Saturday, June 15, 2019

Weeds and Roots in the Creation Garden


Weeds and roots are assets in the Creation Garden, though few will concede this guiding principle. Weeds are Guardians of the Soil, to borrow the name of a famous, radical book. When soil has been wrecked by floods, wind storms, and scientific agriculture, weed seeds fly in and are planted by birds to begin the task of renewing the soil.



According to the Carbon Cowboys, roots provide 75% of the increase in the soil's fertility. Deep roots increase the infiltration of rainwater, which helps prevent runoff that carries away good soil.

 Carbon Cowboys - Gabe Brown and his son - it is all about the soil.


A gardener's impulse is to remove weeds, but what folly!

The dandelion is simply an herb brought over by Europeans for its many good qualifies. The leaves are nutritious. The flowers are so sweet they can be turned into dandelion wine, and the roots make a coffee substitute. The fluff of the seeds is used by birds to line their nests. The tap roots are deep, so they are beneficial for the soil and soil creatures.

 Poke berries are not tasty, supposedly medicinal,
but also toxic to some extent. Birds love them.



Poke Weed is a southern plant valued by some for salad, when the leaves are prepared correctly. Over 60 species of birds love the berries.  Insects crowd the flowers before they turn into fruit. The berries are somewhat toxic, but not for birds. God decided to make many berries delicious for birds but repulsive for humans, so the birds have their own crops growing in their favorite areas.



Wild Strawberries flourish where the birds of our gardens perch. Their thick mat of leaves and berries suppress other weeds, so they are welcome early decorations in the garden. They grow well in shade or sun.

Hog Peanuts is a tall, strange-looking nitrogen fixer, so it improves the soil. A landscaper taught me to trim unwanted plants at the soil level. That works well for these ungainly plants. I cannot yank them out of the ground, and I will not use weed-killer on a good (but homely) plant. I know it will come back and drape itself over some good plants, so I just reduce its size.

Hog peanuts are not this dainty most of the summer. They send up a long, tough stem with big leaves.