I probably made 100 trips to Home Depot in those first few months. The first trip was to buy a weed whacker, and well, I whacked the shit out of those weeds. My father-in-law Aki pulled all the weeds in the garden. Then when my parents drove out to help us they brought a small roto-tiller, and we tilled the shit out of that garden soil. We had a trailer full of weeds and brush that we took to the dump. I spent the next few weeks pulling morning glory sprouts out of the garden. They came back over and over again. But I kept hoeing them. It was man against weeds. Finally though, I decided to plant a cover crop. I didn't know much about that, but one of the garden centers nearby carried Winter Rye. So I scattered that in the areas that I hadn't planted any crops. Planting the rye was the best decision I had made up to that point.
As we finished some preliminary renovations on our house (yeah, that 70s wood paneling and gold shag carpet had to go), I began to realize that we had a real opportunity to grow some food on this property. I had big dreams of a full backyard vegetable garden and fruit trees and solar panels and everything under the sun. I started digging around for resources on gardening, and decided to look deeper into this "permaculture" business I'd briefly heard about. I began with the book Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, and I've been studying the subject ever since. Gaia's Garden was a real eye opening book - a lot of new information and new ways of looking at things - quite overwhelming in a good way.
We tend to think of weeds as inconvenient eye-sores that are robbing our desired plants of nutrients. There's even a degree of panic out there over invasive species. I'm going to do a post in the near future about my experience with Japanese Knotweed. But how often do we take a step back and ask what we can learn from the weeds? Reinforced by some online videos, podcasts, and other books, the teachings in Gaia's Garden are changing the way I think about them.
It's interesting to see the different levels of weed control here in Beacon. You have the yards that are untouched, with weeds taking over - are they coming up through the living room floor too? Then you have the sterile-looking weed-free "flawless" green carpet lawns - a display of attempted dominance over nature? Then you have everything in between. There are times and places for both extremes I suppose. But what I'm most interested in is creating healthy soil. The soil is the foundation of, well everything, and I'm looking for ways to make it better.
I began gardening about six years ago in Brooklyn, and from the beginning I was adamantly against herbicides. I was well aware of the harms they caused. My plot was small enough to remove the undesired plants by hand, which I did until I got tired of it or distracted. When they returned and got to the point that they bothered me, I'd spend another hour weeding, or convince my wife of the therapeutic qualities of weeding and entice her to do it! But I never really asked what these plants could teach us.
What I've learned recently is that 1.) weeds are performing functions, and 2.) it's usually germination conditions that determine which weeds sprout. Some weeds have long tap roots that pull nutrients up from deep in the sub soil. When such plants go dormant for the winter, or are chopped and dropped, or are eaten and processed by animals, those nutrients are added to the soil. Some weeds have extremely strong and aggressive roots that break up hard soils and even crack concrete. Some have roots that hold loose soil together. Some of them are nitrogen fixers that add nitrogen to the soil. Some of them provide food for bees. Many of them are edible for us humans, and pretty tasty too, I'm discovering. I bet we could think of more functions too.
I'm still learning the specific functions of the weeds I'm finding on our property and in our neighborhood. The nice thing is that the information is so easy to find in the age of the internet. I can identify species with photos, and easily find a wealth of information on them.
Every once in awhile I have the urge to completely rid our yard and garden beds of weeds. We're conditioned to believe that a weed-free, ultra-manicured property means that the owner really cares. But I'm resisting that urge and trying to learn from them. And I'm trying to find out what they're adding to the ecosystem here. Why are they here at this time? So many of the species I identify are classified as invasive. There is a patch of Creeping Charlie for example, it's on the invasive species list. But every time I look at this patch, thinking about mowing it down, there are bees having lunch. We badly need to help the bees, as you probably have heard, so I'm letting the Creeping Charlie grow, at least until some of the cone flowers and other bee food plants are flowering.
