Weeds are actually really great to grow
If you are lucky enough to have a garden, you’ll probably feel unlucky enough to also have weeds in said garden. But why do we despise weeds anyway? Weeds are actually very beneficial for wildlife, and plenty of them are edible or are actually very pretty when they flower. So why not give them a chance and allow a little bit more weeds in our garden and our life.
You will be surprised by how useful your weeds can be. They can help in all sorts of ways, from bringing in beneficial insects to enriching your salads. They can help cover bare soil and protect it from soil erosion and thereby keeping in the fertility. Or actually improving fertility, as is the case with some weeds. Learn to see the beauty in their flowers and appreciate the small dots of golden yellow buttercups in your lawn.
Grow some weeds on purpose and reap the benefits of their vigorous growth with seemingly endless harvesting of their fruits, flowers, or leaves. You will find that many common weeds are actually rather tasty and can be easier to grow than traditional vegetables or fruits. Just be aware that certain plants can contain higher levels of oxalic acid, like in the case of lamb’s quarters. Although not just weeds can be high in oxalic acid but also regular vegetables like spinach. In which case you just want to make sure you don’t eat them too often. Or like my mother was taught by her mother and she taught me, that you simply don’t reheat those vegetables.
What are weeds
Botanically and taxonomically, there is nothing that calls certain plants weeds. Mainly because us gardeners don’t agree with certain plants growing in certain places. Think of your lawn, dotted with dandelions or daisies. When these flowers invade one’s lawn, we call them weeds. But when we have planted some daffodils or crocuses in the same lawn, we find them pleasing. Even though both are pretty and disrupt the continuous green of the lawn.
It is then that we can see that a weed is only a weed because it grows where we did not intend it to grow. Sometimes we consider volunteer plants weeds too. The volunteer plant pops up where we sowed it the year before but are not growing another plant. And because this breaks with our sense of order, we will sometimes call it a weed.
Another place where we often find weeds would be the vegetable patch. And while it is true that sometimes the more vigorous weeds may deprive the vegetable plant of nutrients and thereby growth. Once the vegetable plant is established or the weed is not so aggressive, the weeds can actually be very beneficial. Think of chickweed, a delightful little weed that is not so aggressive to hinder any growth for the vegetable plant. But with its ground covering growth habits, it works great as a living mulch. Keeping the soil protected from erosion and drought because it stays covered.
Now I ask you. Are these plants weeds? Or are they helping your garden? As A.A. Milne, the author of the beloved bear Winnie the Pooh, once said.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
A.A. Milne
Hating weeds
So many of us gardeners loathe weeds. But what are weeds really? Weeds are simply plants we didn’t sow or plant, but some of them can actually be beneficial to your garden. A lot of them are edible and actually quite tasty. And only a rare few are so virulent and destructive that they do actual damage to your garden and plants. These rare few are often extremely tough and manage to grow back from tiny fragments of roots, like couch grass. Others like bindweed will try and strangle your precious veggies.
But when managed properly, these much hated weeds can actually bring you great pleasure in your garden. And not just the pleasure of uprooting them, which I must confess is one of my greatest pleasures in the garden. I just love seeing a whole root come out clean and intact. A bit strange I suppose, since most people seem to hate weeding. But ever since I was a child, I really enjoyed plucking them out of the soil with my hands. And even though I really like a lot of the plants we consider weeds, I do still de-weed bits in my garden. But I also grow certain weeds on purpose. That way, there is a balance, and a balance in life is what we all seek. Isn’t it?
Beneficial to the garden
As I said before, certain weeds can actually help you in your garden. Whether it is because they attract pollinators or beneficial insects, or because they function as a living mulch, or because they lock nutrients into your soil. They can all be beneficial to your garden the trick is having them in the right places during the right times.
One of the ways that certain plants that we tend to label as weeds might be very beneficial to your garden is as green manure crops. We tend to sow green manure during the winter when our gardens sometimes would otherwise be bare. Thereby helping to enhance the soil fertility and at the same time preventing any soil erosion due to having bare earth.
