The Zen of weeding

Jill Severn

June is the peak month for weeding. Seeds have been germinating all spring — so many, so much and so fast you’d think it would make noise. Now, as the days are almost at their longest, plant growth keeps accelerating, and weeds are growing like ... you know, themselves. 

And it isn’t just the weeds that are growing fast. Many of the seeds we planted — beets, carrots, lettuce, you name it — are crowded and need to be thinned. Thinning tiny carrot seedlings can try your patience as much as pulling any weed. All those little plants are a test of your finger dexterity and endurance.  

Bigger weeds are usually easier and more satisfying to pull. But you can’t let weeds get too big, or they will go to seed and spread more weeds. Also, there’s a reason for all those metaphors about roots. We have to get to the root of any problem we wish to solve, starting with dandelions. 

Home gardeners and the people who sell stuff to us have spent a lot of time and energy developing ways to avoid weeding, especially the finger-weeding variety. It’s no wonder farmers have machines called finger weeders.

But those machines would be totally unsuited for use in a home garden, where life isn’t organized into straight rows on level ground, with ample space between each row. And the mechanical weeders don’t get the roots out of the soil; they just break them up into pieces.

For some species — like the dreaded morning glory — each root fragment  will grow another of its kind. This brings to mind the sorcerer’s apprentice, who chopped up an enchanted broom to stop it from hauling too many buckets of water, resulting in a horde of brooms with buckets, and a flood.  

Another anti-weed strategy comes from a thriving industry of bark purveyors who sell — in truckloads or plastic bags — a product largely devoted to reducing the need to weed by smothering the soil. There is also a lot of “landscape fabric” devoted to the same cause.

Sooner or later, someone will probably wear a dress made of it to the Met Gala. For weed prevention, both bark and fabric help, but neither is a one-time lasting solution. And neither would be usable among overcrowded carrot or beet seedlings. 

Then there are products that prevent seeds in the soil from germinating, and products that kill weeds of various kinds. Like the humans who invented them, such products have both virtues and vices.  

Christopher Lloyd, a wonderfully eccentric English gardener, observed that the quest to reduce the work of gardening led first to the phrase “labor-saving” to describe new products and techniques, then over the next decade or so transitioned to the goal of “low maintenance” gardening. This, he wryly noted, omitted any mention of labor. He regarded this evolution in language as an indicator of civilization’s imminent fall into sloth and ruin. 

But though we can’t rule it out 100 percent, if civilization falls into sloth and ruin, it probably won’t be because we didn’t weed our gardens enough.  

Weeding — especially finger weeding and thinning tiny plants — is definitely patience-testing work. It can, however be calming and meditative on a day when your patience is tested and it passes the test. That usually happens when you’re not in a hurry and there’s no deadline. It also helps to have just done some yoga or listened to Beethoven’s pastoral symphony. If you get in the zone and weed for a couple of hours, you’re likely to come back in the house quiet and content, and rightfully proud of what you’ve accomplished. 

June may be the biggest month for weeding, but it is not the last. We’ll be weeding all summer and possibly into the fall. Even if we weed everything now, it won’t stay that way much longer than our kitchen floors will go without needing to be swept. 

Weeds will always be with us, and it would be a poorer world if they weren’t. They remind us that gardening makes us collaborators with nature, not its master. Peaceful coexistence — not perfection — is the only worthy and achievable goal.  

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com