There is another area of the yard with a high percentage of clover. I think it's white clover, but I'm not sure. So I'm going to let it flower to at least find out what it is. Clover is one of these magical nitrogen fixers. It takes nitrogen, an essential soil nutrient, from the air and deposits it in the soil. I don't completely understand how this process works at this time, but it's only a click away. This patch of lawn with the clover must need nitrogen badly if clover has germinated. And it could be a good spot for fruit trees someday, so clover, by all means do your thing! Plus, white clover flowers are edible, and pollinators love them too! Bonus!
The other thing to consider is succession. The natural state of the land here in Beacon is temperate deciduous forest. Deciduous forest in this area is a self-sustaining, self-regulating ecosystem that creates soil. The land is trying to regenerate from whatever state it's in back into forest. Take a mowed lawn of grass. I think it would go something like this: If left unkept, the grass will grow tall and produce a ton of biomass, and weeds - the required weeds - will grow. The grass will probably thin because the strong tall stalks will shade out and root crowd the smaller weaker small ones. These plants will add nutrients to the soil as they dry and break down in the Fall and Winter. The grass will reseed itself probably. But next year, under the cover of last years biomass, the grass might not grow as well and probably some larger weeds and some shrubs and perhaps even some trees will germinate. This happens year after year, and we're on our way to forest.
Now most of us don't want a fully mature deciduous forest in our yards, but it's helpful to me to think about what these weeds are doing. If I must pull them, can I replace them with a more desirable species that serves the same function? Can I take my property in the direction of a forest -perhaps a forest with small fruit trees? It feels like less of a war on weeds when I know that they're ultimately just trying to help the ecosystem stabilize.
I'm at the early stage of the game here. I'm at the point where I'm reading and learning a lot of heavy philosophical and theoretical information. I'm learning from the experience of others before me and trying some ideas. Every site is different, the weather is different every year. I'm sure I'll have to make many adjustments to my thinking and practices as I learn from my own experience, which I'm sure will prove to be the most valuable of all.
If I had know the above information last summer when we moved in, I probably would have done things differently. Rather than pull the weeds in the vegetable garden and take them to the dump (removing a lot of nutritious biomass, and clinging top soil from the property), I probably would have just chopped them down and sheet mulched over them, or maybe sowed that winter rye around the chopped weeds and sheet mulched later. I probably would have told my parents to leave the roto-tiller at home. Lawn serves functions for sure, picnics, dog habitat, sports, but we don't need that much of it. I will keep mowing, but hopefully less and less area as we convert it to more useful and more stable states. And I'm going to continue to let some areas grow out, especially if I find a useful species coming up. But to the weeds in the cracks of the curb, sorry, you still gotta go - I want curb there, not deciduous forest. But respect to you for trying to regenerate the place.
We tend to think of weeds as inconvenient eye-sores that are robbing our desired plants of nutrients. There's even a degree of panic out there over invasive species. I'm going to do a post in the near future about my experience with Japanese Knotweed. But how often do we take a step back and ask what we can learn from the weeds? Reinforced by some online videos, podcasts, and other books, the teachings in Gaia's Garden are changing the way I think about them.
It's interesting to see the different levels of weed control here in Beacon. You have the yards that are untouched, with weeds taking over - are they coming up through the living room floor too? Then you have the sterile-looking weed-free "flawless" green carpet lawns - a display of attempted dominance over nature? Then you have everything in between. There are times and places for both extremes I suppose. But what I'm most interested in is creating healthy soil. The soil is the foundation of, well everything, and I'm looking for ways to make it better.
I began gardening about six years ago in Brooklyn, and from the beginning I was adamantly against herbicides. I was well aware of the harms they caused. My plot was small enough to remove the undesired plants by hand, which I did until I got tired of it or distracted. When they returned and got to the point that they bothered me, I'd spend another hour weeding, or convince my wife of the therapeutic qualities of weeding and entice her to do it! But I never really asked what these plants could teach us.
