How To Turn Weeds Into Helpers?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Many gardeners are sure that the main enemy in their garden is the weed. And they mercilessly fight him by hook or by crook. From early spring to late autumn, summer residents are only busy standing bent over, not unbending, and flying, flying, flying their plots … But in fact, weeds can be turned … into your allies, if you know the right approach to them

Pros of weeds in the country

Have you ever thought that weeds did not appear for the misfortunes of gardeners, but even when a person first began to plow the soil for useful plantings in it? From that time on, weeds began to actively oppose man. He pulls them out - they grow even more efficiently in response. He treats them with herbicides - they survive, acquire immunity from such treatments, become stronger and more powerful several times.

Today, in nature, as well as in summer cottages and vegetable gardens, we have obtained by an independent selection method (there is no other way to call this event) thousands of weed species that can adapt and survive on any soil, loose and dense, black earth and loamy, fertilized and plowed. But if you try to look at the weeds with different eyes? Not to fight them, but to try to turn them into your friends, into assistants?

From a natural point of view, weeds in the country are:

• free mulching green manure for the soil, but gardeners each time pull these green manures by the roots and throw them over the fences, instead of cutting the weed on the soil and leaving its root to build up the green mass and work as mulch in the fall;

• valuable organic matter, which, with its long and large roots, loosens the soil for the summer resident, nourishes the soil, while sterile soil, cleared of weeds, leads to a loss of soil fertility and its degradation;

• protection of other plants in the garden from heat and heat, as they shade the soil of the garden, protect those fruits that are in the ground from drying out;

• assistants for mixed plantings, because every summer resident was able to make sure that planting cultivated plants in the "mono" style does not lead to an excellent harvest, and in this case the weeds improve the taste of neighboring cultivated plants, their growth (a simple example, potatoes will be much tastier and grows better if quinoa grows on its field);

• natural repellents, because many of them scare away and protect crops from pests, parasites and harmful insects (for example, tansy under apple trees will collect aphids that eat the leaves of fruit trees);

• green pharmacy, since every second weed can also benefit the health of the summer resident, for example, plantain, dandelion, wood lice, elecampane, milk thistle and many, many others.

Weed control

We will not say that at that very moment the summer residents abandoned their hoes and stopped the fight against pulling weeds out of the ground. We propose not to destroy them at the root, looking with hatred at the new green shoots of weeds in the beds, but to learn how to control them. To turn their evil power into the good that they can bring to the site and its owner.

What should be done in order to control the appearance and presence of weeds on your site?

Step 1. Do not dig up the soil in the country endlessly, it is better to carry out surface loosening. This technique preserves most of the wild plants in a deep layer of soil and prevents them from germinating and breaking free.

Step 2. Mulching should be used as a natural farming method. There will be a lack of sunlight - there will be poor development and weeds.

Step 3. Green manure plants should be planted before and after your main plants in your vegetable garden and garden. If the beds are bare, then nature, which does not tolerate emptiness, will sow it with a large number of weeds.

Step 4. Prevent weeds from releasing seeds onto the soil. They need to be allowed to grow until the phase when they bloom and then pruned in the soil. And let the plant roots work for the benefit of the soil on the site.

Step 5. Control the growth of weeds while the crops are gaining strength. But when the latter get stronger and become strong, independent, the weeds will no longer be afraid of them.

In simple terms, the scheme for controlling weeds and switching them to the benefit of cultivated plants is as follows. In early spring, the growth of weeds must be stimulated so that they emerge as soon as possible. After the snow melts and the soil dries up with the Fokin flat cutter, we loosen the soil. Thanks to the aeration of the soil, it will sooner warm up, and the weeds will actively sprout. Next, you need to give them the opportunity to germinate, grow, restore the structure of the soil.

Now is the time to plant the main plants. We again process the soil with a flat cutter, while weeds are cut. While the latter are undergoing a recovery period, your cultivated plants sprout and grow stronger. Thus, you will not find weed enemies, but your helpers. This, by the way, is one of the methods of conscious farming and rational interaction with Nature.