Weaving Containers from Things Unwanted: Kudzu and it's Many Uses

Happy Samhain everyone! I wanted to talk about a plant today that I love, Kudzu. It's on my mind after teaching a class for the Ashevillage Urban Farming Program last week on Kudzu Basket making, I fell in love again. SO, here's the dirt on Kudzu, or P. montana (among other varieties).  

Just to be clear, the name kudzu describes one or more species in the genus Pueraria that are closely related, and some of them are considered to be actual varieties rather than fully separate species. Interestingly enough, they are not very different physiologically and they can breed with each other. The introduced kudzu populations in the United States also have ancestry from more than one of the species. They are: P. montana, P. lobata (P. montana var. lobata) P. edulis, P. phaseoloides, P. thomsonii (P. montana var. chinensis), P. tuberosa

Kudzu is synonymous with the unwanted in the southern United States where I live. It is a pest, a nuisance and an invasive. While it is true that Kudzu has dramatically changed the Southeastern landscape, it also has many unrealized and often forgotten uses. This is by no means a call out to plant it on your land, but where its hold is strong, one can harvest fodder, crafting material, building material, medicine and food.

Kudzu was introduced to the United States in 1876 at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It’s lovely flowers and stately leaves impressed American gardeners. In the 1920’s, Florida nursery operators Charles and Lillie Pleas promoted its use for forage. Their Glen Arden Nursery in Chipley sold kudzu plants through the mail. 

---

---

During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control. Hundreds of young men were given work planting kudzu through the Civilian Conservation Corps. Farmers were paid as much as eight dollars an acre as incentive to plant fields of the vines in the 1940’s. As we have seen, the widespread planting of Kudzu had unintended consequences. 

Kudzu’s incredible growth rate lead to its take over of the southern forest edges, pulling down trees and smothering other plants.Today, Kudzu is treated much like Japanese Knotweed, another import gone awry. It is destroyed on sight usually by chemical means. It is true that these plants can take over areas when left to their own devices, but this does not mean that while these plants are here, we cannot benefit from their presence. Kudzu’s unique physiology and nutritive properties make it useful in many areas of self sufficient and sustainable living practices. 

Fodder
 
Kudzu had a brief time in the limelight as a well touted forage crop for all livestock, especially ruminants. Kudzu was grown for pasture, hay, and silage. It is palatable to all types of livestock and Kudzu is nearly equal to alfalfa in nutritive value.
Kudzu forage is a good feed for cattle, sheep and goats. It can be grazed, cut for hay or mixed with grass to make good quality silage. Forage yield is about 5t/ha/year when grown on fertile soil. Its overall chemical composition (roots, stems and foliage) and digestion characteristics are comparable to other commonly fed forages. It has also proven to be a great feed for dairy cattle. In goats, it is reported to maintain .35 lbs/  body weight gain /animal/ day growth (that's great!).

Kudzu forage can be a good substitute for alfalfa hay in pigs and poultry. It can be included in rabbit diets that contain energy sources such as cassava, sorghum or other oil rich seed meals as well. All in all, it is comparable to alfalfa in its use as forage. It is also much less expensive, or free if you are willing to harvest it yourself. Selling cut and dried kudzu as an affordable fodder is also a market that has yet to be taken much advantage of.

Kudzu will provide a good ground cover which is long-lived, if not overgrazed or mowed too often, in two to three years. It makes a good coarse hay, retaining its leaves after cutting, does not shed an appreciable amount of leaves during growing season,and it can be fed with very little waste. Kudzu with its heavy viney growth is difficult to cut, particularly the first time, because the vines catch on the divider board of an ordinary mower; modified mowers have been developed just for this purpose. Hay should be harvested when vines and the ground are dry. Leave the hay in swath for several hours before windrowing. The following morning when the dew is off, cut plants should be put in small stacks or turned, and in the afternoon it should be put up in a barn or baled.

Kudzu can make a good pasture, wherein steers can gain more than 3.3 lbs/day. Do not graze plants until third year. If growth is vigorous, it may be grazed lightly the second year. For maximum production and utilization, rotation should be employed. Livestock should be taken from pasture before growth starts in spring. Kudzu is prone to overgrazing so take care on young stands not to let them be eaten to nothing. Conversely, if you need to get rid of stand, let your creatures graze away!

