What is a Weed?

But a weed is simply a plant that wants to grow where people want something else. In blaming nature, people mistake the culprit. Weeds are people's idea, not nature's. ~Author Unknown

One of the many challenges we face in growing our own food is in that of competing with the plants (weeds) native to this area. In our gardens we have chosen to "try" and view our weeds as an asset to the garden rather than a hindrance, working with them rather than against them as much as possible and using them as a valuable source of nutrients for our vegetables. Lambs quarter, pigweed, wild sorrel, mallow, chickweed, wild mint, dandelions, plantain, and various clovers make up the majority of common weeds that inhabit our gardens.

In the videos below you will hear the thoughts of Hellen Atthowe of BioDesign Farm and see how she, in her small produce farm in Stevensville Montana, focuses on working with her weeds and clover cover crops, using them to not only nourish but also help create a more natural and beneficial system for her amazing peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. I found these videos to be most informative, especially in regards to Hellen's ideas on some of these weeds, "self-established" mallow in particular, being an surprisingly excellent additional source of slow release nitrogen in conjunction with her more commonly used nitrogen fixing leguminous cover crops.

Our rows are kept very narrow, practically disappearing around this time of year, allowing us to not only use every inch of space available but also more easily manage the weeds.

We have been trying to apply, on a much smaller scale, somewhat similar methods of weed control in our own gardens. Instead of a tractor we use a hoe, shovel, and push mower, but in the end the results are the same. The weeds are allowed to grow in our isles but not go to seed or take over in the actual rows, they are then chopped up and eventually worked back into the vegetable rows as we weed and hoe and mow, thus, over time, comprising a large part of our soil's fertility. As I have mentioned in a previous post this also applies to our fall crop residue;

"I am once again focused on enriching our soil through a form of sheet mulching. Before winter I pulled up all of the remaining plant materials and broke them up a bit to be distributed amongst the garden rows. According to Emilia Hazelip plants synthesize from light and only receive a small portion of their mass from the soil. The rest comes from air and light and if left in the garden to decompose will give back much more to the soil then they take out."

I would add that living plants such as mallow, dandelions, strawberry spinach, plantains, sorrel, chicory and so forth with their deep root systems are supposedly able to "mine" nutrients from farther down helping to bring them to the surface where they will be more available to our shallow rooted garden vegetables. One of the things that I have been working on over the past couple years is growing out certain plants that I know will easily re-seed themselves and actually become "weeds" in the garden. In doing so I am, in a sense, at least partially in charge of what weeds we do and don't have. For instance, last year I overwintered and let go to seed a large amount of biennial Belgian endive and kale, sprinkling some of the seeds throughout our gardens in the fall. These plants are now growing in little clumps anywhere that I allowed them to but are also easily removed from where I do not, if I am diligent in doing so before the roots take hold.

Note the kale growing in one of our tomato rows, by the time I need to pick tomatoes this kale will have been harvested.

This year I am doing the same with a row of Italian chicory, I received a few seeds from a friend some time ago and have now established an entire row that will be allowed to re-seed itself.

Many of these so called weeds are also a valuable source of nutrition for farm animals, chickens in our case. As an example, extremely hardy chickweed and the various forms of chicory/endive help us provide the birds with green food all year around while lambs quarter fills in some of our hot weather gaps when certain greens are not as readily available to them. And where do some of the vitamins and minerals from these weeds end up but in the eggs that we eat and the compost that is spread throughout the garden. Not only that, but we eat them as well. Almost daily a few of these unsung super foods find their way into our salads.

Perhaps our garden walkways will only look pretty a couple days after I hoe them but in my mind it is much less work to use the weeds to our advantage rather than trying to constantly remove, suppress, or exterminate them which, where I live, is a losing battle anyway as they thrive in the woods around our gardens constantly spewing forth seed with reckless abandon.

Another alternative method for providing soil fertility and controlling the weeds is through the use of heavy mulch such as leaves or hay. This is something that we do in certain areas of the food garden but as our garden is fairly large we have yet to find a practical source for the amounts needed. That, and there is always the issue with it providing a nice place for voles to hide out. You can read a fellow gardeners interesting post on mulching your garden beds here.



Speaking of mulch, in the second video you will notice that Hellen discusses the use of a black plastic mulch that helps her to achieve such early and prolifically fruiting peppers in a colder climate. I will be trying this in my own garden next year with a couple of my pepper rows. You can see from my pictures below how much better some of my potted peppers planted in a black containers look when compared to the same peppers planted directly into the ground. All of my peppers are growing in a similar manner this year, the ones in pots far outpacing those in the ground even though the potted plants were started a couple weeks later after I realized the possible consequences a cold dreary spring would have upon these heat loving plants. Hope you enjoy the videos, I did.:)

Jalapeno →
Red Belgian →