So I’ve been thinking alot about weeds and biodiversity, among other things. If you’ve been reading my posts you will have gathered that I’m a weeding fiend, if only because it satisfies my obsessive drive and the repetitive nature of it is calming and clears my head. It’s like domestic tasks, which I also find soothing. I can’t work if my desk is untidy, for example. Through ordering my environment I also clear space in my mind. OK, I’m a tad pathological, but so are you, yes?

ANYWAY, enough about me, back to weeds…

I’ve been reading "Back From The Brink" by Peter Andrews. The book looks at (European) farming methods that have been used in Australia since settlement in the context of the Australian landscape, and the damage in terms of erosion, salination, water (creek/river/wetland/floodplain) systems that has been visited upon this environment as a result.

The Milkwood crew wrote a great review of this book here

Early on in the book he talks alot about pasture and biodiversity, about what makes poor pasture and what makes a healthy pasture. This is relevant to my experience here on the farm, since we have livestock and having healthy pasture, and enough of it is always on my mind.

I look out at the front paddock and bemoan the thistles waving like tall aliens amongst the grass. I pull fireweed as I wander from the front to the back paddock. Rip out piles upon piles of farmer’s friend and try to yank out other unidentified weeds that clearly have taproots all the way to the centre of the earth.

In my veggie gardens I clear the soil completely before deep digging, adding cowshit and other composted materials. All weeds *must* be eradicated! (I must emphasise here that I use no method other than hand pulling, no homemade weedkillers or commercial weedkillers, and I either leave them on the ground or compost them)

However, after reading this book (I’m not finished yet, but it has galvanised some of my thoughts about biodiversity), and having other input from permies like Sido and reading the thoughts of other people on permaculture forums etc., I am having a weedy change of heart.

One of the stories Peter tells is about visiting a horse stud in England and after a tour of the land, over tea, remarking to the farmer about how weed free his pastures were. He was nonplussed when the farmer seemed to take offense. After a bit of research, he had a penny dropping moment.  And it was about biodiversity. Apparently in this farmer’s approach, a weed free pasture is considered to be a pasture in decline. Biodiversity (and yes, we are talking weeds) is the key to healthy pastures and healthy soil. Apparently a healthy pasture might contain up to 80 different weed species, and any less than 40 is considered to indicate a pasture in decline. After a second visit to the stud, he realised that the pasture was indeed full of a diversity of plants, but the farmer just slashed and mulched the weeds, left them on the ground to enrich the soil.

There’s an idea, and this is something i touched on in an earlier post, something that Sido said, about how specific weeds might indicate a deficiency in the soil in the area where they grow. The weeds with long tap roots mine for certain chemicals, bringing them up the the topsoil and into their leaves. Slashing them and leaving them on the ground return the chemical to the soil for use by other plants, enriching the soil and restoring the balance. Making a compost tea out of the weeds can achieve the same ends. I guess the same principle applies to the "pepper" made of weed seeds and sprinked on the earth where the weeds grow. The pepper is made from ashing the seeds. Ideas ideas.

Apparently there is a pattern of weed growth where the weeds grow until they reach a critical mass, return the nutrients to the earth that are needed, and then the soild is ready for pasture again. And so it goes.

I just read on a forum 2 ideas paraphrased by gardeners/philosophers, and seem to be in keeping with these ideas… Steiner (father of biodynamics( says that the ‘weeds’ are colonisers and are there to start putting back the basic missing nutrients, so making a stew of the weeds and applying it to the area will fix the nutrient deficiency and hence get rid of the ‘weeds’. Fukuoka (Author of the "One Straw Revolution" Fukuoka practices a system of farming he refers to as "natural farming.") says he doesn’t garden without weeds.

Apart from the nutrient aspect, of course there’s the benefits of companion planting, providing shade and protection to other plants, assisting pollination, attracting bees, good bugs, bad b ug predators, providing diversity in a garden.

SO looking at my vegie gardens, I’m part way there. I thnk it’s ok to pull grass. I don’t mono-plant and I always chuck the seeds of a bug mix around the garden (which essentially means I’m planting weeds, right?!). I have as many different plants and vegies as I can in a patch, with herbs and always onions and tomatos, hoping that they’re companionable (I’m learning about things which like different types of soils, so this will become refined over time…)

The pastures confound me a little. I’m unsure which weeds are actually noxious and need to be destroyed utterly (or is this idea completely spurious?) I’m unsure if there’s a time in growth cycle which is optimum for slashing. Is it ok to leave weeds which have gone to seed on the ground? Is it ok to pull weeds, roots and all? What the hell are those huge weeds along the fenceline with green parachutes attached to them full of seeds? Is it OK to hate thistles? These and many more questions are left unanswered as I move on into the day.

 One more thought… soil is sand, clay and plant matter. The fertile part is plant matter Weeds are plants. Weeds can make soil. Weeds can make soil better.

 And just to complete today’s thesis, here’s a photo of our lovely lovely compost. All made from leaves, food scraps, paper and grass clippings. Oh, and cowshit… *my favorite* Who’d have thought?

 Vxx