Dandelions, chickweed, clover, and many more weeds are edible so I keep them in my garden and add them to my diet. I know most people don't want to do that, but its something to consider since many "weeds" are more nutritious than the normal vegetables. Love your channel!
We harvest dandelions and roots every spring and fall for medicinal purposes but I’ve always picked them from the garden because I was afraid they would take away from the nutrition of the other plants I’m trying to grow. Have you not found that to be the case?
I’ve been doing this for at least 7 years now and the soil is much much better. There is the occasional weed seed, etc, but that just means more fertility.
I struggle with being messy but since moving to a climate where everything dies from the hot summer and leaves bare ground, I will accept anything that grows at this point.😅
Sprinkle all your green grass clippings in your garden and mow over fall leavesa couple of times and do the same with those. Keep the soil mulched where no bare ground can be seen in your garden and your soil will become incredible. Red Ripper Peas are a great summer ground cover crop in very hot climates.
I acquired a parcel of land that was backfilled with river sand and clay. This layers are about a foot deep in some places. It would be back breaking to till it and might actually be detrimental to plants if I did try to mix it. So, instead, I took native weeds from the surrounding areas and let them grow so that these plants would move nutrients to the surface. I chopped and dropped them which added more organic matter on my top soil along with the minerals and nutrients that the weeds “mined”. It has been almost a year now and there are obvious improvements. There’s more life under the weeds and more loam, not to mention the presence of worm castings.
Two years later Swave, how’s the experiment going? Would love to know if it’s working. I’ve stopped filling grass when it dies in patches and the weeds have done a great job of improving the health of my yard.
A very nice approach that emphasizes the importance of soil ecology!!! I would like to add one more extreme important correlation between plants and soil microorganisms, which changed my perspective on gardening completly! Plants excrete root exsudates which contain carbohydrates to attract beneficial bacteria and fungi, which support the plants with nutrients in return. Therefore, special microbiomes develop around plant roots in the rhizosphere, dependent on the nutitional needs of the plant. This works similar to the mikrobiomes in our intestines. The connection between plant and soil is therefore not one-sided, the plant is actually feeding and building up soil and doesn't simply deprive it from nutrients, same applies to weeds. Thats why soil covered with living plants is much healthier and more fertile and gardeners should always keep their soil well covered!
Absolutely! Weed cover for land is analogous to skin for human. Weed/skin protects land/human from invasion of foreign objects. Weed/skin senses and responds to the environment. Furthermore, our skin is covered with microorganisms which is crucial for healthy skin and immune system. So is the symbiosis of weed- microorganism to the land.
Yeah well, if the skin and cover let‘s anything else grow there. Which is not the case after a few weeks. Weeds grow faster and bigger than salad or peas. There will be no room and not enough sunlight left for your legumes and fruit and they will disappear, some of them more slowly, some very quickly. I love dandelion and greedy but they won’t let anything else grow. Greedy above all because of the roots. They are a net, they go deeply into the soil, they are everywhere. If you leave one centimeter of root in the soil it will grow out in a week again. It displaces even grass.
I discovered by accident that leaving the weeds around the coriander protected them all winter so I had the best crop by spring No pests attacked them nor did they die off, somehow the weeds provided something.
I was reading up a bit about sandalwood. In it's younger years it is parasitic and the roots need to latch on to suitable host plants or it will not grow to maturity. But it got me wondering if there were not equivalent relationships with other plants - maybe not to the extent of parasitism, but maybe the root secretions of certain weeds and absorbed by it's neighbors might make a plant more resistant to pests or grow better. For all we know, plants that need a lot of calcium, might do better with a dandelion growing nearby. 🤔 Or even that the weed might support a particular fungus which secretes certain chemical compounds that are kill nematodes or something.
YES!! Weeds are just some brown nozer saying they're undesirable. Dandelion has vitamin C and A, and anticancer properties. They are using dandelion in cancer treatment now. Purslane is a good detox "weed". And though all the eggheads will say pokeweed is poisonous, I made poke wine out of it and I'm obviously not dead.
companion planting may be interesting to you. Also this business of having "clean bare rows" was brought about by "modern" farming methods. Running a harvester over crops, they didn't want additional greenage/non relevant plants mixed in. This is how this mindset grew. In a home garden, whether flowers fruit or vegetables or a mix of everything, the soil doesn't have to be bare. Around the green leafy vegetables grow plants which discourage snails and slugs, but companion planting helps de-mystify what to grow where, or what to use as mulch to protect the lettuce. Personally I never had big issues with the occasional green leafy vegetable being eaten; it meant that that particular plant wasn't healthy to begin with. If you monitor what's going on in your garden, you'll see that the only plants that get decimated by pests are ones that are in the wrong place for them, putting them under stress, or there's a soil imbalance of some kind. Unhealthy conditions result in plants that get pest ridden. Healthy plants may have a bite or two taken out of them but the one right next to the healthy plant which struggled for some reason will be eaten by pests. The exception to this is when there's some kind of generalized locust/grasshopper plague. Which doesn't happen often.
@@markusgorelli5278 You may be interested in Companion Planting. There's quite a few books out there on the topic. Nasturtiums can act as a "trap" plant for white cabbage moth, for example.
@@Kayenne54 I find my "companion" plants (like marigolds is another one) just die from the pests. I have had zero success with "companion planting". Though I will say there is a lot to be said for merely ensuring you don't have large patches of bare soil
This is been so obvious to me for so long and I've often tried to explain why I don't weed my garden at all, just slash it all back from time to time. You summarize it well. I'm not a food crop grower tho but a native tree regenerator. My project is long term but the principle is the same. Weeds are good. Any plant is better than nothing. Weeds trap nutrients in their leaves and prevent loss through erosion, and gradually release those nutrients back to the soil as they break down. Roots break down and aerate the soil. Fresh organic matter helps maintain invertebrate and microbial diversity and health, and therefore healthier soil. Having weeds amongst my trees means competition, and therefore slower overall growth, but long term it's overall better and requires less human intervention. Eventually as the trees get bigger and provide more shade and more of their own mulch via leaf drop, weeds a are naturally reduced anyway. This is why I have 'messy' looking garden beds. First the process is started with boosted organic matter in the form of mulch, and from there the sooner the weeds grow through it and stabilise the system the better the overall health of the garden will remain.
This is something that's been on my mind heavily this year, after finding out the hay I'd used for mulching and composting was tainted with aminopyralid. A hundred gallons of compost ready to use had to be dumped, the pile that was in process abandoned, and all the mulching hay pulled up. Having to start a new compost pile, I've developed a new appreciation for the weeds in the yard as readily available clean biomass, and for the first time, there aren't enough weeds!
@@gaeangardensbyizabela You'll know it if the hay has been treated with aminopyralid (GrazeOn). All your plants will look like they have "curly top" virus and soon die. Except for grass crops like wheat, hay and corn. They're unaffected by this persistent herbicide. That's why it's used on these crops. Aminopyralid goes straight through a grazing animals digestive system, so check any manure you get to see what/where the animal was eating. This stuff should be illegal and it IS illegal in other countries. Wonder why that is?$$$? 🤔 It takes a lot of (7+) years and money to fix the soil to be veggie grow-able again.
I remember reading an article almost a decade ago talking about weeds as an indicator of soil needs. Dandelion is calcium, dock is potassium, etc. comfrey is a great accumulator. Bocking 14 could be planted as an all around chop and drop as well as a liquid fertilizer. It would be great for someone to make a simple list that all gardeners could keep posted for quick reference to know what is lacking for a quick application of the needed element.
That doesn't seem right. A dandelion doesn't appear because there's a calcium imbalance, it appears because there's an opportunistic dandelion seed. That seed will grow whether there's a calcium imbalance or not. Charitably, let's say that the calcium deficit causes a space where the dandelion can grow absent less hardy plants, except that's not the case here because there's plenty of space because these are deliberately planted flowers and crops, artificially spaced out already. Perhaps in an organic environment it might be true - a dandelion exploiting a low-calcium area that has had the other plant life die off, but for a garden that's rarely going to be the case. Whole thing seems a bit New Age-y. 100% on board with chop and drop though.
I live in California, I do container patio gardening, and I ADORE dandelions! I find that my container-grown roses bloom better when they have dandelions with them in their pots. If the dandelions start to look hungry and scraggly, they tell me when to feed them both before the roses have time to suffer. :) Thank you so much for your helpful, educational videos!
Dandelions are a poor man's rucola. You can eat the leaves on new plants (in early spring)! My mom used to cook syrup with dandelion flowers. She swore on their health attributes and ate two teaspoons every day.
@@magdalenabozyk1798 😀 sounds like your mom knows her herbs! I like to eat the flowers plain, or with salad. They are mouth puckeringly bitter and I find it very refreshing and tasty. I hear the greens are good too, but I grow them mainly as food for my pets. When I have enough planted and grown, I'm gonna start eating them, myself! 😀
I'm so glad I came across your video because in my new house x 1 year, the weeds and dandelions are plentiful. I weeded last year and felt it in my hands ✋️ 😪 for days. I am going to try some of the ground covers mentioned in the comments. I swore I was not going to start gardening again but it is just not possible! I derive so much pleasure not only from my labor, but I just love ❤️ to be on my patio all day and sometimes into the night basking in the happiness it brings me. Very spiritual 🙏 experience.
I chop and drop everything thanks to one of your videos a long time ago. Extreme Texas summers bake the soil, so as I pull out weeds, grass, plants that are done for the season I make a “salad” and spread all over. Thank You for all you do! I very much appreciate your new format, very encouraging for those of us with limited gardening budgets 🥰
I too have discovered the " joy of weeding" and have been spreading countless little slow-release organic amendments on the surface of my garden ever since. I usually roll the weeds in my hands like I am trying to warm my hands up. This usually crushes the weeds and damages them enough so that a few hours in the sun will kill them.
Been following a guy who eats weeds because nutritionally, a lot of weeds are better than the greens we usually eat. So I have a raised bed or two mixed into my wild back acre. Nature figures out where to grow my dandelions, dock, nettle, mallow, wild lettuce, plantain, heal-all, etc. Mixing the wild and the
@@davidsarahmccolm Sergei Bouchenko from southern Oregon. He has wildcrafting books and cooking books with his Mother. He is really interesting to listen to and has a great story of how his family got into eating "weeds". Air quotes always.
I like to call weeds 'surprise plants'. A lot of them have great flowers for the bees in my garden, and usually I pull only the ones that crowd my veggie beds or cover my stepping stones. I usually drop them back somewhere or throw them in the compost. But the tea is an interesting idea.
Hello, my son and I breed tropical fish. That requires frequent water changes so I use the nutrient rich water to water pot plants and my bonsai with good results. I enjoyed your video and have long considered “weeds”as beneficent in the garden. A long time ago I visited a professional dahlia grower who used weeds to help keep evaporation down and to draw down insect pests from his flower’s. regularly he would hoe down the weeds and leave them as they fell to continue their work in the rows of dahlias, he had magnificent plants.
There also is a misconception in your approach: If you happen to have dandelions in your garden beds, it doesn't mean anything regarding soil health or nutrient balance. Those "pointer plants" only really work in nature. If you see a patch of nettles, you might have dense but rich ground there. A part of my garden, where the woodchips already decayed and where I walk a lot, also is full of dandelions, because the ground is so compacted. But in a nutrient rich garden bed, ANY weed will grow with joy. If you have nothing _but_ dandelions, while your tomatoes next to those are rotting away - THEN there would be something wrong with your soil health.