What I've learned recently is that 1.) weeds are performing functions, and 2.) it's usually germination conditions that determine which weeds sprout. Some weeds have long tap roots that pull nutrients up from deep in the sub soil. When such plants go dormant for the winter, or are chopped and dropped, or are eaten and processed by animals, those nutrients are added to the soil. Some weeds have extremely strong and aggressive roots that break up hard soils and even crack concrete. Some have roots that hold loose soil together. Some of them are nitrogen fixers that add nitrogen to the soil. Some of them provide food for bees. Many of them are edible for us humans, and pretty tasty too, I'm discovering. I bet we could think of more functions too.
I'm still learning the specific functions of the weeds I'm finding on our property and in our neighborhood. The nice thing is that the information is so easy to find in the age of the internet. I can identify species with photos, and easily find a wealth of information on them.
Every once in awhile I have the urge to completely rid our yard and garden beds of weeds. We're conditioned to believe that a weed-free, ultra-manicured property means that the owner really cares. But I'm resisting that urge and trying to learn from them. And I'm trying to find out what they're adding to the ecosystem here. Why are they here at this time? So many of the species I identify are classified as invasive. There is a patch of Creeping Charlie for example, it's on the invasive species list. But every time I look at this patch, thinking about mowing it down, there are bees having lunch. We badly need to help the bees, as you probably have heard, so I'm letting the Creeping Charlie grow, at least until some of the cone flowers and other bee food plants are flowering.
Honey Bee eating feeding on Creeping Charlie. A beautiful sight! May 30, 2016
There is another area of the yard with a high percentage of clover. I think it's white clover, but I'm not sure. So I'm going to let it flower to at least find out what it is. Clover is one of these magical nitrogen fixers. It takes nitrogen, an essential soil nutrient, from the air and deposits it in the soil. I don't completely understand how this process works at this time, but it's only a click away. This patch of lawn with the clover must need nitrogen badly if clover has germinated. And it could be a good spot for fruit trees someday, so clover, by all means do your thing! Plus, white clover flowers are edible, and pollinators love them too! Bonus!
The other thing to consider is succession. The natural state of the land here in Beacon is temperate deciduous forest. Deciduous forest in this area is a self-sustaining, self-regulating ecosystem that creates soil. The land is trying to regenerate from whatever state it's in back into forest. Take a mowed lawn of grass. I think it would go something like this: If left unkept, the grass will grow tall and produce a ton of biomass, and weeds - the required weeds - will grow. The grass will probably thin because the strong tall stalks will shade out and root crowd the smaller weaker small ones. These plants will add nutrients to the soil as they dry and break down in the Fall and Winter. The grass will reseed itself probably. But next year, under the cover of last years biomass, the grass might not grow as well and probably some larger weeds and some shrubs and perhaps even some trees will germinate. This happens year after year, and we're on our way to forest.
Now most of us don't want a fully mature deciduous forest in our yards, but it's helpful to me to think about what these weeds are doing. If I must pull them, can I replace them with a more desirable species that serves the same function? Can I take my property in the direction of a forest -perhaps a forest with small fruit trees? It feels like less of a war on weeds when I know that they're ultimately just trying to help the ecosystem stabilize.
I'm at the early stage of the game here. I'm at the point where I'm reading and learning a lot of heavy philosophical and theoretical information. I'm learning from the experience of others before me and trying some ideas. Every site is different, the weather is different every year. I'm sure I'll have to make many adjustments to my thinking and practices as I learn from my own experience, which I'm sure will prove to be the most valuable of all.
If I had know the above information last summer when we moved in, I probably would have done things differently. Rather than pull the weeds in the vegetable garden and take them to the dump (removing a lot of nutritious biomass, and clinging top soil from the property), I probably would have just chopped them down and sheet mulched over them, or maybe sowed that winter rye around the chopped weeds and sheet mulched later. I probably would have told my parents to leave the roto-tiller at home. Lawn serves functions for sure, picnics, dog habitat, sports, but we don't need that much of it. I will keep mowing, but hopefully less and less area as we convert it to more useful and more stable states. And I'm going to continue to let some areas grow out, especially if I find a useful species coming up. But to the weeds in the cracks of the curb, sorry, you still gotta go - I want curb there, not deciduous forest. But respect to you for trying to regenerate the place.
