"Weeds" - a rich, abundant and poison free agriculture

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Weeds

weeds

invitation

Weeds

The simple truth is that weeds are an immensely rich, very powerful, utterly priceless - we cannot even begin to duplicate what 'weeds' do (for free) - and permanently sustainable resource. And out of some crazy misguided reason, we fight them tooth and nail - and to add injury to injustice, with poisons that quickly end up in us. It's nuts, actually.

I too grew up hating and fighting weeds in my gardens, as I've been taught. However, there came a time, if only eventually, when I said - "hey, wait a minute, what's really going on here?"

Like all plants, weeds collect nitrogen from the air, and upon their decay, add it to the soil. This alone is a net gain in fertility - and a free one to boot. They also take up phosphorus, potash and the whole spectrum of lesser elements, and order them into highly complex compounds in their substance. And upon their decay, all this wealth - their highly complex organic substance - is added to the soil, and the 'fertilisers' plus all the lesser elements they have taken up from the soil are returned right back to the soil.

In this manner, the 'weeds' of the world have created all the rich, fertile topsoil of the Earth. Our modern agriculture, on the other hand, depletes and destroys it - and far, far faster than Nature can create it.The annual loss of topsoil in the US runs around 8 million tons, and around 5 million tons in Canada.

weeds building our biosphere

So I thought - "why not use them?" It is true that weeds take up some nutrients while they grow. However, they don't go anywhere, and upon their decay return it all - and far, far more (nitrogen, complex carbohydrates and amino acids, their organic substance) - to the soil. And this is how we got all of the rich, fertile loam we call "black gold". All of it. No one, and nothing else, has created it.

The only thing left to do was to figure out a way of how to use them. And since I did not want them to compete for light and space with their far less vigorous cousins we have adapted from the weeds for our crops, I tried just shearing them periodically, and laying the shearings over as a mulch.

It worked like a charm. Shearing the weeds prevented competition for light and space, and it also initiated the decay cycle - and with it, the return of the nutrients they had used, to the soil. And I got the additional free nitrogen they had foraged from the air, plus all the priceless wealth of their organic substance.

I also got the many benefits of a mulch. Substantially increased moisture retention; cooler soil in the heat of the day, and warmer soil in the cool of night; and nicely loose soil underneath the mulch - all of which provides ideal growing conditions, which results in a substantial increase in health and yield. I also got, paradoxically perhaps, substantial suppression of weeds. I also got a very, very substantial reduction of labour - about a 90% reduction of cultivating and weeding labour alone.

I also got a haven for the "Wolf spider", a permanent natural 'pesticide' from a single application, which wiped out 99% of all insect pests.

And all this while the fertility, quality, and friability of my soils increased steadily.

Here is a recent picture of corn growing in a ground cover of alfalfa. And even though it isn't one of the best pictures, but just by looking at it, one can see the obvious strong weed suppression, the substantial moisture retention, the temperature equalisation, and the rich organic content that is growing so profusely in this field of corn.

Growing a legume as a ground cover crop among suitable crops is an even better deal. Hardy, undemanding, productive, well adapted to poor soils, and rich in nutrients, alfalfa is one of the best ground cover crops. This field will get more and more fertile with every season, and the soil quality will improve right along with it - and all this at a large reduction of costs, a very substantial increase in yield, as well as a simultaneous second crop from the same ground. I rest my case for the 'weeds'.