To Weed or Not to Weed

I've been coaching gardening newbies for a year now and I'm learning lots of lessons about people.  Like the realization that nobody wants to weed.  They want to fix things so that somehow the weeds won't appear.  Now as any long-time gardener knows, the answer is concrete, right?  Or maybe a deck covering the whole yard.  Black plastic covered with mulch?  All reasonable options for the weed-averse, but not exactly gardening.  With coachees I give what I consider very doable estimates of weeding time required, like a half-hour a week during the fast-growing months, and I see the grim faces of despair.  I honestly don't know what the answer is for people who A, want a yard that looks nice, B, don't want to spend any time caring for it and C, can't afford to pay someone else to do it.  I still say hardscape the whole thing.

If only I could turn people on to the practice of weeding, excite them with the notion of weeding as a meditative practice, as lovingly tending to a garden, as the beautification of their creation.  Sounds great to me but maybe I'm weird about weeding and I think I know why.  My mother used to beg me to let her weed my garden after she moved into a condo, just like I do weeding around B&Bs when I'm on vacation.  The very definition of addiction.   

So I have a new tack and I call it selective weeding or designing with weeds.  It's about rejecting labels and looking at volunteer plants as freebies, not as weeds.  I love the weeds in this photo - the tapestry of smartweed, creeping sedum, clover, violets and something else I haven't identified yet.  Sure, I'll always eject the odd plaintain, crabgrass or dandelion because they're butt ugly.  But allowing these guys to stay in my garden just makes sense - more biodiversity, less maintenance, and a move toward that worthy goal - sustainable landscaping.

Comments

[Kasmira]

I think of weeding as grooming my yard. Sometimes I feel like a momma ape, patiently picking the nits out of my baby ape's fur. I don't mind the time spent and usually just get comfortable with a bucket and a trowel and proceed to love my garden.

The only thing that puts me off weeding is mosquitoes. I have to coat myself in Cutter, and even then I am sometimes too annoyed by the buzzing around my eyes to continue.

[ML]

Getting a butt-ugly plastic bench from Walmart completely turned me around about weeding. Now I love to duck out when I've got a few extra minutes, plug in the fountain in my water garden so I have the lovely plash of water in the background, and sit on my bench to pry weeds from between my bricks encircling the garden. When it's just rained the night before, so the soil's soft enough to release the weeds on the first pull, the textury tension of grasping a fistful of leaves and lifting them softly yet firmly enough out of the soil so that no roots break off, is just heaven!

[Susan]

Ooh, I love ML's "textury tension" and Kasmira proceeding to "love my garden." Aren't gardeners a sensual bunch?

[Kathy Jentz]

I meant to add this comment earlier - finally getting a chance...
I'm not surprised weeding is so despised -- I just read a study that says the NUMBER ONE reason by far that people hate to clean bathrooms is that it requires them to BEND OVER!!!
That really threw me. I mean does everyone out there have a bad back? Or is it just a personal image thing (i.e. "won't be caught stooping")? Is everyone self-conscious about their rears? What gives?
I'd never even put this reason on my list of top 100 things that are bad about bathroom cleaning - would never occur to me.
This is why they're coming out with all those long-handled cleaning tools for toilets and showers. I thought those tools were to separate you farther from maybe touching the dirt/GERMS, but I was way off on that theory. They've tried it with weeding tools - but it just doesn't work like getting down at ground level.
So there you have it -- bending over is unAmerican! Therefore, weeding is just not going to happen.

[Amy Stewart]

Great topic. Now that I have chickens, I am really coming to appreciate weeds. The dandelion is probably good for them, they like to pick at the weedy grasses and bindweed, and anything that's easy to pull up (like the borage that re-seeds everywhere) is now less of a weed and more of a food crop--something I can yank up and toss in the chicken run to give them something to pick at when they can't free range.

I have also come to appreciate dock and a couple of grasses for their ornamental qualities, and am actually working on re-vamping my front yard with more grasses so that weeds can blend in better. Thanks for getting me thinking about all this!