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Hi Permaculture,

I recently cut down a Tree of Heaven that was about 12 feet tall. At the time, I didn’t realize what it was—it was growing within the ficus hedge on my property.

Since then, I’ve learned it is a Tree of Heaven, and every 3 to 4 weeks I’ve been pulling up shoots that keep sprouting around the base of the small stump.

I’d like to fully eradicate this tree. If I decide to use a herbicide, is there a risk that it could damage the roots of my ficus while targeting the Tree of Heaven?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hello all, I’m a 3D and software developer looking to step away from the corporate, capitalist, technocratic machine. I want to do something more grounded, regenerative, and connected to the natural world. I’d love to meet people who are into blending technology with ecology — especially through passive, non-intrusive sensors to help observe and care for ecosystems. My goals are supporting preservation, increasing biodiversity, reducing reliance on pesticides, and helping build natural resilience. I’m not an expert in this space (yet), but I’m eager to learn. I’m looking for friends, mentors, collaborators, resources, inspiration — anything that helps me move in this direction. Looking forward to connecting!

This is over 8 metres of thin, strong rope made from Cordyline australis. Just going at it casually in the evening whilst watching youtube I managed a rate of about two metres an hour. An ideal thing to occupy your hands if you’re prone to fiddling or scrolling on your phone. I’ll probably end up using all of this in a few days training the raspberries back and running a new line down the fence for the hops but I have so many fronds tied up in bundles that I must have enough for hundreds of metres.

For some reason it’s a very popular plant around here and I see garden waste bags put out constantly filled with the dead fronds so even if I didn’t already have a few trees in the garden there would be no shortage of it. The fronds were always a pain to dispose of as they fall in large numbers during wind, don’t degrade very readily and are time consuming to cut up for mulch. Fortunately however they are absolutely ideal to make rope from. Even the stuff I used in the pond last year to tether a log to the side remained intact for a year whilst submerged. I cut the hard ends and middle portions of the fronds off as they are no good for making rope and use them instead of straw under strawberries.

I started experimenting with rope from blackberry primocanes the other day too. Just peeled the outer green skin off and twisted it together whilst fresh. Nowhere near as strong as the Cordyline but would work fine for tying plants to canes.

Hi,

I planted to a bunch of grapevines 2years ago and this spring I was away and just got back…and grapevines have gone wild! What should I do, prune them and keep them as freestanding grapes ro make some kind of trellis?