Dandelions

[PepperJack]

Real quick question, been trying to grow grasses in my tortoise table for my cherry head but with no luck. Everything I put in there, seed or pregrown, simply dies off. My next step was to try and put dandelions in there for her to snack on, wanted to know if the Italian dandelion is ok for her to eat or if I should just stick with plain old yellow dandelions.

 

[leigti]

As far as I know Italian dandelion is fine.

 

[ascott]

Real quick question, been trying to grow grasses in my tortoise table for my cherry head but with no luck. Everything I put in there, seed or pregrown, simply dies off. My next step was to try and put dandelions in there for her to snack on, wanted to know if the Italian dandelion is ok for her to eat or if I should just stick with plain old yellow dandelions.

Depends on what type of cicoria you are referring to....likely the rate of failure in an enclosed set up is high---for both cicoria and taraxacum....

 

[Michael in MO]

You'd be better off to grab dandelion leaves from a known pesticide/herbicide free area (or even buy them from a natural food store) best thing I've ever heard to do for redfoot "snack weeds/grasses" is to have three aluminum pie pans and seed them with dirt and the cheapest bird seed you can find (as the cheep feed is full of weeds) grow them OUTSIDE or by a south facing window, then rotate the pans into the pen growing two while the tort destroys the odd man out. Dandelions have a HUGE taproot and will never grow in your tort table Also the tort will eat the dandelion leaves before they could even grow large enough to make a meal out of them (apparently the leaves start very "sweet" the smaller they are and get increasingly more bitter the larger they get)