A Girl and Her Weeds
All week, I’ve been on my hands and knees weeding. It’s how I spend most of May, preparing the soil before planting the garden. I wish it were different, but they will quickly run to seed if I don’t catch the weeds now. During a single growing season, every weed that goes to seed can easily create thousands of new weed plants. That’s enough to keep me bent over all summer.
I curse the time I spend on this thankless task each spring, yet lately, my rules around a weed-free garden have relaxed. Why am I working so hard to undo nature? I question my sanity. Why I would spend whole days conquering an army of invasives, instead of inviting friends over for a lovely spring porch party.
My first lesson as a new gardener was to learn the difference between a weed and a welcome garden plant. It has taken me years to identify each of the weeds I encounter, recognizing that each weed has its season. This month I am pulling up chickweed, goutweed, common burdock, and dandelion, next month it will be quack grass, garlic mustard, and pigweed. July brings wild parsnips, lamb’s quarters, and horsetail. But wait, some of these are delicious and nutritious greens.
This leads to also asking what is a weed and what deserves to stay in place. After all, aren’t gardens a way to tame nature, and keep a healthy balance between people and pollinators? Let’s start with wild milkweed, the most conspicuous native weed in every public and private garden I visited in 2020-2021, thanks in part to the Garden Club of America to promote pollinator plants.
While I didn’t intentionally plant it, a few appeared in my garden. I followed the trend to support monarchs’ natural habitat and left the shoots, which look like lilies when young. Like mint, however, it has now invaded, sending underground roots everywhere, and continues to require careful editing.
Editing is the term used by those of us who are halfway between maintaining a tidy garden area and allowing parts to go a little wild. Finding a compromise between weeding and eating is my goal.
A permaculture garden is as individual as the gardener. Learning more about your specific microclimate and existing native species that support wildlife habitats will involve taking time to observe before you clear the land to make way for a garden. Once the garden is established, it is key to maintain a bit of wildness to invite pollinators to burrow into hollow plant stems and birds to eat seeds and berries.
The basic premise of a permaculture garden is to plant a wide range of food and flora, trees, shrubs, tubers, and vines that stimulate one another’s growth. Layering is also key, which starts by first assessing the existing landscape — looking at patterns of sun, shade, and the geology under the soil.
When you focus on perennial edibles that come back every year, it becomes beneficial to the landscape by not disturbing the soil: think rhubarb and asparagus, horseradish, and berries. Medicinal and culinary herbs, fruit and nut trees,
Permaculture is inclusive and supportive of a diverse selection of plants that ultimately nourish a whole ecosystem; The goal is to look at the long-term plan of your landscape and create a healthy habitat for people and nature to exist. Layering is key in permaculture design, using taller plants as a canopy, shrubs as mid-levels, and edibles for ground covers. The result is productivity and a balanced ecosystem. Catching weeds when the leaves are small makes it a little easier to pull the whole plant up by the roots, and fewer weeds will grow if I can catch them before they go to the seeds.
Weeding is the flip side of gardening that I don’t much enjoy and requires a constant regiment of time every week. I’ve decided it’s okay to allow a little wild to stay, as a long-term investment in the natural ecosystem. Growing a semi-permaculture garden allows me to accept that nature will always win, and I will still feel like a winner.
Garden in good health,
Ellen O.