A widely loved cover crop is clover whether you plant red or white clover, they will both fix nitrogen into your soil. Clover is so well loved because of its ability to take nitrogen from the air and subsequently fix it into the soil. If you’ve ever uprooted clover, you might have noticed that there are tiny little nodules or balls attached to the roots. But it are the nodules that store the nitrogen and later release it again into the soil. Thereby giving your other plants, like your vegetables, herbs, or ornamental flowers, a nice growth boost.
Some other good cover crops are alfalfa, vetch, comfrey, rye, as well as some pea and varieties since just like clover, they can fix nitrogen into the soil.
But lots of these plants, as well as the one we discussed earlier like the chickweed you can also use during your growing season. Where it grows among your other plants, shielding the soil from the sun and thereby keeping more moisture in. Allowing you more time in between watering. Which will help your water consumption as well as saving you time.
So next time, ask yourself before you rip out your next weed. Is it harming the other plants in your bed or could you leave it in as a living mulch?
Bees and other insects
Hopefully, we all love bees, and the people who don’t love bees will at least understand that we do need them. After all, it are the bees that pollinate the crops that we eat. So we want to take good care of them by ensuring we don’t use pesticides and growing plenty of flowering plants.
We all know that bees need flowers, in order to gather the pollen and nectar that they need. But not all flowers are created equally. Some produce more nectar than others, and some produce hardly any. And the problem with this possible low dose of nectar is that the bee will have to spend energy to get to the flower but will hardly get any in return. Which can become a problem if it happens often enough. Luckily we can really easily negate this problem by planting some high nectar flowers in our gardens. That way, we provide them with more easily accessible nectar when they come across one of these low nectar flowers. And they won’t have had to make their journey without reward.
But it’s not just the bees that are helpful and rather essential in our gardens. But also plenty of other insects are an important part of our gardens ecosystem. Just think of the ladybird/ladybug who is known for its love for munching on aphids. A very nice guest to have over in your garden if you have problems keeping your aphid population in check. Especially its strange looking larvae will munch through a lot of aphids in a day. Some say that they can eat through 50 aphids a day.
By planting native wild plants that most people would call weeds, we can attract all these little insects. Which in turn helps our garden stay healthy and us to grow beautiful vegetables and flowers.
Edible & delicious weeds
Did you know that quite a few of the common weeds are actually edible? When I was little, my mum would sometimes make us daisy sandwiches. She would butter some bread and then top it with some cheese and daisy flowers, and they would look so pretty covered in those white flowers.
Another well known edible weed is dandelions, and as children, we would often eat the flowers as a snack. The leaves we were never too fond of since they can be a tad bitter. But worked into a salad, they can be rather tasty. As for the roots, some people like to roast them and use than as a coffee substitute. Now, I’ve never tried it, but maybe I should give it a try sometime.
Of course, there are blackberries, every child’s favourite foraging snack, and delicious when added to a pie. And nettles that work great steeped as a tea against hay fever. As well as chickweed, nasturtium, or lamb’s quarters that are great when added to salads.
Although it has to be said that no matter which weed you might forage for. You do always need to make sure if it is an edible one and that you’re eating the edible part. It’s also preferable to eat the ones that are not near roads. But if you’re eating the weeds from your own garden, you don’t need to worry too much about that anyway.
Show some love to your weeds
So now that you know that weeds are nothing more than plants we didn’t anticipate being in a particular spot. Do you think you can learn to appreciate them a bit more? Can you see the beauty in their flowers as bees buzz around them and enjoy their leaves in your salad?
Use them in your garden where they will help you and your garden become happier and healthier. Get to know your weeds and learn to love them the same as you love your roses or tomatoes.
And when you’ve gotten to know them, why not introduce them to me because I would love to meet your weeds. Leave a reply here on the site or send me a picture or a DM on Instagram.
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