Medicine

Kudzu has been used as a medicine for thousands of years in the East and is currently being researched for its medicinal value today. Known as ge-gen in Chinese medicine, the earliest known writing about kudzu as a medicine dates back to 100 AD. In traditional Chinese medicine it is used to treat dysentery, allergies, migraine headaches, diarrhea, fevers, colds, intestinal problems and angina pectoris, to help with the digestion of food and reduce blood pressure. One of kudzu’s more fascinating traditional uses is that it has served as a treatment for alcoholism, and this has become a main focus of modern kudzu medical research today.

Its use as a valuable dietary supplement for metabolic syndrome, a condition that affects 50 million Americans, is also promising according to researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In findings published in the latest Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, studies on animals showed that substances called isoflavones found in kudzu root improved regulation of contributors to metabolic syndrome, including blood pressure, high cholesterol and blood glucose. One particular isoflavone, called puerarin is found only in kudzu and seems to be the one with the greatest beneficial effect. 



---

J. Michael Wyss, Ph.D., a professor of in the UAB Department of Cell Biology and lead author on the study said the greatest effect was in its ability to regulate glucose, or sugar, in the blood. "Puerarin, or kudzu root, may prove to be a strong complement to existing medications for insulin regulation or blood pressure, for example," said Jeevan Prasain, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAB Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and a study co-author. "Physicians may be able to lower dosages of such drugs, making them more tolerable and cheaper."

Kudzu also contains several other medically important chemicals such as daidzen, used to fight inflammation and microbial infections, dilute coronary arteries, relax muscles, and promote estrous cycles. It also contains daidzin, which is used to prevent cancer, and genistein, an anti-leukemic. Overall kudzu is not only an important free or low cost fodder, but it is also a useful medicine worth further examination. Kudzu has not been around long enough to become an integral part of the folk medicine practices of the Southeast, but I think it should be, since it may be here with us for awhile.

Food
 
Aside from being palatable to animals, kudzu is also an edible plant to humans. The leaves, vine tips, flowers, and roots are edible; the vines are not. The leaves can be used like spinach and eaten raw, chopped up and baked, cooked like collards, or deep fried.
The young leaves can be consumed as a green, or juiced. They can be dried and made into a tea. Shoots can be eaten like asparagus. The blossom can be used to make pickles or a jelly — a taste between apple and peach. Older leaves can be fried like potato chips, or used to wrap food for storage or cooking. The root is also full of edible starch.

---

---

ou can make a salad, stew the roots, batter-fry the flowers or pickled them or make a make syrup. Raw roots can be cooked in a fire, roots stripped of their outer bark can be roasted in an oven like any root vegetable; or grated and ground into a flour to make a thickener, a cream or tofu.. Only the seeds are not edible. It is best to gather shoots in spring, young leaves anytime, blossoms July through October, and roots best in fall or early spring.
Crafts and Building Materials.

Other Uses

Kudzu vines make a high quality bast fiber that has been used for about 750 years by artisans and weavers throughout East Asia. The fibers are extracted by hand and are translucent and generally considered finer than silk and quite strong. Kudzu is also very useful as a basket and container making material. It can be woven by hand and is easily harvested as an essentially abundant free, craft supply. Many people are beginning to tap into the beauty of kudzu baskets in the Southeastern United States and sell the baskets in stores and online. It can be a valuable material for crafts persons looking for an inexpensive, useful craft to pursue.

Building with kudzu has not been done extensively in the United States, but with the rise in popularity and practicality of green building practices, kudzu bales can find a place as a useful wall mass material as well. 

So after all that, I hope I've provided enough evidence to at least give Kudzu a chance. While it doesn't have a strong history of use as a magical plant, I think the best use for it metaphysically is to add it to spell work for perseverance and proliferation. Use in times of weakness of heart and in times of grand designs of the mind. Let Kudzu help you grow a "mile-a-minute". 

Sources:

Aoyagi, Akiko and William Shurtleff. “The Book of Kudzu”. Autumn Press. 1977. 

http://www.feedipedia.org/node/11546

James A. Duke. 1983. Handbook of Energy Crops. unpublished.

http://geography.about.com/library/misc/uckudzu.htm


http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/162919.php
 
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/cerc/danoffburg/invasion_bio/inv_spp_summ/Pueraria_montana.html 

http://www.eattheweeds.com/kudzu-pueraria-montana-var-lobata-fried-2/

http://www.knowitall.org/naturalstate/html/acc-fa/N-Basket/khouse.cfm

Photos:

http://library.sc.edu/blogs/newspaper/page/2/

http://georgeb.empowernetwork.com/blog/kudzu-a-good-idea-that-went-wrong