Agreed. Dandelions in my raised bed I just turned the soil in means a seed spread from elsewhere and germinated. Impacted, settled soil, sure; can indicate impaction and calcium settling.
Yes, but not always either. Just as the plants we want to grow have different soil requirements, so do weeds. Many weeds won't grow precisely because the soil is too 'rich'.
@@GARDENER42 No, not many. I improved a garden bed that was full of vetch last season and this year has very little. I have paspalum in my lawn, but never in the adjacent garden. It's a lot harder to isolate plants that aren't growing in a certain situation. Often, weeds/plants will still germinate, but may be out competed by plants that prefer the conditions. But that doesn't mean the concept isn't stable. For example, grasses don't tend to like soil high in phosphorus. Legumes generally do poorly in soils with high nitrogen. I suppose the term 'rich' soil is misleading. Because one plant's delight is another's poison.
@@SeanCaught millet's a pain in the bum as it's often in birdseed & if it gets into a lawn, it's hard to eradicate, as I found out a couple of years ago. What I've found is nettles, chickweed, hairy bittercress & dockins do especially well in fertile soil but plantains & thistles less abundant, though still present. TBH since I switched to no dig/no till five years ago in my home garden, I've experienced a huge fall in the number of weeds of all types, this despite throwing even flowered weeds into my compost bays (they're 1.2m³ so big enough to sustain 50°C for a couple of weeks, which kills the seeds). The allotment I took on 18 months ago was a nightmare (15cm of topsoil over quarry waste, so much rock removal & many tons of soil added) but the initial weed issue was sorted using cardboard, compost & maincrop potatoes. Main weeds there now are rosebay willow herb & grasses.
Great to hear someone else saying what i'm thinking. I have for a while seen weeding as harvesting. But i don't return it immediately back to the garden. i feed it to my chickens, then compost goes back into the garden. I've been gardening in hard clay, the rapid transformation in the soil from permaculture techniques is astonishing!
I like your videos, very inspirational and my favourite gardening channel. There should be a warning with the chop and drop though... only do it in dry weather! I'd come across this method a few years ago and started enthusiastically chopping and dropping, only to realise that the plant pieces, I think it was rosebay willowherb, had rooted after some wet days.
Love the weed tea idea! 💕 I thought you could do this with just specific weeds like nettles. Being able to use everything so everything can go back in the soil makes a lot of sense!
Yes! I just started making the FSW (fetid swamp water) as described by David The Good and others (Asian & other traditional gardners). Am using weeds, various grass clippings, raw kitchen & garden scraps, some good soil to inoculate it. It's amazing! I avoid any vegetation etc which may carry serious toxins (poison ivy (urushiol), bad chemical additives, mushrooms I dont def know are safe, any poisonous slugs etc) or other things I would not want my food plants to up take up. I get serious reactions to toxins, so don't want to consume that.
I recently learned that a prolific weed in my garden is a relative of alfalfa and clover, and fixes nitrogen. It’s called black medic. While pulling them out I had seen many nodules on the roots, which I thought were from bugs or disease. In fact they are a sign that the plant is collecting plenty of nitrogen from the air. I think I’ll let them grow as a ground cover until they start to flower, then harvest all that nitrogen rich foliage to amend the soil.
@@mosart7025 If you have clover, alfalfa, wild liquorice, or any legume in your garden it can do the same thing. Some are invasive controlled weeds in certain areas so check your local lists
I used to refer to weeding as "collecting compost materials" but now I feed them to the hens. I let weeds get big enough to easily grab with my hand because: 1. Weeds capture nutrients that would otherwise be leached away. 2. I can do two things at once. Collect hens feed and restrict wild growth!
I love the way you think! Yes indeed! 🙂👍❤️ And this is the mindset of the keeping the circle of sustainability & permaculture completed. (Which is always a good thing if people do it with knowlege vs careless assumptions.)
@@ecocentrichomestead6783 Whatever they don't eat just dry outs. Helps grab the massive amount of poop they leave behind. Saves me money. I got alot local predators. I'm right on front of a huge forest. So they don't get to free roam. Got to keep em in a fence or they will be lunch. So I've come up several tactics to keep it clean. Including a insanely large grazing area that they can't completely work to dirt.
My beds don't have many weeds due to the many years of no dig gardening, but I use Comfrey leaves mulch to help replace some of the nutrients lost by harvesting vegetables from the beds.
Great video. I’ve learned that tilling and disturbing the soil interrupts the mushroom network and brings nutrients to the surface to be burned by the sun. So in 9a we have much better crops in a no till garden. I agree that weeds are beneficial.
I found out the hard way in 2018 that not tilling a garden means you allow pupa of pests to overwinter, meaning you bread them. And ones you breed them, you do so year after year. After much research and thinking back to things I saw in previous years, I was actually eating tiny maggots and I suspect many no-till and "organic" gardeners are doing the same without knowing it. Tilling in autumn and early spring is a must now. There's a reason why farmers till - they know what they are doing. Tilling alone does not completely eliminate pests that pupate in the ground, but not tilling breeds them without a doubt. Tilling down to 5 or 6 inches does not disrupt mycorrhizae that much and it a necessary task for pest management.
I’m so glad I decided to let a lot of weeds grow for their flowers this year . I had no idea they can positively affect the soil . Great video huw . Thank you
Makes sense! My dad only ever hoed the weeds whilst young so they immediately put the nutrient back. I don't recall him buying compost either or even having a compost bin and he got good produce. Mostly I remember every plant went into ground not planters or pots, after being raised on the kitchen windowsills or tiny greenhouse. The garden got manure and blood fish n bone meal as extra feed. he produced good stuff. What do you do for such as ground elder and buttercups though?? Will you do a vlog about that? Please don't suggest cardboard, it doesn't work.
I love chop and drop. For the weeds in my yard, I don't even pull them, I just cut them down to ground level with the week whacker. The roots nourish the soil life and the rest becomes mulch. I'm in the low desert with a yard of bare silty dirt so this works well to nourish the ground until I move back up north, hopefully soon! Hew, you always knock it out of the park with your creative approaches!! When I get up north, all my weeds will go into liquid fertilizer! Thanks!
I could just jump for joy when I see videos like this. weeds can take over, but are so so useful and misunderstood, they are plants with uses.... medicinal, edible, insect repelling, and also bring nutrients to the soil. it's vital to encourage permaculture practice, it has worked for nature for ever. however, some weeds are lethal to plants, so just be controlled.... pull, chop and use for worm bins is my favorite. dandelions are a mini pharmacy plant. when I plant seeds direct, I have much better growth within weeds. I have also protected many veggies using herbs and weeds. it's just a mindset that things should look one way.....
I bought an old book to use the illustrations in art projects. When I started looking at it I realized that it's all about harvestable "weeds/plants" that people used to use years ago for all kinds of things. I'm going to keep it!
Great video. I've been doing this, and honestly at this point I love weeds for their incredibly vigorous growth. It's more labor intensive, but costs nothing and they come back every year. It's really not more work than compost anyway when you think about it.
I love that here in west Texas, all the weeds help mulch the vegetables. I lay them on top of seeds to keep the moisture and appreciate all that weeds do for the garden. Some are edible too.
I remember one particular year, when my parents lawn was absolutely swamped with dandelion. The years before and after there were just a few of them, but in this year everything turned yellow. I always wondered what caused that invasion. What you're describing makes sense and it seems like a reasonable explanation to me. Thanks for solving this 10 year old puzzle for me ✌️
@@robynperdieu3434 (yes depending on your kidney situation. It can be very bad for people with certain kidney problems and good for people with others :)
@@ScrogginHausen Do you have a recipe? I would love to try it! We are having a huge dandelion year this year, so I can experiment til my heart's content🙂
I've been doing this from day one but I already understood this concept because I'm a biology major... I always return to the garden what doesn't get used... I also started the raised beds in layers... I collected leaf shed which I used as a compost layer and then shifted dirt and then manure/kitchen compost... that way the beds are composting naturally... they produce a lot of heat which has helped to promote warm temp crops to germinate faster... then I let it go in the winter and just turn over the weed top to compost downward... the soil fungus looked fantastic when I turned over for this year... so the beds are definitely composting... I also throw my flowering plants in once they start to dye back...
Great to hear I'm not alone on this! I started researching them to find out if any of the weeds are good companion plants, and removing others for my mulch pile. So far I've come across several weeds that I now incorporate into my garden design to aid with pests and promote beneficials. Definitely seen a jump on soil fertility and good insect boom.
I live on a beach and my yard is like 90% sand, most weeds make me happy because it stops sand blowing around and allows rain to penetrate deeper. Most also provide early and year round flowers for pollinators they also reduce pest loads. I control and kill some weeds. Thistle can take over and choke out other plants and it's a literal pain so I kill those but everything else is allowed to stay. I was considering killing back the wandering few as it can be bad for dog skin but my pups aren't bothered by it and it helps keep the soil hydrated and provide a habitat for native frogs.
I am experimenting this s year with the concept of weed soak. I am actually replenishing nutrients with weed fertilizer on all crops and even in spaces where I don't currently grow. The theory is like you say - keeping a balance of what the soils call for. Also, I hope to save on purchasing commercial fertilizers.
Absolutely. As a child, I somehow knew this. I've enjoyed seeing my instinct confirmed throughout life. I somehow knew I wasn't just crazy or childish lol!
I too as a child used to wonder if we could eat all of these weeds in the garden, but I didn't think there are also poisonous weeds such as hogweed that will kill us too.
This is just such wonderful information for anyone who gardens on a very tight budget (that would be me!), and your gardens are just so lovely and inspiring. Thank you!
I started my veggie garden in August 2021 and I put my weeds into a 2L soda bottle hanging from a wall in the sun. I added a bit of water and allowed it to rot. I sift it and use it as a weed tea, works really well. All the seeds in it are dead by this time, so I will dig the remains in as compost next year. I have started a second bottle.
I was digging a border around my garden this spring and a lovely little clover plant was right on the edge. I plucked the clod of dirt it was it, finished my work, and then planted the clover back.
I compost the really invasive rhizomatous weeds and chop and drop practically everything else. I also am lucky to have a decent wild area which I scythe once a year and use the hay as ground cover over winter. The soil here has gone from thin acid sand 8 years ago to very productive rich land now. Might not be tidy, but the results speak for themselves.
This is right up the Nigel Palmer philosophy as well. Harvest your weeds, make shelf stable extractions, return the nutrients right back to the plant and soil. And I'm totally going to try isolating and soaking my weeks with a touch of leaf mold as you suggest over the top as my yard of clay produces may a weed. I really like knowing that the weeds aren't weeds, but nutrition that is waiting to be harvested. Simply fantastic. Thank you Huw :)
In my experience, chop and drop works great for annual weeds, provided they are chopped/dropped before they go to seed. More often, I feed my edible weeds to my chickens. Their poop gets composted and returned to the garden in short order. For perennial, non-edible, and invasive weeds (such as creeping buttercup for my region), I dig it out and compost it. I hadn't thought about soaking it in a bucket.
