By Tessa Chenoa, Somervell County Master Gardener
One of my favorite parts of gardening is weeding. I weed differently than most people. I realize that most of the “weeds” I should be pulling are grasses and forbs native to the ecosystem I’m in. Instead, when I “weed,” I am pulling anything that doesn’t belong in my ecosystem. Side by side with the peppers or onions in my garden, yellow wood sorrel thrives. I almost never pull wood sorrel, as I love to grab a few leaves whenever I wander by. I love their lemony taste.
Last year, I let a gaura stay among my tomato plants. One. One gaura. Today I am considering how best to transplant about a hundred baby gaura plants to a more suitable location so I can use my square foot bed again.
In my pollinator beds, “weeds” coexist with native plants I’ve bought and paid for or been gifted from friends. I don’t like to pull a plant I am unfamiliar with until I see what it looks like growing alongside all the rest. That’s why I have autumn sage and coral honeysuckle giving way to native gum bumelia, which the tiny native birds my land is set aside for so love for nesting.
I never weed out dandelions. Never. Why would I throw out such a useful plant? I love the leaves in sandwiches, its ground-up root makes a tea good for your liver, it has a fanciful name that always makes me smile, and the happiest face of any flower…and I haven’t even gotten to the “old grannies!” I can certainly do with a wish…or two hundred.
Most of what I do pull out when I weed is grasses – and normally non-native, invasive grasses. Their runners take over my garden beds and choke all the light from the soil, leaving no room for any of my lovely natives.
So, if I really weed out so few types of plants, why do I love it so? First, I always feel like Mary Lennox*, clearing the spaces around the struggling bulbs and new plants, giving them space and light to grow. It’s rewarding to come back a few days later and see that my efforts have made a difference.
Weeding helps me alleviate stress, too. Most people would say it’s the fresh air, or the time outside, or even the exertion. But there’s more. As I sink my fingers or weeding tool under the root ball of a weed and gently coax it up out of the ground, it gives a very satisfying “pop” as it lets go of the earth. I often think of a frustrating moment at work or an asinine coworker, whose head, at least in my imagination, can be lopped off. I imagine it makes just such a “pop.” Fun.
Mostly, though, I love the creativity of it. Just as in music the silences are as important as the notes, in a garden spaces keep the plants from spilling all over each other in a haphazard, mangled, cacophonous arpeggio played by a 13-fingered pianist. So, weeding creates the rests, the spaces, the room for the blooms to sing out individually.
*from The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Copyright 1911 F.H. Burnett, published by J.B. Lippincott Company