How I learned to stop worrying and love weeds

Wait! I don't love weeds, I hate them. Or I hate most of them. Some I don't mind so much. Some I hate, but I love pulling them and using them in the compost. Some I leave until just before they go to seed because they look cool. What I'm trying to say is it's a complicated relationship. And what are weeds anyway?

In the conventional garden it's easy to identify weeds: There are the desirable plants such as tomatoes, lettuce, and cucumbers purposefully placed there by the gardener, and everything else is a weed. To the permaculturist it's also easy: there are no weeds. In my garden there are weeds everywhere (yes, it's true) but like genders these days the weeds are fluid and what is not a weed today may be a weed tomorrow. The real problem is using one word when 10 or more are needed to cover all the categories of weeds.

Regardless of your definition for weeds, or if you eschew the word entirely, you are most likely making decisions about which plants need to be removed from your garden. Not surprisingly one of the most important steps in coping with weeds is learning their names and habits. Knowing at a glance what weeds are growing where, will teach you a lot about your garden. Learning to distinguish annual, from biennial, from perennial weeds is essential, because you will treat them differently. In southeastern Ohio where I garden, a fascinating class of weeds called winter annuals thrives.

Annual plants by definition complete their life cycles in less than a year. Annual weeds live short lives, make lots of flowers and seeds, then die. Next years weeds come totally from seeds that overwinter (or on the case of winter annuals, oversummer) in your mulch or soil. Winter annuals thrive in cool weather and generally sprout in fall, lie low during the winter, then explode with growth in early spring. As temps rise they quickly flower and set seeds, which lie dormant during the hot months, then sprout in fall and start the cycle again.

Common winter annuals in my garden are deadnettle, various chickweeds, and hairy bittercress. During mild winters they may be observed as spots of vibrant green in the otherwise bleak landscape. It always amazes me to see the plucky little seedlings emerge, just when other garden plants are giving up and turning brown. Because they are able to grow during a time of year when they have very little competition, they are incredibly successful.

I don't like winter annuals as much in the spring when they overrun my beds and smother my seedlings, so I remove them as much as I am able during fall and winter. Pulling and hoeing work well as the root systems tend to be shallow. As my soil improves, I've found that many of them come out easily by raking.

Chickens appreciate these greens, especially chickweed, which is edible for humans as well. Deadnettle is also edible, and has medicinal uses. Winter annuals can be tossed in the compost to add green matter so nothing goes to waste. Removing them from my beds provides a good reason to visit the garden during November. Until the real cold weather hits, I'll be puttering in the garden, doing a little weeding, and fantasizing about next year.