I covered my garden soil in grass clippings this is first year doing it I am amazed at the difference I have seen already compared to years past with bare soil
David the Good refers to his "weed tea" as fetid swamp water. The name may change, but the purpose is the same. Thanks to both of you, I no longer look at weeds the same way and now even use my hated Bermuda grass in weed tea. I can't compost it because my compost doesn't get hot enough, but there are two large old stainless steel "mop" pails now filled with my smelly wed tea. I'm also growing comfrey and I would like to ask, were do you find nettles??? God bless & keep growing
Nancy, I just saw your comment. I, too, have Bermuda grass that continuously wants to take over. I'll go ahead and try making the weed tea. I do compost my Bermuda but your note reminds me to get a compost thermometer to insure that it gets hot enough to kill it. Honestly, though, not sure how hot it needs to be to kill Bermuda. Another rabbit trail to go down...
@@maryann4796 Bermuda will not grow under any shade. If your compost is shaded it will die out even without the average heat of a compost core. I use old carpets between rows which I move around after a couple weeks. The bermuda also requires nitrogen to thrive so it eventually starves out if you keep after it and dont fertilize. Grasses only feed on nitrogen so it wont rob your plants of any other minerals or nutrients and is shallow rooted. Plus its only a summer plant and wont affect winter& spring gardening. Consider it a cover crop and a natural mulch if you look on the bright side.
@@inharmonywithearth9982 Thanks for responding. I was concerned about my compost but will keep on with the Bermuda in there for now. I'm in Central Texas where we have roughly 3 seasons of summer and one of a mild winter so while that is good in so many ways, my Bermuda grass definitely is around in spring and much of winter if it's particularly mild. The cows love it but it's a challenge in the garden. What I'm wondering now if it it makes sense to just move to raised beds...
Ditto! I've just made my first batch of David The Good's FSW 😀 but after watching this I will continue as I used to with leaving the weeds where I found them also sometimes. Or making multiple buckets of fsw in different areas of the yard where certain weeds tend to collect, so that I have maybe the ideal nutrient profile of swamp water for each part of my land? Even before my FSW got past the third day, it was already getting good & stinky. I gently drizzled a very small amount around some garden wildflower seedlings I had direct seeded. For the next two days they almost doubled in height and grew strong, putting out their secondary leave form. Maybe that would have happened anyway, but I'm sold on the FSW. I can't do good compost where I live either, too wet, moldy etc in our area (Western North Carolina, in the lovely foothills of a deciduous rainforest) As a child I planted miniature gardens in aluminum pie pans with native (some Native American medicinal) plants I found where I live. And I had this strong urge to just grab whatever other or same plants I could find, tear them up, put very hot water on them in a jar, pulverize & shake it all - and then pour the greenish water back on my tiny gardens. Now I understand why!
Oh by the way, some people plant the stinging nettles, on an edge or unused corner of their property, to use for making FSW. You can get seed for it. I think it reseeds itself well after that. Some long dishwashing gloves, and one or two brown paper bags with no holes or tears, and you can pick and handle the nettles without getting stung (there are videos on that). You can cook them too, for they're one of the very best greens one can ever consume on the planet! Although they will make your poop green, so don't be alarmed lol 😄
not a trick for your mind. I changed from thinking of weeding as a weeding chore title to gathering feed for my chickens, other poultry, horse, and rabbits. I used their manure and manure/composted bedding on my garden and orchard. what does mustard weed indicate about your soil? that is the first weed that pops up here in southeastern Colorado, USA. along with dandelions and pig weed. I love your calm explainations of what and why you do things the way you do in your posts. you do have an advantage over me in that it looks like you have a good bit of rainfall where you are gardening. the total for the year, in my area is a whole 2.81 inches since 1 January.
Great stuff Huw. This has great timing, as I have been considering this kind of approach myself lately. I have never heard of the Law of Return, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I loved this video. Makes perfect sense to chop and drop as Mother Nature is providing the solutions to soil health for us. Giving back is giving the soil what it needs ⭐️🥰
Always enjoy your videos. Thanks! I leave weeds that attract aphids. There are several in my garden, including burdock (I cut off the burrs before they mature), which aphids prefer to the crops I plant. It's amazing to watch them and the ladybird beetles that feast on them.
I started an organic garden at 13 (1955). I wondered from the start, "Why do we weed?" My father told me it was because the weeds stole nutrients from our food plants and they were good at doing it because they had "home advantage". I was skeptical, but I weeded by tilling. Recently, I learned the scientific argument for letting weeds grow. My mind was changed by Masanobu Fukuoka's "The One Straw Revolution" in 1984. His unique growing methods have the best results, with the least physical work, but require a rare mindset, not easily taught. For example, "weed" is an ignorant value judgement. And that ignorance of growing with nature makes our growing harder. "First, do nothing nature doesn't do." Nature encourages "weeds".
I read somewhere that "a weed is simply a plant you don't want growing there". That's the usual human mind set. I got over that very quickly decades ago, mostly because 1. Can't keep up with the weeding 2. I hate to see 'bare" soil. It doesn't happen in nature and domesticated and native plants do very well left to their own devices out in the forests. Quite frankly, sometimes better, because we keep insisting on a certain "order" in our gardens.
This only works In temperate zones, here in the tropics the weeds never die back and just keep growing. I tried Fukuoka’s theory in the 80’s. I have had success with a modified version of allowing grass and smallest weeds to grow and planting very close together.
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass is a great resource about plants and how Native Americans always gave back to the plant they took from. She is also featured on a pod cast On Being with Krista Tippet. I always enjoy your channel.
I let weeds grow on my land except the patches on which I grow vegetables and flowers. Then I cut the weeds, leaving the clippings where they are. The repeat of grow-cut cycle provides the main source of the organic matters for my sandy land. Weeds are the major producers in this sense. Also, it is very interesting to observe what nature presents at different times of the year or on different weather conditions. Some plants only pop up after flood then disappear quickly when soil dries. Enjoy nature's diversity. Uniformity is boring.
Hi Huw Richards for putting this Great Video together and educating all of us even more. I myself have been harvesting Dandelion Leaves for salads and sometimes even just eating them without the salad. Yes they are bitter when having flowers, but, they are so so so nutritious....
I've recently had the instinctive understanding that the best fertilizer for a particular plant (and tree) is it's own leaves and flowers...perhaps why in the wild things proliferate with abundance without any intervention^^ So rhubarb leaves under the rhubarb yesterday (keeps moisture in and helps stop weeds too!)
Nope, the plants we eat are highly mutated from the original nature stock through selective breeding. High food yields require a human to add more nutrients than there would otherwise be there.
@@meoff7602 I agree when it comes to certain things but I meant those plants which naturally proliferate and heirloom varieties. I've been mulching my geraniums with their own flowers and they have since bloomed incredibly all year round (in a covered space) without having added any 'fertilizer'. It's partly to do with the consciousness of the plants too. If you want more leaves add the leaves, more flowers add the flowers and simply say to the plant 'there you go' make more...whatever :)
I pack plants together more than the recommended spacing to stop sunlight drying the soil out, the leaves provide shade. I also sprinkle crushed eggshells onto my garden. When they had a sycamore tree next door I'd collect the leaves and compost them and put them on my garden. I compost weeds.
I've been pulling and dropping my weeds for a while now, all except for the weedy grass that has moved in this year. That goes out to dry up and then into the compost. I noticed you are planting in your asparagus bed. I always thought you couldn't do that. Please explain what you are growing there and how far away you are putting them in. Your hard work is helping me to actually grow a garden; Thank you!
That’s so funny, I just did this with the weeds in my row crops yesterday without really thinking about it, I just wanted a lighter mulch than woodchip and the weeds were right there! My usual problem is seedy weeds and bindweed-can’t put those on the beds! but I’ve been making weed tea with them and I’m hoping that’ll work out.
Putting bindweed in a tea sounds like a perfect option, since it can't really be chopped and dropped or always composted because every little piece develops roots. It may not be in a hot enough spot in the compost pile to kill it and as I have had happen, it just regrows.
My “lawn” is made up from grass, white clover, wild violets, wild strawberries and other weeds. When I mow, I bag the cuttings and distribute them in a thin layer to my garden and shrubs. They respond greatly. It is hot in my zone 7b and I never have to water or fertilize my “lawn” and the bunnies love it!
Fantastic information and makes perfect sense - a total eye opener. Thanks for sharing this valuable information, I'll never look at the lovely "weeds" in my garden the same again. They're not my enemies but my friends! I wish more people understood this concept.
Just my observation, if you have dandelions(deep tap root weed) try not to pull it out. Cut it almost to soil level leaving the root in the ground, the roots will continue to pull moisture from the ground and keep the area around it moist for a few days. Plant seeds around or near the the root and it will be kept moist for some time.
This is what Dr. Ingham teaches. Ever since taking her course, I seldom pull a weed. If it must come out, it just gets cut at soil level and the top growth is utilized in whatever way appropriate, while the root stays in the soil as a home for microbial life, but perhaps more important is that the carbon stays in the soil, not released into the atmosphere… my small part in carbon sequestration.
@@garthwunsch Doesn't the plant regrow? Dandelions for example are capable of doing that, as I heard. So it wouldn't decompose and microbes may also remain the same. In this case you could just leave the top aswell...
@@mikeharrington5593 no like he said things like dandelion will regrow as they are perennial whereas other weeds when you chop them the root systems decompose leaving it’s nutrients in the ground and as they break down it keeps soil loose and allows the microorganisms to grow..
Thanks for an interesting video. This might be a daft question but I was wondering whether with chop and drop, the dropped leaves might encourage more slugs?
Since last year I m no longer mowing my grass, I m harvesting mulch and compost feed. Since this year I m also harvesting grass clippings. Rather then covering my garden paths with wood chips or fabric, they are now surplus organic matter I harvest with my mower. All organic matter is useful. The difference between a weed and a herb is a weed is a herb you don't know either the name or the use for :-)
I have always dropped my weeds were I pick them. Glad to know its been a good practice. The dock information is awesome as its becoming invasive here. I need to go remove large mature patches at there crowns. Now I will be making a Dock tea as well. We have huge knee high broad leaf plantain. Any idea what kind of nutri tea it would make? I have been using it as greens for compost.
So I have a stinging nettle patch. When I first moved in I constantly tried weeding it and turning into another area to no avail Now I use it as a "permaculture and ladybird" patch. I literally trim it time to time to add to compost bin
I have one compost pile connected to the chicken run. They add to it, turn it and pick out the seeds and stems...🤪 I amend the compost with everything but the kitchen sink, activated charcoal from my smoker, ash from my fireplace, seaweed from the sound, swamp water. My soil is Soo alive it practically speaks back. Rich living soil takes time, but the RETURNS!
In addition to the great info-- excellent video editing, pacing, and clarity! This is my first time watching one of your videos but I will be subscribing.
Loved this video! I'm curious to know if I should avoid using weeds that are known to be toxic in my compost or on my garden. A few examples are Perilla Mint (Perilla frutescens); American Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana); Common Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea); or Water hemlock (Cicuta douglasii) Just for the record, I would NEVER intentionally use Cicuta sp. in any way, shape or form! But the Perilla Mint and Pokeweed are so common around here, and make so much biomass I was just curious if those could be used or not.
