Weeds?

We have had a wet spring where I live, and everything in my garden is really tall right now, including the weeds. I've read a little bit about permaculture, and I know having some weeds in your garden can be beneficial. If my main goal of gardening is to grow food crops (mostly beans and potatoes), how should I find the right balance between pulling weeds and leaving them?

Hi Allen,

Weeds, weeds, weeds, what to do!!


So I suppose that I should start this by saying that if you don’t already know which weeds you have and what function they serve, you might be best served by cutting the weeds down flush to the ground and then cover them up with some type of weed barrier.  My preference is cardboard, but various papers, including newspaper can be used as well.  This way the weeds will now serve as green mulch and feed your plants but the barrier will prevent the weed roots from causing trouble.  The worms will be happy to devour your weed feast!

Now if you can be more selective about exactly which weeds to let grow, then you might really be on to something.  I would focus on a legume to provide nitrogen, but flowers for pollinators is a good idea as well.  But all this takes time to take note and observe.

One “weed” that can be great in/near the garden is comfrey, but be careful about exactly where you plant it because it is a permanent crop.


Best luck!

Eric

Those plant ID apps for the phone are really helpful, they show you which weeds are edible or useful in other ways and which weeds are just not good news.  Most weeds have at least some use, food, medicine, flowers for pollinators.  You can transplant weeds so they're in places that work better for you, or you can harvest some to eat, and yes, there are a few you probably don't want in your garden.  If the app. ID shows something is edible, but your plant doesn't quite match the picture then you can take a lil' nibble and wait awhile to make sure the app. worked accurately, and then enjoy if all is well.

The way I deal with a new piece of land is to start with the 'observation' part of permaculture. Once I've had a chance to see what's growing, and where, I have a better idea what to do with it. Those apps are a good place to start, but I've found them to frequently be unreliable, and mistaken. So, I'd advise multiple sources - especially if you want to forage for free food. (Botany in a Day is a fantastic resource, as are many of the state park offerings, on plant ID.)

But, it's more than that. What's already growing there can tell you a lot about the soil and microclimate. Plants with deep taproots trend to grow where the soil is heavy, compacted, &/or tends to be dry, for example. This type of information can tell you what may or may not grow well in that spot.

If you don't want to get into that, yet, Eric's suggestions, and many other means of growing things are easy to find, here! Welcome to permies!

Most folks here on the forum chop and drop weeds.  That way their nutrients go back into the ground.

I agree with the suggestion by Riona that they might be edible or medicinal so check them out.

I don’t pull anything I can’t identify. I was clearing some new garden areas and found a plant that I think is an orchid. There are more of them uphill under the young black locusts. I couldn’t bear to have pulled up an orchid!

The way I have been slowly slowly gardening, I clear an area and then it grows back with weeds, but ideally the plants are strong enough to deal with this neglect. Especially perennials are helpful, and most especially wherever the soil is questionable.

Daisies (oxeye daisies) are edible and very good for the soil. I have not met anyone who doesn’t like the flavor. But I haven’t eaten much, so they are being cut and laid on the ground for the sage, sea kale, Kentucky coffee tree, bellflower, chive, garlic, and a plethora of other plants. It has been a long journey overcoming my excessive attachment to good weeds but I can’t stomach only daisies day after day!

Chickweed I mostly leave alone. I take moneywort as a spring antiscorbutic and ground ivy as a basil substitute but after that begin weeding them relentlessly because they take over if left unattended and always come back whatever happens.

Potatoes are strong, they can deal with weeds fine. But certain weeds can encourage snails, slugs and voles who love to chomp the beans. I’ve found where I live that the most weed and predation resilient and resistant beans to be scarlet runner beans but it’s always worth experimenting.

Also if the soil is poor, then weeds, kale and other semi-wild brassicas, and perennial vegetables for me seem to be the only plants who can thrive. Other crops tend to languish and in the end I’ve often found that a bed of weeds is what results. Cereal grains do grow in these conditions but with all the rabbits they quickly get chomped.

I hope this is helpful for you!

Anne Miller wrote:Most folks here on the forum chop and drop weeds.  That way their nutrients go back into the ground.

I agree with the suggestion by Riona that they might be edible or medicinal so check them out.

