Ask any gardener what they think of weeding and they might respond in an upbeat way with a quip like "it's like meditating." These words are seldom uttered by a farmer, or at least a market gardener who is growing organically, on VERY fertile soil.
I heartily agree that the the adage, "one years seed equals seven years of weeding" is so appropo! And by the looks of this little plot, there was more than one year's seed in there.
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| Weeds on 6/24 |
The weeds on this plot of land are absolutely prolific, and I tackled it head on in two days and a little over five and one half hours, not including the two and a half hours it took me to weed the paths a few days earlier.
Of interest was the variety of weeds that grew in each treatment. Here is an inventory by treatment:
Control:
- Pennsylvania Smart Weed
- Pigweed
- Lambsquarters
- Galinsoga
- Purslane
- Grasses
Straw:
- Chickweed
- Galinsoga
- Cover
- Pennyslvania Smart Weed
- Lamium
- Grasses
- Plantain
Spent Brewer's Grain:
- Pigweed (1/4" diameter stems!)
- Galinsoga
- Lambsquarters
- Pennsylvania Smart Weed
While the variety between the control and SBG sections was similar the size of some of the weeds appeared significantly larger in the Spent Brewer's Grains.
Also significant was the difference in the color density of the weeds among the different treatment groups. Unfortunately, my camera wasn't able to really show the difference, but those weeds growing in the SBG were certainly "greener" than those in the Straw or control treatment patches.
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| Tidy again, but for how long? |
