- I try and stay away
from doing too many weeding videos on this channel.
There's only so many ways that we can cover it.
But the other day I was reading a blog
and there was a single sentence that I had no idea
could completely change my approach and attitude to weeding.
And that is what this video is about.
Well, actually, there were two things
that stood out to me on the blog,
and I'll come onto the weeding attitude later,
'cause the first thing spoke about the law of return.
The law of return is, in nature,
when something is taken from a soil ecosystem,
it's gotta be returned
in order for it to maintain its balance and health.
So take this hop, for example.
Over spring and summer
the roots are drawing up nutrients from the ground.
And then in autumn the leaves fall back down,
returning the nutrients to the soil, break down over winter,
ready to start the cycle again in spring.
It's the exact same story for this pear tree.
Its leaves, which will fall onto the ground over autumn,
will break down and provide those nutrients
to help it again next year.
However, we need to remember
that most of the mass of this tree
is water and carbon, and all of that carbon
comes from the air through photosynthesis,
gets turned into glucose to help the tree's growth
and create things like cellulose,
which is the most abundant organic polymer on this planet.
Another example is when we harvest potatoes.
The dry weight of the tuber's around 70% starch,
and that comes from sugars created from photosynthesis.
Basically what I'm saying
is that the majority of a plant's mass
actually comes from the air and not from the soil.
It's a tiny percentage of mass that comes from the soil,
but it's a really important percentage
'cause that's the nutrients.
An example of this is, like humans, all plants need calcium,
but calcium doesn't come from the air.
It comes from the ground.
So it's the nutritional needs of the plants
that we need to consider with the law of return,
because when we harvest something
and we take it to the kitchen and eat it,
even if we chop and drop all the crop residues, et cetera,
there is a loss of nutrients from the soil.
And that's why we add compost to help balance that out.
And this is where a garden differs from nature.
So take this tree, for example.
The leaves, when they break down,
they create a complete nutrient cycle.
But in a garden, when we harvest crops,
we're also harvesting the nutrients and taking them away.
And this is where weeds come into the picture.
I'm not here to debate about what a weed is.
I think we can all agree that dandelions, thistles,
and also nettles in our raised beds and pots
are not welcome, at least for the long run.
But we have to understand
that weeds are nature's way of rebalancing soil health.
Things like dandelions, here, and thistles
send down deep roots to mine nutrients from below
and then bring them up into their leaves.
And when these plants break down,
they're bringing and effectively leaving
those nutrients in the top soil.
And also, when we weed a bed, or this is a tyre
where I'm gonna grow just some ornamentals,
what you are also doing is affecting the law of return
because weeds are full of nutrients
and you're picking them off and you are carting them away.
So in a second, I'll explain about
why whenever you're weeding a section
you want to return those exact weeds
to the spot that they were growing.
But firstly, I want to share the main part
of that blog article that, honestly,
it just made me think,
wow, I'm never gonna look at weeding the same again.
I'm paraphrasing what I read on this blog post,
but it was along the lines of not seeing weeding as a chore
but actually as nutrient harvesting.
And I thought this is fantastic.
I can actually trick my brain into finding
a higher purpose to weeding than clearing a bit of ground.
It can actually be a harvest
that's going to help me grow better crops.
Let's unpack this a bit further.
So firstly, let's say this bed had a load of dandelions.
If we take and remove those dandelions
but actually replace it with compost,
we could actually be creating a nutrient imbalance,
because dandelions are known to be
an indicator of poor calcium,
and so they're bringing calcium
from further down up to the top.
So if we actually chop and drop
the dandelions on the surface,
we're helping to rebalance those natural calcium levels.
Now, if you don't fancy doing chop and drop,
or you want to keep your beds nice and clean,
I totally understand that.
Whatever the weed has grown,
whether it's like a load of nettles, or thistles,
or dandelions, you can actually get them from elsewhere,
for example, in the hedgerows or in your lawn,
and create a weed soak from those
and then use that as a liquid feed
to put back onto the soil.
So you are actually returning
those nutrients that are needed.
For those of you in more suburban and rural areas,
you can look at things like hedgerows
as a great place to harvest nutrients
to help enrich your garden and also your compost.
This is dock, here, for example,
and dock is really high in potassium.
So I can make a potassium plant feed using these leaves.
It's not a weed, it's a fantastic plant
to help me grow better food.
It's really important to know
that one of the main purposes of compost
isn't just to add nutrients back into the soil,
but also to create a carbon rich environment
to promote the microbes
to actually make those nutrients plant available.
So if you incorporate techniques such as no dig,
alongside harvesting nutrients, AKA weeding,
and bringing weeds from external sources into your garden,
you can help balance out that law of return
and have a thriving, thriving garden.
In your garden beds, you may come across
bits of grass growing, which, in that case, are a weed,
but grass is so abundant. It's free.
And it is one of, if not the most valuable
free resource for your garden.
This video, right here,
is gonna show you how to best utilize grass
in so many different ways to get you growing better
and more nutritious crops from your vegetable garden.