And, if you choose 'chop & drop', which is a great thing to do, doing it before they go to seed will help reduce how much you have to deal with, next time.

I transplant a lot of perennials from garden beds.
Black locust trees or rose of Sharon for example.
I mostly leave creeping Charlie, dandelion, and plantains to grow in place.
I leave a weedy bed weedy until I'm ready to plant into it, so the living roots can feed the soil.
I tend to gather the weeds at one end of the bed rather than chopping and dropping.
They can compost there for a while before going into the bottom of a new bed, or a long term compost pile, which is pretty much the same thing for me.

I think it's important to learn what your local plants are, but don't get paralyzed by wanting to preserve every plant.

I find my tolerance for anything described as a weed to vary depending on its location.

I have an array of raised garden beds that host a lot of my traditional produce. I might be pretty selective in this space to what can stay. My main goal is to get select plants to grow and be consumed so they get preference for space and resources.

My pollinator and flower gardens get a less strict eye kept over it. Many of these are made up of strong perennials or prolific reseeding annuals that can hold their own against other plant species.

The more familiar I am becoming with my local plants and their potential uses, the less plants I consider a weed. The trouble becomes how to make the best use out of all the bounty while you have it!

A weed? any plant growing where it isn't wanted.   I favour the pull and drop method, or send them off to the compost.  Anything I can't immediately ID, gets left to develop until it's easier to come up with a name and if it has to go.  It's funny how a weed will grow better than anything that's planted deliberately!

Oh my goodness, weeds are often just maintenance-free crops! I eat lambsquarters, wild daisies, chickweed, dandelion…..

If my main goal of gardening is to grow food crops (mostly beans and potatoes), how should I find the right balance between pulling weeds and leaving them?

Excellent question!

Most food crops, besides brassicas, amaranth and a few other exceptions, want a more fungal soil than what most weeds want. Most species we commonly refer to as weeds are low successional plants. What does that mean? It means they are the first to come after disturbance...sometimes called pioneer or ruderal species. They thrive in a bacterial dominant soil. They prefer nitrate for a nitrogen source. The higher a plant is in succession the more fungal the soil, the greater the need for ammonium, not nitrate.
So weeds are indicators. Depending on the weed, it may be indicating compaction, poor drainage, mineral imbalances, toxins, and almost always a lack of biology (life!) in the soil. They come in to remediate, balance, mine unavailable nutrients, break compaction....
Cultivating biology or I like to say, promoting life, is the name of the game. If you are plagued by weeds, it is a sure indicator the soil needs more life-more fungi, more protozoa,  more nematodes. The soil needs more structure-more aggregation, more pore space.
Finding the right balance of removing or leaving the weeds is dependent on understanding your context. I almost never recommend pulling. Pulling is a disturbance and if you are trying to improve soil health, minimal disturbance is a key principle. Pulling is reserved for those that spread by rhizomes, like Johnson grass or when its your choice of therapy or the weed has a very thin stem (and cutting requires more energy). Most often, cutting to the ground is your best bet. If its a more competitive weed and sprouts back too quickly from a crown, you can go just below surface and cut main root. Leaving the root means not only less disturbance but potentially exudates continue to be released to feed the biology (though most weeds give up less energy in the form of exudates than higher successional plants. 10% vs 80%), or as the root senesces (dies) it becomes food for decomposers and then pathways for biology. This is on the way to getting more soil structure.
First recommendation is to ID the plant then research and consider: is it an annual or perennial and how does that effect management? is it beneficial in some way? Does that make it more tolerable? Can you manage it by mowing, not allowing it to go to seed? can you plant something to outcompete it (cover the soil), something that is a more cooperative soil builder; is it a dynamic accumulator? If yes, what? Are you low in that mineral? Can you add it and effectively tell the weed its job is done? Can you ferment that weed and help the system go through succession more quickly by returning it to the soil. Chop and drop is in the same principal but composting and fermentation requires less energy for the soil biology and plants to mineralize and only a little more energy from you. Is the weed some exotic invasive doing nothing except taking advantage of an opportunity because it is highly competitive? Those are the most difficult. Think Bermuda or bindweed. Im not sure about poison ivy but definitely a bear to deal with. Again, most all weeds respond to a more biologically active soil by going away.
Another recommendation is to have a change of attitude when in the garden. Lol, but true! I will quote Jay McCain, author of the excellent "When Weeds Talk"..."the attitude is not to "kill" the weed but to feed the microbes in the soil by placing the weeds where they can be digested by the soil life. Some think plants are effected by the emotions of the grower. As such it is important to maintain the proper attitude if the best is to be obtained from the plants. 'Kill' is not the best attitude."