Yeah, really wondering about that. I'd been chopping and dropping it because this spring it came up like gangbusters all over my plot, but since I found out what it was I'm not sure that's a good plan. I chop and drop everything as much as I can just because it's such a hike down to the garden's compost area.
I've been using poke weed and perilla. I've not noticed any I'll effects. What's supposed to be bad about them? Both are edible although I'm saving poke for hard times and I can't stand perilla.
"I think we can all agree..." regarding dandelion and nettle which I planted, on purpose, and eat and use medicinally. Thistles I haven't tried juicing and putting into soup yet, but I will. In the meantime it is the bulk of the new compost bed.
There’s specific weeds I encourage at the beginning of the season. Whatever they are, flea beetles love them and I can get the vegetables past the seedling stage with those weeds as a trap crop. Of course, I have to let a couple go to seed at the end of the season.
Yes! I had been reframing my thinking this way recently as I'm dealing with an overgrown allotment and putting all the nettles and other weeds into the compost bay. I suddenly realised I was harvesting nutrients for reuse later :) Makes the work feel a lot more rewarding and less drudgy.
We brought our 2.5 avres over christmas; the house is sooooo full of weeds, what i have been doing is using the whipper snipper to mow the weeds down in place to feed the soil and now have grass popping up everywhere which is great
Huw, thanks for the information for the paradigm shift I need to do in my mind about weeds. I pulled a bunch of nettles from around our garden the other night and put them all in a bucket thinking there has to be something I can do with them in order to benefit the garden and then I see your video today! I will do a weed soak and then add a portion to my watering can so I can put the nutrients back in the garden. Once again, thank you Professor Richards for your video content!
I'll grant that thistles are not welcome in my garden, although they do tell me that I might want to plant artichokes or cardoon in those places where thistles appear. Dandelion and nettle are both welcome. Dandelion isn't just edible, it's versatile, a great nectar source for pollinators, a decompactor. Welcome in my garden. Nettles are one of the most nutrient dense plants we can grow, and again, welcome in my garden. Every living plant in the space is pushing exudates into the soil, improving soil fertility through its living presence. It's only when something is both "unproductive" in terms of evident human benefit and interfering with the growth of productive plants that I start thinking in terms of needing it removed. There are a very limited number of plants that I will pull from my garden space. Most of the time my weed control consists of chopping and dropping, disadvantage the less desired plant relative to the more desired one, but let it continue to live and pump fertility into the soil.
I like to share an experience on weed and imported fire ants. When I purchased my land, the land was a sandy barren because the land developer stripped off both plants and top soil. Quickly, mounds of imported fire ants showed up and kept growing. If you have encountered these ants you know how scary they are. I was afraid to step on my land. So I started pouring hot water into the mounds which was effective in controlling the fire ants but not enough to eliminating them. Fortunately, weeds started to grow. When the land was steadily covered with dense tall weeds, there was no more mound of fire ants, like a magic! Fire ants prefer loose sands to build their castles. The matted deep roots and dense stems of weeds hindered their nesting. I don't know where had they gone, but it is true that they are not visible on my land anymore.
@@LincolnWorld Are you serious that you imported fire ants in your front yard? They are so scary. The bites gave me itchiness which lasted months and woke me up in the night. True nightmares.
That really is a good garden secret to know, fantastic tip and knowledge worth passing on, thanks so much I to don’t like weeding but now I have a much better way of looking at it, thanks for sharing such handy advice
Imo this only applies if you get the weeds before they go to seed. Once the go seed you’d be crazy to pick them out and chop them up and spread them all over your garden. Also, I have a lot of weeds like Johnson grass and morning glory that spread through rhizomes and they’re an absolute nightmare.
I try to get them before they seed. Either drop them in place or toss on my cardboard. Some I let got to seed. Eat the weeds, I will harvest and can lambs quarters this week. I'm fighting crab grass and just dug out some Johnson grass. I learned you can't smother Johnson grass out and pulling young shoots didn't work to starve it out either. So I'm using a digging fork.
@@cheryldenkins1597 I started several no dig beds last fall and put down 2-3 layers of thick cardboard. It worked great during the fall/winter, BUT the morning glory roots that were dormant during this time got activated once late spring hit. By that time, my cardboard was no barrier anymore, and the morning glory grew up through it with ease and became a hassle. I was able to get one of the beds mostly cleaned up, but it was a nightmare.
@@larpbusters I've pulled some morning glory this year. They come up from seed around here, roots don't survive the winter. I use copious amounts of fall leaves also. I don't seek to have a weed free garden. Many "weeds" have their uses. I have fresh cardboard out now. I have a row of okra growing where I cut a slit in cardboard I put down this spring.
‘Create a carbon rich environment’ - there’s something you don’t hear v often nowadays! The continual demonisation of carbon by the powers that be seems to have forgotten what an important part it plays in us being able to feed ourselves. Wouldn’t it be lovely if someone like Hugh was overseeing our agriculture and environment policies, instead of the morons we currently have.
Carbon in the soil is where it always belonged dear. Carbon released into the air is literally the reversal of life. we did that by tilling the earth and exposing it to wind and sun.
@@cheryllwaldrop9732 there's a balance of how much carbon is in the air. Before humans came the entire globe was green. The plants did just fine with whatever carbon was there. Every little bit after we came in is excess of that.
i learned this from an old Rastafarian in Jamaica, they do the same in there yards with bananas etc. iv been doing the same in the uk ever since. once iv dropped everything on the ground, i cover with compos from the heap. makes it look abit more tidy if your bothered. sometimes i just leave it.
I've always said that a weed is just a misunderstood wild plant. Sometimes to the point of slander. Just because we haven't domesticated it doesn't mean it has nothing to offer us. Thumbs up!
I do chop and drop when the weeds get big enough to do it with In my raised beds. Works a treat. You do sometimes get more weeds growing back but I jut rinse and repeat. Great video Hew makes perfect sense 🌽🥔🍎
Very interesting,. I always suspected this myself and I usually leave the weeds on the flower bed to break down. I'll do it with more confidence now ☺️
I started doing this intuitively especially when doing compost. Its also my go to, in areas where our soil is "clayed". If weeds or grass wont grow, then I know I need to give that area more tlc
Really interesting video. I’ve been uprooting weed seedlings at various intervals and just leaving them as a mulch wherever they are, I thought they’d be useful as they break down for the plants I want that are in the same bed but I had no idea it could be addressing imbalances in this way. I only do no dig so in theory my weeds are imported from surrounding fields (I’m using 2 yr old cow manure), so I don’t know what imbalance they might address in the soil underneath but I guess the seeds that germinate and thrive might be the ones that are ‘needed’. I also leave medicinal, edible or useful weeds in the bed, like sorrel, dandelion and clover. Thx for posting 👌
Those dandelions you're "weeding" are probably the most nutritious food in your garden, given that they're a superfood. The reason they're so widespread is that people would plant them so they could count on them to be the first fresh nutritious greens of spring, back when we all ate locally and seasonally.
They are also one of the earliest flower, helping the bumblebees alot in their survival. They are pretty and yes can be eaten.. I don't know why people hate them
Funny, I have always loved them and my kids will pick me a bouquet for mother's day (as long as they are out) every year. Years ago I used to eat the flower and leaves as they were said to be good for stabilizing blood sugar. Weirdly enough, I was also told the root and stem were toxic. So I stayed away from that. I actually don't like the taste of dandelion but now that I know the entire plant is edible, and there are people here suggesting ways to consume it, I am thrilled and would definetly try them!!
@@juanitaglenn9042 if you still know the person who told you they were toxic, maybe let them know they were misinformed and the dandelion is actually really good for them? I like the flowers more than the leaves (the variety here is fairly bitter, though not all varieties are), but you're right that the whole plant is edible. I always thought it was a shame that people were so aggressive about getting rid of such a pretty little flower in their yard (my kids used to bring them to me, too!), but it's even more so given how nutritious they are and how pretty they make a tossed salad.
Wonderful video! We have used trees to draw nutrients from deep in the ground to the surface to feed goats, and this is applying the same idea to the garden.
Dandelions, chickweed, clover, and many more weeds are edible so I keep them in my garden and add them to my diet. I know most people don't want to do that, but its something to consider since many "weeds" are more nutritious than the normal vegetables. Love your channel!
I like the idea of dandelions as food, but I am also happy that I don't have to deal with it in my region.
The chickens need greens too!
We keep "native greens" in the walk ways or corners of the kitchen garden. We have plantain, violets, dandylions, purslane, clover, wood sorrel.
I made dandelion tincture. It’s an excellent liver detox. Nettle soup is very nutritious and makes excellent plant fertiliser for free.
We harvest dandelions and roots every spring and fall for medicinal purposes but I’ve always picked them from the garden because I was afraid they would take away from the nutrition of the other plants I’m trying to grow. Have you not found that to be the case?
Brilliant way to think about weeds. Thanks. I’ve been doing “chop and drop” because I’m lazy, but now I have scientific justification for laziness! 😄
If the weed is small enough, I just do "drop."
Haha, me too👌
Yep!🤭same here!👍
@@karencski711 Even the big ones I just lay them down as a kind of mulch. Nature will take care of the chopping for me.
@@TheManKnownAsJR Haha of course 🤷♀️🤣🤣
I’ve been doing this for at least 7 years now and the soil is much much better. There is the occasional weed seed, etc, but that just means more fertility.
Love your videos 😊
You and Huw are two of my favourite gardener TH-camrs : )
Fancy running into you here. Good to see you 😊 ~ Lisa
doesn't make sense. spreading confusion, and still dependant on conventional food production. l'enfer est pavé de bonnes intentions.
I struggle with being messy but since moving to a climate where everything dies from the hot summer and leaves bare ground, I will accept anything that grows at this point.😅
Sprinkle all your green grass clippings in your garden and mow over fall leavesa couple of times and do the same with those. Keep the soil mulched where no bare ground can be seen in your garden and your soil will become incredible. Red Ripper Peas are a great summer ground cover crop in very hot climates.
I acquired a parcel of land that was backfilled with river sand and clay. This layers are about a foot deep in some places. It would be back breaking to till it and might actually be detrimental to plants if I did try to mix it. So, instead, I took native weeds from the surrounding areas and let them grow so that these plants would move nutrients to the surface. I chopped and dropped them which added more organic matter on my top soil along with the minerals and nutrients that the weeds “mined”. It has been almost a year now and there are obvious improvements. There’s more life under the weeds and more loam, not to mention the presence of worm castings.
Two years later Swave, how’s the experiment going? Would love to know if it’s working. I’ve stopped filling grass when it dies in patches and the weeds have done a great job of improving the health of my yard.
A very nice approach that emphasizes the importance of soil ecology!!!
I would like to add one more extreme important correlation between plants and soil microorganisms, which changed my perspective on gardening completly! Plants excrete root exsudates which contain carbohydrates to attract beneficial bacteria and fungi, which support the plants with nutrients in return. Therefore, special microbiomes develop around plant roots in the rhizosphere, dependent on the nutitional needs of the plant. This works similar to the mikrobiomes in our intestines. The connection between plant and soil is therefore not one-sided, the plant is actually feeding and building up soil and doesn't simply deprive it from nutrients, same applies to weeds.
Thats why soil covered with living plants is much healthier and more fertile and gardeners should always keep their soil well covered!
