The Amazing Story of Kudzu - 1996 Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- In "The Amazing Story of Kudzu" you’ll learn about kudzu’s colorful past, present and future. Travel from Chipley, Florida - where Glen Arden Nursery sold kudzu plants through the mail in the 1920s - to Covington, Georgia - where Channing Cope crowned kudzu “king” in the 1940s.
Meet a 93 year old man who supervised Civilian Conservation Corps workers as they planted thousands of acres of kudzu during the Great Depression. See farmers who feed their livestock kudzu, cooks who create kudzu dishes, and artists who weave baskets and make paper from this hardy vine. You’ll meet others who see kudzu as a nuisance and join one man’s ten year long losing battle against one huge kudzu plant.
Ask any Southerner about this vine and they’ll have something to say about it. They may love it or hate it, but they can’t escape it!
"The Amazing Story of Kudzu" was originally broadcast on Alabama Public Television, as a part of the weekly series, The Alabama Experience. It was distributed to other Public TV stations nationwide in 1996.
The documentary was recorded at various locations in the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina where kudzu has had its greatest impact.
Kudzu also makes an amazing fertilizer as it is a legume that fixes nitrogen. In a soil test plot in Alabama they grew it for three years then tilled it under. The soil produced more bushels per that acre without additional inputs or amendments for over 10 years. The world record for tomatoes was made using a kudzu fertilizer blend. I use it with chicken and rabbit manure to compost. Gets extremely hot and makes an amazing soil amendment. My newest endeavor is going to be running the vines through a wood chipper to see if I can make a loose mulch that can fertilize at the same time.
The best beef that I have ever eaten came from a calf that we raised on kudzu.
There was a lot of honeysuckle around, also. cattle love both.
I think kudzu is beautiful. It grows amazingly here in Mississippi. I love it.
I think it's incredibly invasive and kills competition
I went down to Mississippi for a vacation and it was disappointing how much of the landscape has been swallowed in a see of green vines.
Obviously, you’re not the one that has to try to get it out of your yard.
Kudzu saved my life.
if you can't beat it, eat it.
Except where they have been bombing it with round-up and other herbicides
haha good point.
As fast as it grows, you can’t begin to imagine how much and how fast he would have to eat. It literally will grow up to 2 feet a day! Unless you have a high dollar weed eater or a bush hog, you are not going to get it out of your yard with a traditional cheap weedeater. The vines and the strings wrap around the cutter parts and burns your engine out. It’s also so thick and covers the ground so well that snakes and other varmints make their residence in it
fascination story...had never heard of this plant and was researching a substance called pueraria lobata and discovered that it is derived from kudzu. i think that instead of destroying it, we should use it creatively for fodder...and may be to make paper etc. that would be win-win situation; but sadly, so often we overlook and waste such opportunities.
Ha!😊count on Southerners to deep fry anything!
The Book of Kudzu is free by William Shurtleff on Google Books. ebook. I have 2 blogs on kudzu questions. I am the cousins of David G. Fairchild who married Marian Bell, Alexander Graham Bell's daughter. Fairchild was a scientist with the USDA who brought 200,000+ different kinds of plants to the USA for agriculture. He also supplied the photos the first 2 years National Geographic was published. If you want to hear songs about kudzu, I wrote 2 on youtube. Kudzilla and Kudzu Covered Land. I also invented some recipes that I put on my blog. Kudzu is non-toxic. Noxious does not mean toxic. Meanwhile apple seeds have arsenic and bamboo has cyanide. Go figure!
I just got best idea for a present for my ex! 😉
Heh go for it!
The music is too loud!
Will kudzu in a northern climate...like chicago? Maybe it will block my neighbors from my view 😅
I don't think you would get the amount of growth that warmer climates allow. The growing season will be shorter.
It will grow. Your a bit colder than me but i live near nyc and i got it to grow.
I'm in nj. I can't stop it. It's all over everything.
Breed goats and let em roam free xD
They eat corns plants,too.
I don’t understand what you’re doing to these vines that make them good for weaving or craft purposes. When I tried making wreaths with the vines, they didn’t make very good wreaths. When the moisture is gone they don’t stay hard and they break apart, also the bark flakes off of it.
I'm sorry you haven't gotten good results. Ruth Duncan said she only used kudzu that was growing up trees and power poles and she had to work with it within a week of harvesting or it got too brittle. I've had one of her baskets for nearly 30 years and it is still beautiful.
@@MaxShores hmmm, curious.
I used mine IMMEDIATELY after picking. I’ll have to research a little more. Maybe the next will turn out better. Thanks
rodents with drinking problems? 24:46 lol!
I found this to be hilarious as well. I stumbled across an article on an herb that reduced alcohol consumption and then this.
If you turn it to profitable material and pay money to people to cut it you will get red of it quicker.
it's really an amazing vine. there's some in ny as well.
tried growing kudzu by seed is almost impossible
Joseph Battaglia how it grows about a foot every day
Presumably germinating the seed is the hard part, not growing on established plants.
Come to TN and dig yourself a root or two!!!
@@seahagkeylover lol. I'll shall try
The most efficient way to sprout from seeds is to scarify the seed with about 5-7 needle tips held together. I have not had success with this but it is supposed to have about a 70% rate to sprout.
to me their lush green color looks very lovely...but i suppose it is upsetting if all other trees and shrubs are
completely thwarted by it. wish i could grow it as ground cover on a hill on the side of my house.
dont do it it will take over a lot more than the hill
If anyone has any information on how this plant does in the Mediterranean climate I would be most grateful.
not so good than monsoon climat ... in northen italy alpen, there are some kudzu growing savagely .
@@poilochien Thank you very much for your reply. Do you know if it spreads by seed? All reports from the US say that they only spread through vegetative means (cuttings or branches rooting in place).
