A few years ago I harvested a large number of Goldenrod tops. The first batch I made I put myself to a lot of trouble mixing water based paints and air brushing the weeds! Until here recently when another member ran an idea buy me.

It is a pretty simple process one anyone can do. The idea goes like this.

1. Soak the weed tops in glue.
2. Take turf or the blend of color you want your trees and sprinkle it over the glue soaked tree to be.
3. Next just place it in an upright position and allow the glue to set.

Pretty simple as apposed to painting by airbrush when it is not so critical to get the same fine detail required as opposed to detailing locomotives and rolling stock.

In the images the tree on the left has not been done. The tree on the right is complete.

1. Goldenrod tops or any weed top that may look to scale of your model railroad.
2. Plenty of Woodland Scenic Blended Turf
3. Elmer’s spray glue as shown in the picture
4. Styrofoam works well to stick trees in to dry.

 I preferred the Elmer’s spray glue for two reasons. One was the glue did not drip in excess after spraying the tree to be pretty heavily as opposed to dipping into a Elmer’s solution of a typical 50-50 mix. 50% Elmer’s and 50% water diluted. Second was the process of sprinkling the turf. When the glue is dripping from the tree while sprinkling the turf excess glue drips and falls into the same area excess turf falls. This makes waist and it is not easy to reclaim or reuse the excess turf that has fallen free of the tree.

I simply sprayed the trees (weeds) one at a time. Over an old newspaper I rotated the tree while shaking the turf from the canister. Note, if you have the turf in a bag. Get an old baby powder container. This will do the same and fill it with some turf. The news paper can be folded like a troth in the middle and the excess turf can be reclaimed to make more trees or used later for other modeling detailing. Good luck and have fun!
By Nelson Pattison
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