Very cool. Plants are already in a harmonious relationship with the soil. We're the ones who have to catch up. :)
👌 that's my understanding too. 😁 thank you so much 😁🌱💚🙏✨
Absolutely!
Weed cover for land is analogous to skin for human.
Weed/skin protects land/human from invasion of foreign objects. Weed/skin senses and responds to the environment. Furthermore, our skin is covered with microorganisms which is crucial for healthy skin and immune system. So is the symbiosis of weed- microorganism to the land.
Yeah well, if the skin and cover let‘s anything else grow there. Which is not the case after a few weeks. Weeds grow faster and bigger than salad or peas. There will be no room and not enough sunlight left for your legumes and fruit and they will disappear, some of them more slowly, some very quickly. I love dandelion and greedy but they won’t let anything else grow. Greedy above all because of the roots. They are a net, they go deeply into the soil, they are everywhere. If you leave one centimeter of root in the soil it will
grow out in a week again. It displaces even grass.
@@Mondelfe That is true. But it is important to save as much land as possible for weeds.
I discovered by accident that leaving the weeds around the coriander protected them all winter so I had the best crop by spring
No pests attacked them nor did they die off, somehow the weeds provided something.
I was reading up a bit about sandalwood. In it's younger years it is parasitic and the roots need to latch on to suitable host plants or it will not grow to maturity. But it got me wondering if there were not equivalent relationships with other plants - maybe not to the extent of parasitism, but maybe the root secretions of certain weeds and absorbed by it's neighbors might make a plant more resistant to pests or grow better. For all we know, plants that need a lot of calcium, might do better with a dandelion growing nearby. 🤔 Or even that the weed might support a particular fungus which secretes certain chemical compounds that are kill nematodes or something.
YES!! Weeds are just some brown nozer saying they're undesirable. Dandelion has vitamin C and A, and anticancer properties. They are using dandelion in cancer treatment now. Purslane is a good detox "weed". And though all the eggheads will say pokeweed is poisonous, I made poke wine out of it and I'm obviously not dead.
companion planting may be interesting to you. Also this business of having "clean bare rows" was brought about by "modern" farming methods. Running a harvester over crops, they didn't want additional greenage/non relevant plants mixed in. This is how this mindset grew. In a home garden, whether flowers fruit or vegetables or a mix of everything, the soil doesn't have to be bare. Around the green leafy vegetables grow plants which discourage snails and slugs, but companion planting helps de-mystify what to grow where, or what to use as mulch to protect the lettuce. Personally I never had big issues with the occasional green leafy vegetable being eaten; it meant that that particular plant wasn't healthy to begin with. If you monitor what's going on in your garden, you'll see that the only plants that get decimated by pests are ones that are in the wrong place for them, putting them under stress, or there's a soil imbalance of some kind. Unhealthy conditions result in plants that get pest ridden. Healthy plants may have a bite or two taken out of them but the one right next to the healthy plant which struggled for some reason will be eaten by pests. The exception to this is when there's some kind of generalized locust/grasshopper plague. Which doesn't happen often.
@@markusgorelli5278 You may be interested in Companion Planting. There's quite a few books out there on the topic. Nasturtiums can act as a "trap" plant for white cabbage moth, for example.
@@Kayenne54 I find my "companion" plants (like marigolds is another one) just die from the pests. I have had zero success with "companion planting". Though I will say there is a lot to be said for merely ensuring you don't have large patches of bare soil
This is been so obvious to me for so long and I've often tried to explain why I don't weed my garden at all, just slash it all back from time to time. You summarize it well. I'm not a food crop grower tho but a native tree regenerator. My project is long term but the principle is the same. Weeds are good. Any plant is better than nothing. Weeds trap nutrients in their leaves and prevent loss through erosion, and gradually release those nutrients back to the soil as they break down. Roots break down and aerate the soil. Fresh organic matter helps maintain invertebrate and microbial diversity and health, and therefore healthier soil. Having weeds amongst my trees means competition, and therefore slower overall growth, but long term it's overall better and requires less human intervention. Eventually as the trees get bigger and provide more shade and more of their own mulch via leaf drop, weeds a are naturally reduced anyway. This is why I have 'messy' looking garden beds. First the process is started with boosted organic matter in the form of mulch, and from there the sooner the weeds grow through it and stabilise the system the better the overall health of the garden will remain.
This is something that's been on my mind heavily this year, after finding out the hay I'd used for mulching and composting was tainted with aminopyralid. A hundred gallons of compost ready to use had to be dumped, the pile that was in process abandoned, and all the mulching hay pulled up. Having to start a new compost pile, I've developed a new appreciation for the weeds in the yard as readily available clean biomass, and for the first time, there aren't enough weeds!
Wow, thank you for this comment, I used hay to mulch this year, I'm sure they used chemicals on it and haven't thought of it
Same thing happened to me with the hay!
@@gaeangardensbyizabela You'll know it if the hay has been treated with aminopyralid (GrazeOn). All your plants will look like they have "curly top" virus and soon die. Except for grass crops like wheat, hay and corn. They're unaffected by this persistent herbicide. That's why it's used on these crops. Aminopyralid goes straight through a grazing animals digestive system, so check any manure you get to see what/where the animal was eating. This stuff should be illegal and it IS illegal in other countries. Wonder why that is?$$$? 🤔 It takes a lot of (7+) years and money to fix the soil to be veggie grow-able again.
I think straw is a better mulch anyway.
Wow, I'm sorry you lost all of that!
I remember reading an article almost a decade ago talking about weeds as an indicator of soil needs. Dandelion is calcium, dock is potassium, etc. comfrey is a great accumulator. Bocking 14 could be planted as an all around chop and drop as well as a liquid fertilizer. It would be great for someone to make a simple list that all gardeners could keep posted for quick reference to know what is lacking for a quick application of the needed element.
Thank you
I recently came across a clip using banana peels to provide potassium, but this is not, as the ones you mentioned above, a living plant.
@@jmasters1905 I made a banana tea with the peels and fertilize my roses with it. You can bland them up, too. I'm just too lazy to do that.😊
That doesn't seem right. A dandelion doesn't appear because there's a calcium imbalance, it appears because there's an opportunistic dandelion seed. That seed will grow whether there's a calcium imbalance or not. Charitably, let's say that the calcium deficit causes a space where the dandelion can grow absent less hardy plants, except that's not the case here because there's plenty of space because these are deliberately planted flowers and crops, artificially spaced out already. Perhaps in an organic environment it might be true - a dandelion exploiting a low-calcium area that has had the other plant life die off, but for a garden that's rarely going to be the case.
Whole thing seems a bit New Age-y.
100% on board with chop and drop though.
@@AntonGully Well, you’ve convinced me Anton.😀
I live in California, I do container patio gardening, and I ADORE dandelions! I find that my container-grown roses bloom better when they have dandelions with them in their pots. If the dandelions start to look hungry and scraggly, they tell me when to feed them both before the roses have time to suffer. :)
Thank you so much for your helpful, educational videos!
Dandelions are a poor man's rucola. You can eat the leaves on new plants (in early spring)!
My mom used to cook syrup with dandelion flowers. She swore on their health attributes and ate two teaspoons every day.
@@magdalenabozyk1798 😀 sounds like your mom knows her herbs!
I like to eat the flowers plain, or with salad. They are mouth puckeringly bitter and I find it very refreshing and tasty. I hear the greens are good too, but I grow them mainly as food for my pets. When I have enough planted and grown, I'm gonna start eating them, myself! 😀
@@rosethorne9155 A dandelion pesto is pretty enjoyable.
I'm so glad I came across your video because in my new house x 1 year, the weeds and dandelions are plentiful. I weeded last year and felt it in my hands ✋️ 😪 for days. I am going to try some of the ground covers mentioned in the comments. I swore I was not going to start gardening again but it is just not possible! I derive so much pleasure not only from my labor, but I just love ❤️ to be on my patio all day and sometimes into the night basking in the happiness it brings me. Very spiritual 🙏 experience.
I chop and drop everything thanks to one of your videos a long time ago. Extreme Texas summers bake the soil, so as I pull out weeds, grass, plants that are done for the season I make a “salad” and spread all over. Thank You for all you do! I very much appreciate your new format, very encouraging for those of us with limited gardening budgets 🥰
"Weeds are nature's way of rebalancing the soil health"
So true!
Your production is so sophisticated it is better than many tv shows. Very visually interesting to pop around your garden as we learn.
I too have discovered the " joy of weeding" and have been spreading countless little slow-release organic amendments on the surface of my garden ever since. I usually roll the weeds in my hands like I am trying to warm my hands up. This usually crushes the weeds and damages them enough so that a few hours in the sun will kill them.
Been following a guy who eats weeds because nutritionally, a lot of weeds are better than the greens we usually eat. So I have a raised bed or two mixed into my wild back acre. Nature figures out where to grow my dandelions, dock, nettle, mallow, wild lettuce, plantain, heal-all, etc. Mixing the wild and the
Could you give a link? Thanks!
Would love to know the channel also. I hunt wild edibles and medicinals and always enjoy a new channel.
@@davidsarahmccolm Sergei Bouchenko from southern Oregon. He has wildcrafting books and cooking books with his Mother. He is really interesting to listen to and has a great story of how his family got into eating "weeds". Air quotes always.
"Heal all"?? Piqued my interest. What plant is that?
@oztrich24 Probably prunella vulgaris, but there are some other plants that can go by that name, like glechoma hederacea.
I like to call weeds 'surprise plants'. A lot of them have great flowers for the bees in my garden, and usually I pull only the ones that crowd my veggie beds or cover my stepping stones. I usually drop them back somewhere or throw them in the compost. But the tea is an interesting idea.
"Suprise plants", I love it. Happy little accident plants?
Hello, my son and I breed tropical fish. That requires frequent water changes so I use the nutrient rich water to water pot plants and my bonsai with good results. I enjoyed your video and have long considered “weeds”as beneficent in the garden. A long time ago I visited a professional dahlia grower who used weeds to help keep evaporation down and to draw down insect pests from his flower’s. regularly he would hoe down the weeds and leave them as they fell to continue their work in the rows of dahlias, he had magnificent plants.
There also is a misconception in your approach: If you happen to have dandelions in your garden beds, it doesn't mean anything regarding soil health or nutrient balance. Those "pointer plants" only really work in nature. If you see a patch of nettles, you might have dense but rich ground there. A part of my garden, where the woodchips already decayed and where I walk a lot, also is full of dandelions, because the ground is so compacted.
But in a nutrient rich garden bed, ANY weed will grow with joy. If you have nothing _but_ dandelions, while your tomatoes next to those are rotting away - THEN there would be something wrong with your soil health.
Agreed. Dandelions in my raised bed I just turned the soil in means a seed spread from elsewhere and germinated. Impacted, settled soil, sure; can indicate impaction and calcium settling.
Yes, but not always either. Just as the plants we want to grow have different soil requirements, so do weeds. Many weeds won't grow precisely because the soil is too 'rich'.
@@SeanCaught I've yet to find a deficiency of any particular weed in nutrient rich soil.
Please could you suggest examples?
@@GARDENER42 No, not many. I improved a garden bed that was full of vetch last season and this year has very little. I have paspalum in my lawn, but never in the adjacent garden.
