An old, wise farmer once told me that a weed is just a plant that is growing where you don’t want it to grow. Now that is essentially a true statement, especially when we are talking about vegetable agriculture, but consider the following:
Several years ago I had a large bumper crop of cherry tomatoes. The next year I planned on planting pinto beans where the tomatoes were the year before. Hundreds of tiny tomato plants started coming up in the spring where the dead fruits had fell upon the ground that winter, and as it grew warmer these plants had to be removed (I transported many to a different location) because I did not want them there. With the previous definition mentioned, those tomato plants were considered “weeds” because they were not in the location I had selected. (Since that day I’ve learned that I should have just left those tomato plants all alone to themselves.)
However, it is seldom that we actually have a plant that makes such delicious fruit and is considered a weed and is need of removal. Most of us (especially in central Texas) have to deal with Johnson or Dellis grass and other similar wild grasses that love to dig into our gardens. They track right in like they own the place; and they do; and that’s the beauty of it.
Mankind, with our row planting of crops, in a mono-agriculture paradigm (the cultivation of a single variety of crop, often genetically altered), with petroleum based fertilizer, has scalped the Earth’s topsoil so deep that these plants (and many other hardy varieties) are the only type of vegetation that can exist in that type of depleted, super compacted soil. These so-called weeds are in a sense performing CPR on the topsoil. If these grasses were not so persistent, desertification (that means the land is turned unnaturally into a desert) would result. Many places in the world, including the U.S.A., Mexico, Chile and Australia (just to start) have had areas already turned into deserts due to mono-agriculture methods and the over-grazing of cattle on the land. Unfortunately, the eventual desertification of the Earth is not being so eventual in the 21st century.
Using Mollison’s(*1) model of zoning your land, (Zone 0 = House, Zone 1 = Gardens, egg laying hens, water tanks, etc., Zone 2 = Orchards, large crop beds, animals, sheds, etc., Zone 3 = Un-pruned trees, Zone 4 = Unaltered habitat), you can come up with your own game plan for designing your own landscape. Even if you live on a small plot in an urban or suburban setting, you can still come up with at least a Zone 0,1 and 2 on your land. (Zone 2 might only be a single fruit or nut-bearing tree in the back of your yard but go ahead and consider it, as it’s own zone). When using the Texas Raised-Intensive Method, Zone 1 is made up of only the garden beds (excluding the chicken yard next to the garden). Every thing else is considered Zone 2. Zone 2, for my farm, remains un-weeded. I want these grasses aerating and perspiring everywhere that I am not cultivating food.
This also means that Zone 1 becomes a very small piece of land in which we have to worry about weeding. In the last few years, we have successfully covered our farm’s Zone 1 completely with a minimum depth of 1 inch of newspaper. Many spots are 2 to 3 inches thick. This is only the perimeter of the zone. In between the garden beds the newspaper is 12 to 18 inches thick. The newspaper is then covered with straw, leaves or whatever type of mulch can be acquired. After these two actions are performed, you can pretty much eliminate having to weed this area again for the year.
This double layer of newspaper and mulch also serves many other useful purposes as well. First, earthworms, other insects and the weather will breakdown the double layer into delicious black soil (compost). This compost will eventually be ingested by the garden bed and help the garden soil by naturally loosening it. This effect is amplified even further with the Texas Raised-Intensive Method because the raised garden bed will not be trampled upon, thereby eliminating the re-compaction of the soil. If the garden bed is not re-compacted, the compost will be more easily dissolved into the garden soil.
Secondly, the newspaper and mulch retain water and moisture very well. Rain in Texas is very sporadic in the summer and the double layer can soak up the rain that would otherwise run off downhill, rendering it useless. (Which is also why we dig a deep trench around the garden) Using such a thick layer of paper causes it to act like a sponge. It is still amazing to me that during a blazing summer day when the Zone 2 soil is cracked and dry, the soil and newspaper underneath the dry straw in the garden will still be moist. This is why such a thick layer is added on top of the garden.
Which actually leads us to the third purpose of the double layer of newspaper and mulch: the Sun. It happens to be the source of all life on the Earth, but outside in the middle of summer in Texas the Sun can literally fry an egg on concrete. It will evaporate the water out of soil or anything for that matter, very easily, if the moisture is not insulated from the heat. Using such a thick layer of paper and mulch keeps the sunrays out and keeps the H20 in the bed. Practicing deep watering techniques correctly with this double layer of insulation can result with the garden only having to be watered several times during the week, not necessarily every day.
Immediately, these pernicious wild grasses will stop invading the garden beds. Not only because we have covered them up on the ground we walk on, but also the weeds themselves thrive in compacted dry soil. They just don’t thrive in our loosened, nutrient enriched soil, and are more easily pulled. Baby weeds may still show up in the beginning on top of the raised bed due to aerial seed dispersal, but after our selected crop’s tiny sprouts turn to adolescent plants, more mulch is added to the top of the bed, prohibiting the weeds further growth. When all the roots in the topsoil are removed during the initial digging, and the baby weeds are successfully pulled in the beginning (if needed), then weeding will become practically obsolete for the remainder of the season.
It should also be pointed out that using newspaper in this fashion is parallel with Mollison’s(*2) definition of Permaculture design : Every component of a design should function in many ways. The newspaper: 1- Is used as reading material; 2- Keeps the Sun’s rays out; 3- Keeps moisture in the soil and holds H20 like a sponge; 4- Prevents unwanted varieties of plants from getting into the garden; and 5- decays and turns into edible plant food with the help of earthworms and other creatures.
Petroleum based herbicide can’t come close to that.
Footnotes:
*1- Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (Australia: Tagari Publications, 1988. Pp. 49-53. *2- Bill Mollison, Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (Australia: Tagari Publications, 1988. Pg. 36.
Lance Willard - Copyright 2004 - All Rights Reserved