@@futurecaredesign generaly, savage kudzu cames from kufzu cultivated for décorative plants and running away ... at my knowledge, pueraria never used as fooder in europe.
Roundup will kill an elephant. Will it not work on Kudzu?
My research for this documentary was in the early 1990s. At that time Roundup was not considered effective against kudzu. I don't know if the roundup product has changed since then.
What was the dosage in that experiment? Anything can kill anything given large enough doses.
My elephant killed all my kodzu.
Round up typically has poor control on vines if used by itself. If mowed first then the new growth is sprayed roundup does much better. Two or three times for two years ought to do it in. Still have seeds in the soil will sprout over the next dozen years.
I got the poster print of your man with no name picture
plants will save the planet ... (°0°) stupid bear !
Not good for people with liver issues...beware
solution: free range goats, cattle and pigs
INVASION??? INVASIVE??? ABUNDANCE?
Burn it!
Why are we not funding this???
Funding what?
they did fund it once for erosion control, and look what happened, LOL
Who first brought kudzu to the USA? Was it David G. Fairchild? Did anyone ever take credit?
The Japanese government brought it to the U. S. in 1876 as part of a garden display in Philadelphia.
So the people in Japan brought it to the USA! www.kudzus.blogspot.com is one of my 14 blogs. I am proud of your video! There is recent research that it detoxes the liver by western double bind tests in peer reviewed journals and is great for the liver and pancreas. I use it often.
just like muslims
Heheh true,Former Muslim here.
Horrible stuff!
This crap should never have been brought into the country. Biiiiig mistake!
Why?
Exactly its taken over my home town here in alabama. All the old houses there have been taken over by kudzu…if you dont do regular cutting around your house itll take over your house. It makes my home town look like no one lives there.
I want kudzu infested property!
NO YOU DON’T! I promise you!
It it a NEVER ENDING BATTLE!
Here's an idea for Kudzu. Use prison inmates - start a goat farm at the prison then inmates take the goats to eat the Kudzu. After goats eat up an area then other inmates have to dig up all of the roots and make herbs, starch, breading, kudzu potatoes etc. And others can pick and package the leaves and package for salad type food. Of course, make sure they don't pick poison ivy. Also, prepare the vines for making baskets and/or rope then send to a factory for that purpose and train the inmates to make everything out of this Kudzu then when they get out of prison they have a free resource for making money - even offer company contracts for those whom did a good job upon their release from prison.
That's good actually
do elephants like Kudzu cuz they would eat it down in no time!!!!! When we were in Mississippi, I took lots of pics for my Kudzu Zoo...especially lots of giraffes and Brontosaurus ..and monsters!!... where it grew up poles and trees 20:08, 25:05 . But I lost all the pics. It has a beautiful flower and is a really pretty plant. My Biology teacher in VA told us to fertilize it with crankcase oil and cinder blocks, and not to sleep in it cuz it would cover you up. This is a delightful video, miss those Suthern axcents, yeah ha ya'll!
I heard it was brought in to control erosion, not as an ornamental.
My family has had properties since the beginning of this country and none of them eroded but we are not on the oceans or lakes so I wonder where these people get this erosion theory from but the road that I walked down on our mountainside has been the same since that I can remember and thats 59 years and my father also told me it was the same as when he grew up 85 years ago
I think it's just another of those love it/hate it plants depending on which side of the fence you're watching it come from and, go to... I think it has many good uses and, grazing feed it one of the best... As an erosion control measure; well, it works but, like a double edged sword; cuts both ways... There's a high price to pay later on for getting it started... It's a forester's nightmare and, a cattleman's dream... I remember reading a little booklet by a guy who was parodying the South's takeover by Kutzu where someone wanting to plant it for soil erosion asked him what the best fertilizer was to help get it started... He told him to try a combination of cinder blocks and, old power lines... I almost died... lol
That’s a very accurate assessment.
God help you if you’re just trying to maintain your yard and you have it, and you don’t have livestock to eat it. If you don’t craft, and you don’t like the taste of it either.
Thanks for sharing this, Max, very educational; kudos!
They know that kudzu tea inhibits the desire for alcohol and it is not yet a standard drink in AA meetings? What is stopping kudzu tea from being more popular?
In 1995/1996 when I was working on this documentary, a researcher at Harvard Medical School told me that their research showed that a chemical in kudzu root curbed the desire for alcohol but they did not yet know why it had that effect. He said that research showing how it worked would be necessary before FDA approval could be achieved. I haven't followed up on this so I don't know if that has ever been proven. I suspect not.
@@MaxShores Maybe a little late to the discussion, but just in case you were wondering where this research is today - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4510012/
Kudzu is allegedly hardy to -20F or lower. It was lready found in Maryland when this documentary was made, all the way up to the Penn border. Not sure if it is found in Pennsylvania or not.
After so many generations Americanized Kutzu may be very different from its Native Asian genetics.
Kudzu pulled down my fence. ☹️
The chemicals aren't working
What are you trying to do and what chemicals are you using?
@@MaxShores I mean generally and with regard to the bigger picture. It's time we moved away from chemicals and started embracing more goats! Kudzu is amazing stuff !
There are some fields of kudzu in which goats would get so tangled they could not move! If the vines are cut back, goats can keep the new growth under control.
@@MaxShores Wishful thinking... The task is more than goats or humans can manage.
Hi 👋 cuz
Hi. 🖐️
I’ve heard you can eat all parts ?
The roots can be ground into a powder that is like corn starch. I've eaten jelly made from the blooms. Although I've tried eating the leaves, I'll leave them for grazing animals.
All parts of the plant are edible except for the seeds and seed pod husk. Like a hairy edamame seed husk.
Antidipsotropic