Ground View
by Glen
Andresen |
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My philosophy of gardening has changed considerably since I took shovel to dirt almost 30 years ago as a first-time homeowner.
With some space for a garden and plenty of sun, I charged ahead — armed with gardening knowledge I gleaned from my parents, grandparents and the family truck-farm I worked at during summers in the southern Willamette Valley. (It turns out that hundreds of acres of peppermint, corn, bush beans, beets and filberts didn’t really translate to home gardening.)
From my parents and grandparents I learned a lot about what can be grown, how to harvest, and what “should” be sprayed to help keep them “pest free.” It was normal for my folks to sprinkle and powder the soil and vegetables with diazinon and Malathion, and to spray rhododendrons with Orthene. And that was normal for me, too — at first.
Fortunately, I educated myself about the dangers of these and other organophosphates – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organophosphate — and insecticides — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insecticide — quickly, and I have not used them or any other synthetic insecticides in more than 20 years.
Over time, through trial and error, learning from others and experimenting, my philosophy has changed immensely. I now focus almost entirely on learning all about garden pests. Armed with my knowledge of specific “pests,” — their life cycle, feeding habits, and natural predators — I can better decide how to live with, prevent, or (in rare instances) combat them. I have learned to let nature do most of the work of keeping pests in check.
Weeds: Growing where they shouldn’t
But what about weeds? How can we prevent, control, and even learn from them? We can start with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of a weed as “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” That’s a good quote, but is it true? A potato is a plant whose virtue is well known. But if a volunteer potato comes up in my carrot bed, I consider it a weed. So my definition of a weed is simply a plant that is growing where I don’t want it to grow.
Why worry about weeds, anyway? The answer is that weeds compete with your veggies for water, sunlight and nutrients, which then likely leads to malnourished and stunted vegetable plants. Weakened plants are less able to fight off diseases and pests, and they produce less.
The thought and threat of diminished yields may lead you to believe that you have to use insecticides to protect your plants from diseases and pests. But all you really have to do is pull up the weeds when they are small, at the beginning of this downward spiral.
A quality experiment
Nearly seven years ago, I experimented with weeding one patch of corn but not another just to see how it would affect production. If this had been a “real” experiment, I would have had to compare two very similar – if not identical – planting beds and I would have had to water, fertilize and tend them in exactly the same way — except for the variable component, which in this case was the weeding.
But instead this is what I compared: the weeded corn patch was in a raised bed, rich in organic matter that I have been amending for more than 10 years. The unweeded corn patch was not in a raised bed and I even removed some weedy sod to plant the bed. Get the picture? These were not similar beds. To top it off, I planted the weeded bed roughly a week earlier.
So what were the results? The weeded bed produced stalks in excess of 10 feet while the unweeded bed’s stalks topped out at about seven feet, with some weeds up to my knees. But I’m growing corn for the production of ears, not stalks for Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations.
In all honesty, I would have to say that the two beds produced about the same quantity and quality of ears.
Based on this experiment, can I make any blanket statements about the effect of weeding on corn production? Heck no! In fact, I would never recommend not weeding, for I can picture those weeds producing hundreds of thousands of seeds, each one needing water, nutrients and light – and ready to compete with next year’s crop.
Next month I’ll continue with the topic of weeds and get specific on cultural and mechanical ways to stay ahead of them.
Glen Andresen hosts “The Dirtbag,” aired every second Monday at 10:30 a.m. on KBOO 90.7 FM. He tends his bees on a three-quarter acre organic garden at a retreat in Eagle Creek. He also coordinates Metro’s Natural Gardening Program. Comments and questions may be sent to glen@pacifier.com or c/o The Portland Alliance.
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