It's a lot harder to isolate plants that aren't growing in a certain situation. Often, weeds/plants will still germinate, but may be out competed by plants that prefer the conditions. But that doesn't mean the concept isn't stable.
For example, grasses don't tend to like soil high in phosphorus. Legumes generally do poorly in soils with high nitrogen.
I suppose the term 'rich' soil is misleading. Because one plant's delight is another's poison.
@@SeanCaught millet's a pain in the bum as it's often in birdseed & if it gets into a lawn, it's hard to eradicate, as I found out a couple of years ago.
What I've found is nettles, chickweed, hairy bittercress & dockins do especially well in fertile soil but plantains & thistles less abundant, though still present.
TBH since I switched to no dig/no till five years ago in my home garden, I've experienced a huge fall in the number of weeds of all types, this despite throwing even flowered weeds into my compost bays (they're 1.2m³ so big enough to sustain 50°C for a couple of weeks, which kills the seeds).
The allotment I took on 18 months ago was a nightmare (15cm of topsoil over quarry waste, so much rock removal & many tons of soil added) but the initial weed issue was sorted using cardboard, compost & maincrop potatoes.
Main weeds there now are rosebay willow herb & grasses.
Great to hear someone else saying what i'm thinking. I have for a while seen weeding as harvesting. But i don't return it immediately back to the garden. i feed it to my chickens, then compost goes back into the garden. I've been gardening in hard clay, the rapid transformation in the soil from permaculture techniques is astonishing!
I like your videos, very inspirational and my favourite gardening channel.
There should be a warning with the chop and drop though... only do it in dry weather! I'd come across this method a few years ago and started enthusiastically chopping and dropping, only to realise that the plant pieces, I think it was rosebay willowherb, had rooted after some wet days.
I wouldn't trust dandelions, buttercups or couchgrass either. Once dried and dead they don't selfplant.
Love the weed tea idea! 💕 I thought you could do this with just specific weeds like nettles. Being able to use everything so everything can go back in the soil makes a lot of sense!
If you make weed tea, make sure you include the roots of the weeds.
Any vegetation will work, from weeds to grass.
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Yes! I just started making the FSW (fetid swamp water) as described by David The Good and others (Asian & other traditional gardners). Am using weeds, various grass clippings, raw kitchen & garden scraps, some good soil to inoculate it. It's amazing!
I avoid any vegetation etc which may carry serious toxins (poison ivy (urushiol), bad chemical additives, mushrooms I dont def know are safe, any poisonous slugs etc) or other things I would not want my food plants to up take up. I get serious reactions to toxins, so don't want to consume that.
How do i measure the nutrients from weeds that travel into the water from sun tea?
@@davidflash603 Talk to a lab that does comprehensive soil testing, like Logan Labs, and see if they can test it for you.
I recently learned that a prolific weed in my garden is a relative of alfalfa and clover, and fixes nitrogen. It’s called black medic. While pulling them out I had seen many nodules on the roots, which I thought were from bugs or disease. In fact they are a sign that the plant is collecting plenty of nitrogen from the air. I think I’ll let them grow as a ground cover until they start to flower, then harvest all that nitrogen rich foliage to amend the soil.
Thanks! I'm going to Google that and see if it's in my area.
@@mosart7025 If you have clover, alfalfa, wild liquorice, or any legume in your garden it can do the same thing. Some are invasive controlled weeds in certain areas so check your local lists
I used to refer to weeding as "collecting compost materials" but now I feed them to the hens.
I let weeds get big enough to easily grab with my hand because:
1. Weeds capture nutrients that would otherwise be leached away.
2. I can do two things at once. Collect hens feed and restrict wild growth!
I love the way you think! Yes indeed! 🙂👍❤️
And this is the mindset of the keeping the circle of sustainability & permaculture completed. (Which is always a good thing if people do it with knowlege vs careless assumptions.)
Yeah, my coop is covered with dead weeds my flock doesn't eat.
@@meoff7602 oh they don't eat everything. When I throw in a batch I say "See what you can find tasty in that!"
@@ecocentrichomestead6783 Whatever they don't eat just dry outs. Helps grab the massive amount of poop they leave behind.
Saves me money. I got alot local predators. I'm right on front of a huge forest. So they don't get to free roam. Got to keep em in a fence or they will be lunch. So I've come up several tactics to keep it clean. Including a insanely large grazing area that they can't completely work to dirt.
My beds don't have many weeds due to the many years of no dig gardening, but I use Comfrey leaves mulch to help replace some of the nutrients lost by harvesting vegetables from the beds.
Great video. I’ve learned that tilling and disturbing the soil interrupts the mushroom network and brings nutrients to the surface to be burned by the sun. So in 9a we have much better crops in a no till garden. I agree that weeds are beneficial.
I found out the hard way in 2018 that not tilling a garden means you allow pupa of pests to overwinter, meaning you bread them. And ones you breed them, you do so year after year. After much research and thinking back to things I saw in previous years, I was actually eating tiny maggots and I suspect many no-till and "organic" gardeners are doing the same without knowing it. Tilling in autumn and early spring is a must now. There's a reason why farmers till - they know what they are doing. Tilling alone does not completely eliminate pests that pupate in the ground, but not tilling breeds them without a doubt. Tilling down to 5 or 6 inches does not disrupt mycorrhizae that much and it a necessary task for pest management.
I’m so glad I decided to let a lot of weeds grow for their flowers this year . I had no idea they can positively affect the soil . Great video huw . Thank you
Makes sense! My dad only ever hoed the weeds whilst young so they immediately put the nutrient back. I don't recall him buying compost either or even having a compost bin and he got good produce. Mostly I remember every plant went into ground not planters or pots, after being raised on the kitchen windowsills or tiny greenhouse. The garden got manure and blood fish n bone meal as extra feed. he produced good stuff. What do you do for such as ground elder and buttercups though?? Will you do a vlog about that? Please don't suggest cardboard, it doesn't work.
I love chop and drop. For the weeds in my yard, I don't even pull them, I just cut them down to ground level with the week whacker. The roots nourish the soil life and the rest becomes mulch. I'm in the low desert with a yard of bare silty dirt so this works well to nourish the ground until I move back up north, hopefully soon! Hew, you always knock it out of the park with your creative approaches!! When I get up north, all my weeds will go into liquid fertilizer! Thanks!
I could just jump for joy when I see videos like this. weeds can take over, but are so so useful and misunderstood, they are plants with uses.... medicinal, edible, insect repelling, and also bring nutrients to the soil. it's vital to encourage permaculture practice, it has worked for nature for ever. however, some weeds are lethal to plants, so just be controlled.... pull, chop and use for worm bins is my favorite. dandelions are a mini pharmacy plant. when I plant seeds direct, I have much better growth within weeds. I have also protected many veggies using herbs and weeds. it's just a mindset that things should look one way.....
I bought an old book to use the illustrations in art projects. When I started looking at it I realized that it's all about harvestable "weeds/plants" that people used to use years ago for all kinds of things. I'm going to keep it!
@@mosart7025 that is so cool
Hallelujah Huw! Mother Nature is going to love you even more. And, there are so many weeds that are beneficial to put amongst our salads for lunch. 💞
Great video. I've been doing this, and honestly at this point I love weeds for their incredibly vigorous growth. It's more labor intensive, but costs nothing and they come back every year. It's really not more work than compost anyway when you think about it.
I love that here in west Texas, all the weeds help mulch the vegetables. I lay them on top of seeds to keep the moisture and appreciate all that weeds do for the garden. Some are edible too.
I remember one particular year, when my parents lawn was absolutely swamped with dandelion. The years before and after there were just a few of them, but in this year everything turned yellow. I always wondered what caused that invasion. What you're describing makes sense and it seems like a reasonable explanation to me. Thanks for solving this 10 year old puzzle for me ✌️
Pop the flowers off of those dandelions and make jam, it's delicious.
You can eat the root, flowers and leaves. Very nutritional with vitamin c, a, and minerals. Good cancer fighter and kidney aid.
@@robynperdieu3434 (yes depending on your kidney situation. It can be very bad for people with certain kidney problems and good for people with others :)
As an artist I want to experiment with making some kind of yellow paint or coloring from dandelions. Maybe I can make it edible?
@@ScrogginHausen Do you have a recipe? I would love to try it! We are having a huge dandelion year this year, so I can experiment til my heart's content🙂
I've been doing this from day one but I already understood this concept because I'm a biology major... I always return to the garden what doesn't get used... I also started the raised beds in layers... I collected leaf shed which I used as a compost layer and then shifted dirt and then manure/kitchen compost... that way the beds are composting naturally... they produce a lot of heat which has helped to promote warm temp crops to germinate faster... then I let it go in the winter and just turn over the weed top to compost downward... the soil fungus looked fantastic when I turned over for this year... so the beds are definitely composting... I also throw my flowering plants in once they start to dye back...
Great to hear I'm not alone on this! I started researching them to find out if any of the weeds are good companion plants, and removing others for my mulch pile. So far I've come across several weeds that I now incorporate into my garden design to aid with pests and promote beneficials. Definitely seen a jump on soil fertility and good insect boom.
I must say, I was doing this kind of unconsciously, but now my mind ist just blowing. Thx a lost for sharing. Best channel ever!
I live on a beach and my yard is like 90% sand, most weeds make me happy because it stops sand blowing around and allows rain to penetrate deeper. Most also provide early and year round flowers for pollinators they also reduce pest loads. I control and kill some weeds. Thistle can take over and choke out other plants and it's a literal pain so I kill those but everything else is allowed to stay. I was considering killing back the wandering few as it can be bad for dog skin but my pups aren't bothered by it and it helps keep the soil hydrated and provide a habitat for native frogs.
I am experimenting this s year with the concept of weed soak. I am actually replenishing nutrients with weed fertilizer on all crops and even in spaces where I don't currently grow. The theory is like you say - keeping a balance of what the soils call for. Also, I hope to save on purchasing commercial fertilizers.
Absolutely. As a child, I somehow knew this. I've enjoyed seeing my instinct confirmed throughout life. I somehow knew I wasn't just crazy or childish lol!
I too as a child used to wonder if we could eat all of these weeds in the garden, but I didn't think there are also poisonous weeds such as hogweed that will kill us too.
This is just such wonderful information for anyone who gardens on a very tight budget (that would be me!), and your gardens are just so lovely and inspiring. Thank you!
I started my veggie garden in August 2021 and I put my weeds into a 2L soda bottle hanging from a wall in the sun. I added a bit of water and allowed it to rot. I sift it and use it as a weed tea, works really well. All the seeds in it are dead by this time, so I will dig the remains in as compost next year. I have started a second bottle.
I was digging a border around my garden this spring and a lovely little clover plant was right on the edge. I plucked the clod of dirt it was it, finished my work, and then planted the clover back.
I compost the really invasive rhizomatous weeds and chop and drop practically everything else. I also am lucky to have a decent wild area which I scythe once a year and use the hay as ground cover over winter. The soil here has gone from thin acid sand 8 years ago to very productive rich land now. Might not be tidy, but the results speak for themselves.
