnam and and a lot of other things that they make out of bamboo so you know it's it's uh it's just such an important plant and I don't think we need to fear it like everybody the only reason you have fear is because you have a lack of knowledge okay once you understand it how it grows how it can be used you're going to be like me you'll be all for bamboo I'll try to add a little bit even more to this is that my view of this this planet Earth is that ever since it's existed insects uh microbes all sorts of land animals everything's been moving all over this planet constantly it's there's no such thing as an ecosystems that's static that stays the same we know that the climate has changed massively over thousands and thousands of years and um so to say that this exists here only and can't go over here it is a lack of knowledge because what you need to understand is that nature is self-balancing self-preserving um massively abundant so you know I like to talk about the insects that have come to America there's many that have come from Asia or Africa that you know do massive damage to our crops but I like to tell people that's going on yes but it's because a predator a natural predator hasn't Arisen to take out those bugs so how do we create a habitat that's gonna create the most diverse system possible to allow for that Predator to arrive to then Feast on this insect that nobody else is eating and it just takes time for nature to catch up and do that so I think that's an important concept to understand that over time things self-balance plus you know and it's very unbalanced in the way we do agriculture right with those but I mean we have huge acreages the very same thing all planted out there big monoculture and and the bugs arrive and just decimate it you know so you know right exactly so yeah there's a lot more than just like everyone you know has these little sound bites that they believe about agriculture they believe about these certain things like everyone has heard about this term invasive species in the United States or in San Diego everyone was about oh I only plant native species in San Diego I'm so proud of that as if that's the ultimate thing that you should be doing with your land when that's not correct a correct way of thinking it's a very it's a Layman's way of thinking so I hope that we're giving you guys some more context to understand some more of those things and if you are going to plant an invasive or something that grows rapidly understand how it grows go watch uh the video where Daryl explains how to kill a rhizome growing plant you can use that technique for any plant-like bamboo and you can go from there and not worry about it because you understand how it works and I think the most invasive species is homo sapiens well this is all here for us we're not doing a great job of it yeah yeah we're a little greedy aren't we yeah so thanks Daryl for uh explaining giving us some more context for that and be sure to look out for all the other videos that me and Daryl are going to make together we're gonna be harvesting some bamboo shoots we're going to show you how to harvest bamboo and take that to a new location we're going to take it back to my house and plan it so teach you guys how to do that and yeah thanks Daryl so much thank you for doing this with us

Channel: Nature's Always Right

Views: 4,457

Keywords: invasive species, invasives and native species, how to plant invasive bamboo, what is invasive species, what are invasive species, problem invasive species, darrell luck, steven cornett, nature's always right, homesteading, gardening, invasive plant species, most invasive species

Id: UPmpPBMgCmk

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023