This is a long winded answer to a question that deserves an even more longwinded discussion but I hope you find some insight to guide you.

Oh gosh, I've been pondering weeds a lot lately. Thanks for this discussion.
I have a small city yard with some trees and a vegetable bed.
There's lots of space I haven't yet planted anything in. It's been a cool spring, so all the weeds are well developed, lush and beautiful, and they grow over anything they can reach. So even though they're neither toxic nor stickery I need to cope with them.
My main weeds during this season are some kind of grass that spreads by runners and seems to never bloom, and annual vetch. The bees like the vetch blooms, and I eat a small quantity of the tendrils. So I enjoy it until this stage of its growth.
The vetch is about done blooming and is covered in green pods. If I left it in place it would soon drop mature seeds everywhere. And besides it dries into a brown scratchy tangle.
I was wondering if I need to pull it all up, or what else I might be able to do with it. It feels insurmountable, so I'm discouraged.
But yesterday I started pulling it, even if I can't get all of it. I'm making it into a big heap so as to not waste it and also have all the seeds drop in one place. But I worry about the big heap of soon-to-be-dry fire hazard.
Usually all I do is I go around the yard and try to remove the grass that's about to bury my perennials, and pull it back so they get some sun and the grass has to grow a ways to start climbing again. Which I think it won't do as much in the summer, because of no rain here, but there are plants I water, so there is always something of a water source for it.
So it's a constant approximate chop-and-drop process, but kind of at random, and the ground is getting really lumpy and hard to walk across, since I can't see where the holes are under the grass.
I don't put the green waste on my vegetable bed, which would probably be the right place for much of it. There always seems to be something just emerging that would get buried. I don't chop it fine enough. Arthritis.
So basically I'm feeling totally overwhelmed and would appreciate both encouragement and advice.

Hey Ellen
From your description, it seems like covering your dead (or living)weeds, might really help.
Some cardboard, a tarp, some big tiles or rocks , or some combination of these, could do a lot to suppress growth and preserve moisture, while promoting "nutrient cycling".

I like to build a compost bin next to every tree I purchase.
I occasionally harvest them, to build annual beds but it's mostly to feed the tree.
It's a way to concentrate a "forest floor" into a small space more suitable for an urban garden
If you toss your weeds under your perennials and cover them with something, you  might achieve something similar.
The tarp should hopefully keep your compost from becoming wildfire fuel.

If you have access to old coffee sacks, laying them out in a path could be a low effort way to preserve your access, by keeping the soil softer.

Thanks William.
I don't want to do the whole yard in cardboard for a number of reasons. Probably the most salient one is that the grass just grows right over it and through the wood chips.
I used to have a compost bin. Then a client of mine looked out the window and asked "Is that a rat?" Now I just put everything in the municipal compost.
Yes, I do need to be more methodical about dropping my chop around my trees instead of where I removed it. Good reminder. And I can keep an eye open for coffee sacks. Though most of my trees are surrounded by other smaller plants, so it becomes a bit of a jigsaw puzzle.

The saying that "Nature hates a void" is so true.  It doesn't want the soil to dry out and blow away. Weeds will grow if there is nothing else in that location. (They will grow even if there is something there!) They can be indicators of need.  My nemesis is horsetail.  It comes up everywhere.  Often, I'll pull it and toss it onto the lawn to dry out a bit. (I also dry it and use it medicinally, but there is SO much of it!)  When I mow, you would never know that there had been weeds all around the area! The mulched up weeds feed the lawn without any other work required from me. What fascinates me is how weeds will grow in and amongst look-alike plants within my gardens so that I don't even see them until they are quite large, even if I'm right on top of them.  Nature is a miracle!  