This is right up the Nigel Palmer philosophy as well. Harvest your weeds, make shelf stable extractions, return the nutrients right back to the plant and soil. And I'm totally going to try isolating and soaking my weeks with a touch of leaf mold as you suggest over the top as my yard of clay produces may a weed. I really like knowing that the weeds aren't weeds, but nutrition that is waiting to be harvested. Simply fantastic. Thank you Huw :)
In my experience, chop and drop works great for annual weeds, provided they are chopped/dropped before they go to seed. More often, I feed my edible weeds to my chickens. Their poop gets composted and returned to the garden in short order.
For perennial, non-edible, and invasive weeds (such as creeping buttercup for my region), I dig it out and compost it. I hadn't thought about soaking it in a bucket.
I have 5 dustbins that I use to drown weeds. Every 6 weeks or so I lift them out and add them to my compost heaps. A nasty smelly job!
@@andymoore9977 I know! I about gag whenever I do that!
I covered my garden soil in grass clippings this is first year doing it I am amazed at the difference I have seen already compared to years past with bare soil
David the Good refers to his "weed tea" as fetid swamp water. The name may change, but the purpose is the same. Thanks to both of you, I no longer look at weeds the same way and now even use my hated Bermuda grass in weed tea. I can't compost it because my compost doesn't get hot enough, but there are two large old stainless steel "mop" pails now filled with my smelly wed tea. I'm also growing comfrey and I would like to ask, were do you find nettles??? God bless & keep growing
Nancy, I just saw your comment. I, too, have Bermuda grass that continuously wants to take over. I'll go ahead and try making the weed tea. I do compost my Bermuda but your note reminds me to get a compost thermometer to insure that it gets hot enough to kill it. Honestly, though, not sure how hot it needs to be to kill Bermuda. Another rabbit trail to go down...
@@maryann4796 Bermuda will not grow under any shade. If your compost is shaded it will die out even without the average heat of a compost core. I use old carpets between rows which I move around after a couple weeks. The bermuda also requires nitrogen to thrive so it eventually starves out if you keep after it and dont fertilize. Grasses only feed on nitrogen so it wont rob your plants of any other minerals or nutrients and is shallow rooted. Plus its only a summer plant and wont affect winter& spring gardening. Consider it a cover crop and a natural mulch if you look on the bright side.
@@inharmonywithearth9982 Thanks for responding. I was concerned about my compost but will keep on with the Bermuda in there for now. I'm in Central Texas where we have roughly 3 seasons of summer and one of a mild winter so while that is good in so many ways, my Bermuda grass definitely is around in spring and much of winter if it's particularly mild. The cows love it but it's a challenge in the garden. What I'm wondering now if it it makes sense to just move to raised beds...
Ditto! I've just made my first batch of David The Good's FSW 😀 but after watching this I will continue as I used to with leaving the weeds where I found them also sometimes.
Or making multiple buckets of fsw in different areas of the yard where certain weeds tend to collect, so that I have maybe the ideal nutrient profile of swamp water for each part of my land?
Even before my FSW got past the third day, it was already getting good & stinky. I gently drizzled a very small amount around some garden wildflower seedlings I had direct seeded. For the next two days they almost doubled in height and grew strong, putting out their secondary leave form. Maybe that would have happened anyway, but I'm sold on the FSW. I can't do good compost where I live either, too wet, moldy etc in our area (Western North Carolina, in the lovely foothills of a deciduous rainforest)
As a child I planted miniature gardens in aluminum pie pans with native (some Native American medicinal) plants I found where I live. And I had this strong urge to just grab whatever other or same plants I could find, tear them up, put very hot water on them in a jar, pulverize & shake it all - and then pour the greenish water back on my tiny gardens.
Now I understand why!
Oh by the way, some people plant the stinging nettles, on an edge or unused corner of their property, to use for making FSW. You can get seed for it. I think it reseeds itself well after that.
Some long dishwashing gloves, and one or two brown paper bags with no holes or tears, and you can pick and handle the nettles without getting stung (there are videos on that).
You can cook them too, for they're one of the very best greens one can ever consume on the planet! Although they will make your poop green, so don't be alarmed lol 😄
not a trick for your mind. I changed from thinking of weeding as a weeding chore title to gathering feed for my chickens, other poultry, horse, and rabbits. I used their manure and manure/composted bedding on my garden and orchard.
what does mustard weed indicate about your soil? that is the first weed that pops up here in southeastern Colorado, USA. along with dandelions and pig weed.
I love your calm explainations of what and why you do things the way you do in your posts. you do have an advantage over me in that it looks like you have a good bit of rainfall where you are gardening. the total for the year, in my area is a whole 2.81 inches since 1 January.
Great stuff Huw. This has great timing, as I have been considering this kind of approach myself lately. I have never heard of the Law of Return, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I loved this video. Makes perfect sense to chop and drop as Mother Nature is providing the solutions to soil health for us. Giving back is giving the soil what it needs ⭐️🥰
This is so great! To now have a reasonable explanation for why its good to do it that way. Learning from nature, who knows best 🌱💚
Always enjoy your videos. Thanks! I leave weeds that attract aphids. There are several in my garden, including burdock (I cut off the burrs before they mature), which aphids prefer to the crops I plant. It's amazing to watch them and the ladybird beetles that feast on them.
I started an organic garden at 13 (1955). I wondered from the start, "Why do we weed?" My father told me it was because the weeds stole nutrients from our food plants and they were good at doing it because they had "home advantage". I was skeptical, but I weeded by tilling. Recently, I learned the scientific argument for letting weeds grow. My mind was changed by Masanobu Fukuoka's "The One Straw Revolution" in 1984. His unique growing methods have the best results, with the least physical work, but require a rare mindset, not easily taught. For example, "weed" is an ignorant value judgement. And that ignorance of growing with nature makes our growing harder. "First, do nothing nature doesn't do." Nature encourages "weeds".
Another important thing is to avoid using iron/steel tools as it affects the fertility of the soil. I treated myself to bronze tools years ago.
@@wendylorimer5663 Can you explain how that works Wendy? As it wouldn't seem to make any difference to me. Thanks.
I read somewhere that "a weed is simply a plant you don't want growing there". That's the usual human mind set. I got over that very quickly decades ago, mostly because 1. Can't keep up with the weeding 2. I hate to see 'bare" soil. It doesn't happen in nature and domesticated and native plants do very well left to their own devices out in the forests. Quite frankly, sometimes better, because we keep insisting on a certain "order" in our gardens.
This only works In temperate zones, here in the tropics the weeds never die back and just keep growing. I tried Fukuoka’s theory in the 80’s. I have had success with a modified version of allowing grass and smallest weeds to grow and planting very close together.
@@Kayenne54 Do weed out the poisonous tho..
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass is a great resource about plants and how Native Americans always gave back to the plant they took from.
She is also featured on a pod cast On Being with Krista Tippet.
I always enjoy your channel.
I let weeds grow on my land except the patches on which I grow vegetables and flowers. Then I cut the weeds, leaving the clippings where they are. The repeat of grow-cut cycle provides the main source of the organic matters for my sandy land. Weeds are the major producers in this sense.
Also, it is very interesting to observe what nature presents at different times of the year or on different weather conditions. Some plants only pop up after flood then disappear quickly when soil dries.
Enjoy nature's diversity. Uniformity is boring.
After hoeing, the only plant I pick up and dump is bindweed, everything else is left on the surface to decompose.
Hi Huw Richards for putting this Great Video together and educating all of us even more. I myself have been harvesting Dandelion Leaves for salads and sometimes even just eating them without the salad. Yes they are bitter when having flowers, but, they are so so so nutritious....
I've recently had the instinctive understanding that the best fertilizer for a particular plant (and tree) is it's own leaves and flowers...perhaps why in the wild things proliferate with abundance without any intervention^^ So rhubarb leaves under the rhubarb yesterday (keeps moisture in and helps stop weeds too!)
Nope, the plants we eat are highly mutated from the original nature stock through selective breeding. High food yields require a human to add more nutrients than there would otherwise be there.
@@meoff7602 I agree when it comes to certain things but I meant those plants which naturally proliferate and heirloom varieties. I've been mulching my geraniums with their own flowers and they have since bloomed incredibly all year round (in a covered space) without having added any 'fertilizer'. It's partly to do with the consciousness of the plants too. If you want more leaves add the leaves, more flowers add the flowers and simply say to the plant 'there you go' make more...whatever :)
I pack plants together more than the recommended spacing to stop sunlight drying the soil out, the leaves provide shade.
I also sprinkle crushed eggshells onto my garden.
When they had a sycamore tree next door I'd collect the leaves and compost them and put them on my garden. I compost weeds.
I've been pulling and dropping my weeds for a while now, all except for the weedy grass that has moved in this year. That goes out to dry up and then into the compost. I noticed you are planting in your asparagus bed. I always thought you couldn't do that. Please explain what you are growing there and how far away you are putting them in. Your hard work is helping me to actually grow a garden; Thank you!
I really enjoy your videos. I appreciate how you get to the point very quickly, great info, and lovely filming. Thank you!
That’s so funny, I just did this with the weeds in my row crops yesterday without really thinking about it, I just wanted a lighter mulch than woodchip and the weeds were right there! My usual problem is seedy weeds and bindweed-can’t put those on the beds! but I’ve been making weed tea with them and I’m hoping that’ll work out.
Putting bindweed in a tea sounds like a perfect option, since it can't really be chopped and dropped or
always composted because every little piece develops roots. It may not be in a hot enough spot in the compost pile to kill it and as I have had happen, it just regrows.
@@triciac1019
I leave the bindweed lying on the paths until it’s completely dried out.
I stopped adding wood chips as the bigger chips steal nitrogen to breakdown.. fully decomposed wood however builds great soil
My “lawn” is made up from grass, white clover, wild violets, wild strawberries and other weeds. When I mow, I bag the cuttings and distribute them in a thin layer to my garden and shrubs. They respond greatly. It is hot in my zone 7b and I never have to water or fertilize my “lawn” and the bunnies love it!
totally agree with this, weeding out feels like taking the future nutrients from the soil
Fantastic information and makes perfect sense - a total eye opener. Thanks for sharing this valuable information, I'll never look at the lovely "weeds" in my garden the same again. They're not my enemies but my friends! I wish more people understood this concept.
Just my observation, if you have dandelions(deep tap root weed) try not to pull it out. Cut it almost to soil level leaving the root in the ground, the roots will continue to pull moisture from the ground and keep the area around it moist for a few days. Plant seeds around or near the the root and it will be kept moist for some time.
This is what Dr. Ingham teaches. Ever since taking her course, I seldom pull a weed. If it must come out, it just gets cut at soil level and the top growth is utilized in whatever way appropriate, while the root stays in the soil as a home for microbial life, but perhaps more important is that the carbon stays in the soil, not released into the atmosphere… my small part in carbon sequestration.
@@garthwunsch Doesn't the plant regrow? Dandelions for example are capable of doing that, as I heard. So it wouldn't decompose and microbes may also remain the same. In this case you could just leave the top aswell...
But I like dandelion root tea.
A downside might be the root is still robbing nutrients from below your sowing, & the resurgent leaf growth may smother the seedlings?
@@mikeharrington5593 no like he said things like dandelion will regrow as they are perennial whereas other weeds when you chop them the root systems decompose leaving it’s nutrients in the ground and as they break down it keeps soil loose and allows the microorganisms to grow..
