Hoeing Weeds

Hoeing weeds

Fast weed growth

 

   After some five or six months with no rain, we got a two day gully-washer
that dropped some five to six inches on the area.
This was the largest October storm system to hit the state in 45 years.

   The combination of warm temperatures and moisture has led
to an explosive growth of weeds.
The photo above was taken only five days after the rain started. Very fast sprouting!

 

   Keep in mind, when I say ‘Weed’, I merely mean a plant that is growing where I do not want it.
   These plants in the photos are right in front of our house where we want nothing growing so that we have no flammable vegetation near the house. We’re better off having the ground bare and clear all around the house to lower wildfire risks.
   We could have a lawn there, but that takes a lot of water, water I’d rather use to grow food, both to sell and to eat.

   The plants in the photo are the types that need to be growing on the hillsides where they can help to bind the soil reducing erosion.

   It is when plants are in this young and tender stage that they are the easiest to kill. A simple swipe with a hoe will scrape them from the soil surface, slicing them from their roots and leaving the leaves to dry in the sun. A nice day that will be sunny is said to be the best to scrape these weeds from the ground. The sun will hasten their demise. A rainy day might allow them to get their roots going again.

   If you let the weeds grow, they will set their roots firmly in the ground, and you will have a harder time removing them, if scraped with a hoe, the roots might set up a new stalk…. you might have to pull them from the ground by hand.

   Take care of your weeds before they get out of hand.

   “A stitch in time saves nine” Old Proverb

 

This is a deerpath in the wilderness, the photos taken the same day as the one above.
We can see that even though the plants are different, they have the same germination speed, although perhaps a lower rate of germination due to the rougher soil.

   There are several factors we can learn form in the two photos….
Notice the deerpath has a lot of debris on it… leaves and duff from the nearby bushes.
These have lowered the germination rate.. perhaps some weeds were under a large leaf that did not allow the small sprout to grow properly.

 

When you hunt an animal you have to learn its habits….
when you have weeds, you should learn how to control them
by knowing their growth habits, and vulnerabilities.

   A seed is a marvel of life…
it has the accumulated nutrition and energy given to it by its parent for its early life…..Just as most humans and animals will do anything for their young, so too did the parents of these annual weeds sacrifice themselves for their progeny.
   The parents of these annual weeds grew during the moist winter in our mild climate… they waxed through the winter. And when the springtime came and the rains stopped, the plants, programmed to seed at the beginning of the dry season, took every bit of energy they had in their roots, stalk and leaves and packed every bit of this essence and energy into the seeds they carried. This is why seeds are so nutritious.  Every bit of fat, protein and carbohydrate the plant can manufacture is given to the seeds, so that they will have a good chance to grow in the next generation.

   So now we are left with a seed that has lain in the ground for five or six months,  waiting for the right environmental conditions to sprout.
   Plants are grown and adapted to their area….. the plants here ‘know’ they should not sprout before the rainy season has began. In order to make sure that a stream of urine from a passing deer or a short unseasoable sprinkling in July will not cause them to sprout, the seeds are coated with a hard ’seedcoat’ that will keep out short-term moisture.
   When it has rained for a couple of days the moisture will seep into the seed itself.
This will start the seed’s germination. To germinate too soon would mean death for the seedling,  nature sets these effects in place to ensure enough plants grow to continue the process.

   It is when they are newly growing that they are easiest to destroy…. if you have a space in which you don’t want any new plants growing,  this is the time to take care of them,  when they are young tender seedlings that have no large root system,  nor copious leaves to cause interference.

~Lao Tzu~
Chapter 63

Accomplish the hard task while it is still easy.
Handle large affairs while they are still small.
For even the most difficult and large of tasks and affairs
have a point where they are still easy and small

Here we see a photo of a large hoe being used to scrape the newly-grown weeds.

 

   What means you use to destroy these young seedlings depends on your resources.
One method used for nearly a century is ‘flame-weeding’.
Some tractors are adapted with systems that shoot a flame
onto the ground beneath the crop plants.
Just a second of heat from the flame will cause the moisture in the small leaves to boil,
rupturing cells and resulting in dessication and eventual death.
You can also purchase hand held flamers that will run from a small propane bottle.

   I prefer using mechanical means….
if the ground is not covered with a mulch,
I use a hoe, gently scraping along the soil surface,
scraping the plants from the ground.
This does not require hacking if the plants are young enough….
gently scrape the plants from the ground in a space a foot or so…
then push the scraped soil back to cover the ground.
This results in what the old-timers used to call a ‘dust mulch’.
The broken soil will reduce the wicking action of the soil surface
and act much as a mulch of leaves would…
covering the soil with a blanket of soil shading it from the sun etc.

    If you have a mulch of leaves, straw or some other organic material, you can use a rake and be able to kill the weeds trying to grow on top of the mulch.
    These are the weed seeds brought onto the mulch by wind or animals.
If left unchallenged, they might possible be able to grow through the mulch and enjoy the same healthy conditions you desire for your crops plants.  

 

weeds scraped from the ground

Here we see the ground scraped across the entire photo.  
The left-hand side is scraped, and the right-hand side is scraped
and the removed soil put back onto the soil as a mulch.

 

   It is generally seen as better for the environment overall to keep the soil covered with plants.
    Plants cover the soil keeping the nearby areas cooler. Bare open ground tends to be hotter, and much more susceptible to erosion by rain or wind. Here in the summertime we often see ‘dust-devils’ on open fields, and even on our own clean scraped driveway. 

 

~Lao Tzu~
‘Chapter 48′

Common learning consists in doing something new each day,
In pursuit of the Tao, every day something is dropped.
Day after day something else is not done,
until one reaches the point where one is able to do much by doing nothing.

Less and less you work and desire, until you reach the state of non-action.
By not striving to control the world, it offers itself to you.
You cannot master the world by trying to enforce change on it.

 

    Unless there is an overwhelming need for clean-cultivation, I argue against it. We remove all vegetation from near our house because of the high fire danger in our area. We want no organic materials next to the house. Clean and open rocky ground is what I want… the small pebbles are unlikely to blow away with the wind.  We also have some garden area that is clean-cultivated. Some of our cactus species are small, and would be overtaken by allowing other species to grow with them.

 

   Most annual gardens do well with clean cultivation… before you plant, prepare the soil in the usual way…and then water as if you had planted… in a few days you will see weed seedlings sprout… rake the soil to kill the emerging seedlings, and water again. Within the next two weeks, water and rake four or five times…. you will kill most of the weed seeds near the surface…. then when you plant, do not dig the soil again, you will bring up seeds from deeper…. just make your tiny seed plantings, and cover them…. hopefully you’ll have very few weeds growing when your vegetables emerge.

    It is hard for many people to not do all the work at once… but there are times it pays to do less now… and take much longer, doing a little bit here and there… don’t rush nature, she usually doesn’t rush much… and you can’t push her hard.

 

 

“When you throw Mother Nature out the window,
She comes back in the door with a pitchfork”

~Masanobu Fukuoka~