We forget some of the more successful traditional gardening methods such as edging a bed by inserting a shovel and digging a mini swale between lawn and garden. I personally rarely/never do this, but it is one method of contending with creeping weeds. I tend to use hosta as an edging.  I have it varying sizes.  I like it because it doesn't spread and go where it is not wanted like comfrey.  It requires no upkeep, and pollinators seem to love the flowers.  When I'm walking around in the evening, many is the time that I'll find a bumblebee curled up for the night inside one of the flowers; it's pretty adorable!

Maybe it's the timing of when this post was started, but come Fall, I get out the leaf sweeper and collect not only mine but all of my neighbors' leaves.  I bring them back home and chop them up and add them to all of my beds.  They look attractive and really help hold moisture in.  They can be slippery even when it hasn't rained for long stretches of time, so caution is needed.  I also get free wood chips from arborists if I see them in town.  I just finished my last load yesterday and that was a wonderful feeling. Not so much for my back!

As far as trying to prevent weeds, another strategy I try to employ is to plant things close and use ground covers.  Out front, I planted strawberries and I have been harvesting berries every day.  I probably pull in about eight quarts a day now and the freeze-dryer has been running non-stop.  I like them as a ground cover because they stay relatively low, they are pretty and they give me buckets of food.  The tricky part is that they will send runners wherever they want, so there is no clear cut path anymore.  Every year, as I'm out there playing Twister, I think, "Next year, I'm going to put down some stepping stones...which would be a great idea, but I just have to follow through!

That would be something that might work: get a pallet of thicker stones, lay them along your path and then just weed whack the weeds growing around them.  By doing that, they wouldn't go to seed, and the ground that is covered with stone will not have weeds, so you will always have a place to step.  I would not use gravel!!! Dirt still gets in and gives a foothold for weed seeds and then you have a real mess on your hands.

I guess I just love happy garden surprises haha.  I made a salad last night, principle ingredients of which were dandylyon leaves and nipplewort leaves.  They're a bit bitter, but we used raspberry balsamic and it helped counteract the bitterness for me.

So I saved a rare orchid from extermination by being circumspect! Likely of genus Platanthera. I almost thought they were lily of the valley before they made buds.

Also horsetail is amazing! Where I go to get sawdust there is an entire expanse where nothing is able to grow in the blown-around sawdust except horsetail. Then there is the deepest black compost that formed from the sawdust. I haven’t asked whether I can gather any but it’s so beautiful…

My favorite weeds are milkweed and nettle. They feel very food-like to me. And a friend gets particularly excited about wild salsify, and cultivates them as a garden plant. They are indeed good. Not to mention parsnip, who is only a weed because of growing spontaneously. Otherwise we call them an esteemed vegetable.

I call them, volunteer plants, and like others, I only surpress ones I can positively identify as 'too successful for this spot'.

In this way, I've gained many useful plants from a delicious, prolific woodland strawberry, to gorgeous tiny woodland forget-me-nots!

A lot of my gardening is working with succession to shift the weeds from horrible stickery annuals to other plants that are easier to live with and preferably also useful.
I'm starting to think about the place of the vetch in succession.
It climbs over the bermuda grass and shades it out in patches. After the vetch dies, that leaves patches of semi-exposed dirt where I could plant without digging up mats of grass.
Perhaps I can establish something in those patches before the winter rains come and the whole place turns to sourgrass and three-cornered leek that shade out all seedlings.
It would take watering, which I try to minimize, so the bermuda grass might come roaring back to cover the open space. But it's an idea that's kind of appealing, and if I could keep up with patches of weeding I might increase diversity at ground/low shrub layer.
But what to use? I could start with low woody native shrubs. I dunno. Sometimes I plant native grasses but I tend to lose them. I think in the long run I'd probably want to replace many of the first round as I figure out better options. But I guess I could just start with whatever natives might shade out the grass and see what happens. If they grow wide it might not take too many of them.
I'd have to think about all the open space in the middle of the yard, and instead of it all being random and semi-pathless, I'd have to have places to walk and places to walk around. I guess that wouldn't be so bad.
Hmmm...

I'm more like Timothy Norton when it comes to gardening
As a rule, I do not chop & drop most of my plants because some  will go to seed  after pulling & dropping (dandelions, forget-me not, and few more I can't remember the names of right now,  but I have them).
I spread the unwanted into the bush, and the ones with bigger roots I keep trimming because any root is better for building healthier soil, than yanking it out and leaving it bare.
In the Fall, rye grass and red clover is a must now (since my experiment last year).