Thanks for an interesting video. This might be a daft question but I was wondering whether with chop and drop, the dropped leaves might encourage more slugs?
That is my question too, hopefully Huw or anyone can answer this.
Thanks
Since last year I m no longer mowing my grass, I m harvesting mulch and compost feed. Since this year I m also harvesting grass clippings. Rather then covering my garden paths with wood chips or fabric, they are now surplus organic matter I harvest with my mower. All organic matter is useful. The difference between a weed and a herb is a weed is a herb you don't know either the name or the use for :-)
A herb is edible
@@Stettafire Exactly my point :-), many so called weeds are perfectly edible, nettles for example in soup or mashed potatoes.
Have been doing this for years. Nice of you to bring this up, though. Really hope more people begin to understand this.
I have always dropped my weeds were I pick them. Glad to know its been a good practice.
The dock information is awesome as its becoming invasive here. I need to go remove large mature patches at there crowns. Now I will be making a Dock tea as well.
We have huge knee high broad leaf plantain. Any idea what kind of nutri tea it would make? I have been using it as greens for compost.
wonderful for bug bites, and reducing skin irritation, ex; itching.
So I have a stinging nettle patch. When I first moved in I constantly tried weeding it and turning into another area to no avail
Now I use it as a "permaculture and ladybird" patch. I literally trim it time to time to add to compost bin
I have one compost pile connected to the chicken run. They add to it, turn it and pick out the seeds and stems...🤪 I amend the compost with everything but the kitchen sink, activated charcoal from my smoker, ash from my fireplace, seaweed from the sound, swamp water. My soil is Soo alive it practically speaks back. Rich living soil takes time, but the RETURNS!
In addition to the great info-- excellent video editing, pacing, and clarity! This is my first time watching one of your videos but I will be subscribing.
Loved this video! I'm curious to know if I should avoid using weeds that are known to be toxic in my compost or on my garden. A few examples are Perilla Mint (Perilla frutescens); American Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana); Common Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea); or Water hemlock (Cicuta douglasii) Just for the record, I would NEVER intentionally use Cicuta sp. in any way, shape or form! But the Perilla Mint and Pokeweed are so common around here, and make so much biomass I was just curious if those could be used or not.
Yeah, really wondering about that. I'd been chopping and dropping it because this spring it came up like gangbusters all over my plot, but since I found out what it was I'm not sure that's a good plan. I chop and drop everything as much as I can just because it's such a hike down to the garden's compost area.
I've been using poke weed and perilla. I've not noticed any I'll effects. What's supposed to be bad about them? Both are edible although I'm saving poke for hard times and I can't stand perilla.
"I think we can all agree..." regarding dandelion and nettle which I planted, on purpose, and eat and use medicinally. Thistles I haven't tried juicing and putting into soup yet, but I will. In the meantime it is the bulk of the new compost bed.
There’s specific weeds I encourage at the beginning of the season. Whatever they are, flea beetles love them and I can get the vegetables past the seedling stage with those weeds as a trap crop. Of course, I have to let a couple go to seed at the end of the season.
I love this so much. Dandelions can also be simmered for a half hour to produce a nice yellow green dye for fabrics and wool.
Yes! I had been reframing my thinking this way recently as I'm dealing with an overgrown allotment and putting all the nettles and other weeds into the compost bay. I suddenly realised I was harvesting nutrients for reuse later :) Makes the work feel a lot more rewarding and less drudgy.
We brought our 2.5 avres over christmas; the house is sooooo full of weeds, what i have been doing is using the whipper snipper to mow the weeds down in place to feed the soil and now have grass popping up everywhere which is great
Huw, thanks for the information for the paradigm shift I need to do in my mind about weeds. I pulled a bunch of nettles from around our garden the other night and put them all in a bucket thinking there has to be something I can do with them in order to benefit the garden and then I see your video today! I will do a weed soak and then add a portion to my watering can so I can put the nutrients back in the garden. Once again, thank you Professor Richards for your video content!
Dock! Finally thanks so much for this! We've got loads and I hate pulling anything out because I know everything has a purpose!
I'll grant that thistles are not welcome in my garden, although they do tell me that I might want to plant artichokes or cardoon in those places where thistles appear. Dandelion and nettle are both welcome. Dandelion isn't just edible, it's versatile, a great nectar source for pollinators, a decompactor. Welcome in my garden. Nettles are one of the most nutrient dense plants we can grow, and again, welcome in my garden. Every living plant in the space is pushing exudates into the soil, improving soil fertility through its living presence. It's only when something is both "unproductive" in terms of evident human benefit and interfering with the growth of productive plants that I start thinking in terms of needing it removed. There are a very limited number of plants that I will pull from my garden space. Most of the time my weed control consists of chopping and dropping, disadvantage the less desired plant relative to the more desired one, but let it continue to live and pump fertility into the soil.
Thank you so much for the tips I keep cutting Brambles back for the stick insects and now when I weed the gravel I will chop and drop thank you again
I like to share an experience on weed and imported fire ants.
When I purchased my land, the land was a sandy barren because the land developer stripped off both plants and top soil. Quickly, mounds of imported fire ants showed up and kept growing. If you have encountered these ants you know how scary they are. I was afraid to step on my land.
So I started pouring hot water into the mounds which was effective in controlling the fire ants but not enough to eliminating them.
Fortunately, weeds started to grow. When the land was steadily covered with dense tall weeds, there was no more mound of fire ants, like a magic!
Fire ants prefer loose sands to build their castles. The matted deep roots and dense stems of weeds hindered their nesting. I don't know where had they gone, but it is true that they are not visible on my land anymore.
I am your neighbor. I can tell you where the ants went. I can see them right now,... in my front yard.
@@LincolnWorld Are you serious that you imported fire ants in your front yard? They are so scary. The bites gave me itchiness which lasted months and woke me up in the night. True nightmares.
@@fazeinhaze2687 It was just a joke, thank goodness. So you went through that.
@@LincolnWorld Good thing it's a joke, no need to see them.
That really is a good garden secret to know, fantastic tip and knowledge worth passing on, thanks so much I to don’t like weeding but now I have a much better way of looking at it, thanks for sharing such handy advice
Imo this only applies if you get the weeds before they go to seed. Once the go seed you’d be crazy to pick them out and chop them up and spread them all over your garden. Also, I have a lot of weeds like Johnson grass and morning glory that spread through rhizomes and they’re an absolute nightmare.
I try to get them before they seed. Either drop them in place or toss on my cardboard. Some I let got to seed. Eat the weeds, I will harvest and can lambs quarters this week. I'm fighting crab grass and just dug out some Johnson grass. I learned you can't smother Johnson grass out and pulling young shoots didn't work to starve it out either. So I'm using a digging fork.
@@cheryldenkins1597 I started several no dig beds last fall and put down 2-3 layers of thick cardboard. It worked great during the fall/winter, BUT the morning glory roots that were dormant during this time got activated once late spring hit. By that time, my cardboard was no barrier anymore, and the morning glory grew up through it with ease and became a hassle. I was able to get one of the beds mostly cleaned up, but it was a nightmare.
@@larpbusters I've pulled some morning glory this year. They come up from seed around here, roots don't survive the winter. I use copious amounts of fall leaves also. I don't seek to have a weed free garden. Many "weeds" have their uses. I have fresh cardboard out now. I have a row of okra growing where I cut a slit in cardboard I put down this spring.
I feel it's a blessing if you can see that everything in nature has value, is a gift
Beautifully put!
‘Create a carbon rich environment’ - there’s something you don’t hear v often nowadays! The continual demonisation of carbon by the powers that be seems to have forgotten what an important part it plays in us being able to feed ourselves. Wouldn’t it be lovely if someone like Hugh was overseeing our agriculture and environment policies, instead of the morons we currently have.
lol yeh man so true.
Carbon belongs in the ground, not in the air!
@@kj_H65f if it's not in the air, the plants can't absorb it from the air and convert it.
Carbon in the soil is where it always belonged dear.
Carbon released into the air is literally the reversal of life. we did that by tilling the earth and exposing it to wind and sun.
@@cheryllwaldrop9732 there's a balance of how much carbon is in the air. Before humans came the entire globe was green. The plants did just fine with whatever carbon was there. Every little bit after we came in is excess of that.
i learned this from an old Rastafarian in Jamaica, they do the same in there yards with bananas etc. iv been doing the same in the uk ever since. once iv dropped everything on the ground, i cover with compos from the heap. makes it look abit more tidy if your bothered. sometimes i just leave it.
I've always said that a weed is just a misunderstood wild plant. Sometimes to the point of slander. Just because we haven't domesticated it doesn't mean it has nothing to offer us. Thumbs up!
I do chop and drop when the weeds get big enough to do it with In my raised beds. Works a treat. You do sometimes get more weeds growing back but I jut rinse and repeat. Great video Hew makes perfect sense 🌽🥔🍎
Very interesting,. I always suspected this myself and I usually leave the weeds on the flower bed to break down. I'll do it with more confidence now ☺️
Yes! Go for it! :)
Love this rephrasing . You've changed my perspective forever. Thankyou
Wonderful :)
Love the idea of nutrient harvesting. ever since I thought of weeds as mulch my lawn has started to become more well kept.
I started doing this intuitively especially when doing compost. Its also my go to, in areas where our soil is "clayed". If weeds or grass wont grow, then I know I need to give that area more tlc
Really interesting video. I’ve been uprooting weed seedlings at various intervals and just leaving them as a mulch wherever they are, I thought they’d be useful as they break down for the plants I want that are in the same bed but I had no idea it could be addressing imbalances in this way. I only do no dig so in theory my weeds are imported from surrounding fields (I’m using 2 yr old cow manure), so I don’t know what imbalance they might address in the soil underneath but I guess the seeds that germinate and thrive might be the ones that are ‘needed’. I also leave medicinal, edible or useful weeds in the bed, like sorrel, dandelion and clover. Thx for posting 👌
Those dandelions you're "weeding" are probably the most nutritious food in your garden, given that they're a superfood. The reason they're so widespread is that people would plant them so they could count on them to be the first fresh nutritious greens of spring, back when we all ate locally and seasonally.
They are also one of the earliest flower, helping the bumblebees alot in their survival.
They are pretty and yes can be eaten..
I don't know why people hate them
Funny, I have always loved them and my kids will pick me a bouquet for mother's day (as long as they are out) every year. Years ago I used to eat the flower and leaves as they were said to be good for stabilizing blood sugar. Weirdly enough, I was also told the root and stem were toxic. So I stayed away from that. I actually don't like the taste of dandelion but now that I know the entire plant is edible, and there are people here suggesting ways to consume it, I am thrilled and would definetly try them!!
@@juanitaglenn9042 if you still know the person who told you they were toxic, maybe let them know they were misinformed and the dandelion is actually really good for them? I like the flowers more than the leaves (the variety here is fairly bitter, though not all varieties are), but you're right that the whole plant is edible. I always thought it was a shame that people were so aggressive about getting rid of such a pretty little flower in their yard (my kids used to bring them to me, too!), but it's even more so given how nutritious they are and how pretty they make a tossed salad.
Weeds are such a blessing and the more we learn about them the more majestically wonderful they become!
Wonderful video! We have used trees to draw nutrients from deep in the ground to the surface to feed goats, and this is applying the same idea to the garden.