Yesterday I began the process of clearing black raspberries from a community garden plot.
I was going to transplant them, but this particular cultivar just doesn't produce a berry that makes  dealing with the thorns worthwhile.
My consolation prize is a few regular raspberry plants that were hidden among the black raspberries, and a bundle of mugwort, which I planted in a bucket when I got home.
I'll go back for the raspberries later, after they fruit.

I'm sure bringing mugwort home seems crazy to some people,but I've found it manageable at the community garden.

I've been throwing together some air pruning boxes.
I plan on using them as a place to plant the black locust trees I weed out of my raised beds.
I've never seen any predation on them, so I'm skipping the mesh cage for now.


I have decided to give my new barrel gardens over to the tomatoes.
Both cuttings and random volunteers will be placed there.
They are mostly air pruned, except for the 4 inches over the soil wick.


Something I'm trying as an alternative to chopping or pulling up a plant.that is in my way, is stripping it of its limbs or leaves.
So far, it's just with mulberries, box elder and black locust.
I've witnessed regrowth of leaves on the mulberry branch and the limbs on the box elders.
I stripped the leaflets from the compound leaf of the back locust, no sign of regrowth yet.

There are some ill placed catalpal trees around the yard.
I've been hacking them back to a single branch instead of cutting them flush with the ground or digging them up.
Where they can't be dug up, I figure I'll get a flush of young green shoots to feed to my compost.
Where they can be dug up, I figure it can work like a rooted cutting, minimizing the amount of leaves reduces transpiration untill the roots can reestablish themselves.

I've been looking into different mulches to use for pathays, and so far it seems like straw is way cheaper than woodchips. Is there any major drawback to using straw as a mulch for pathways? I know most people only use it in their actual beds themselves

Allen Carlson wrote:I've been looking into different mulches to use for pathays, and so far it seems like straw is way cheaper than woodchips. Is there any major drawback to using straw as a mulch for pathways? I know most people only use it in their actual beds themselves

I use straw for winter mulch over my veggie garden and bulb beds. However, I pull it in the spring because the moles, voles, mice or ? tunnel directly under it when the ground starts to thaw as it's the warmest spot. Having critter runs under it, doesn't help my garden at all, although it can make early spring planting a bit easier.

Aside from the fact that it creates a huge amount of biomass I have to deal with every year, a PITA for an oldster like me, I don't mind.

I know this doesn't directly address your question, but it's my experience here.

Allen Carlson wrote:I've been looking into different mulches to use for pathays, and so far it seems like straw is way cheaper than woodchips. Is there any major drawback to using straw as a mulch for pathways? I know most people only use it in their actual beds themselves

If the straw is not organic, then there is the possibility of it being contaminated with things that might, among other things, prevent your plants from growing, or kill the soil microbes. Even in paths between beds, that sort of thing likely isn’t desired.

Allen Carlson wrote:I've been looking into different mulches to use for pathays, and so far it seems like straw is way cheaper than woodchips. Is there any major drawback to using straw as a mulch for pathways? I know most people only use it in their actual beds themselves

Have you tried chipdrop.com to get free wood chips?

Allen, I've tried Chipdrop but never got any response over five years...What I do now is find arborists who are working nearby and ask if the customer they are working for wants the chips. (The answer is always "no".) I tell them where I live and that if it would help them out, I'd love to have the chips.  I've gotten four huge deliveries this way for free.  They are happy not to drive them out of their way, and I'm happy to have so many great woodchips.  Instead of waiting and hoping that there will be an arborist in your area, you could call them and see if they have any local jobs coming up.

Barbara Simoes wrote:Allen, I've tried Chipdrop but never got any response over five years...What I do now is find arborists who are working nearby and ask if the customer they are working for wants the chips. (The answer is always "no".) I tell them where I live and that if it would help them out, I'd love to have the chips.  I've gotten four huge deliveries this way for free.  They are happy not to drive them out of their way, and I'm happy to have so many great woodchips.  Instead of waiting and hoping that there will be an arborist in your area, you could call them and see if they have any local jobs coming up.

Around here, various folks have signs next to their driveways "wood chips wanted" and that seems to work too.

I currently have a request pending on chipdrop.com. 4 months and no answers 😐