good morning this is angela with parkrose permaculture i'm in my front yard food forest in
portland oregon zone 8b it's been raining heavily the last few days and unfortunately i missed a
window to make a video about my rain garden but if we have more rain in the future i will be doing it
it's on my list i know people keep requesting how i design my rain garden it's going to happen y'all
um next time we have a heavy rain i'll get to it but today i actually wanted to talk about another
consequence of all the heavy rain we've been having and a concept in permaculture that i think
more gardeners should value and embrace and learn about and that is when we have a heavy rain like
this and we're going to have quite a bit of warm weather following it you get a flush of new growth
from existing plants existing perennials but also dormant seeds in the ground are going
to be springing to life this can be a mixed bag because what you find is that plants you have sewn
that have not yet germinated perhaps your pumpkins perhaps perhaps your summer squash perhaps things
that have self sewn like chard or calendula will all come up they love that deep soaking of the
rain followed by an increase in temperature weed seeds also love this so you can find
the weeding in your garden really ramps up after a rain so what do you do about it
i know that i see a lot of gardeners who love the look of plants spaced far apart and clean
pristine compost in between them that is a very labor-intensive method of gardening and the
reality is that's not how nature works or abhors a vacuum she sees that open soil that open compost
as a blank canvas upon which she would like to paint with plants and the kinds of plants she's
going to pick if your soil quality is a little bit more poor are things like scarlet pimpernell
doc dandelion which you may be able to utilize but maybe not if you have boggy soil she's going
to pick a different range of of weeds so you can learn a lot by the weeds that nature will choose
to grow in those open spaces and that's a subject for another video but today i want to talk about
how you as the permaculturist as the gardener in your garden can help shift and can help
reduce weed pressure in your garden and also you can be the artist that coordinates with
nature to decide what you want to paint with on those blank canvases of soil
and in that way you have less weeding you have the garden that you want and you push toward abundance
so let's just keep in mind here as we are working that weeds do happen
weeds are a real thing but they are very subjective and how you define them is
perhaps unique to you and something you may value as a plant somebody else may see as an annoyance
or a weed so again every time i talk about weeds i get comments about how weeds don't exist
well a plant growing where you don't want it that is not serving the purpose that you want
for that spot in your garden that's a weed even if otherwise it would be a useful plant i may
love my borage and calendula self if they come up and obstruct something else or in a spot where
i really want to plant something else that would in my opinion benefit the system more that valued
plant becomes a weed and i remove it but it's okay because when we remove weeds that have not yet
gone to seed and we throw them back down on the garden we are creating more biomass so the plant
still has a purpose in our garden so when you're looking at these weeds in your garden and these
empty spaces of dirt that are being colonized by plants that you don't want just remember they
can serve a purpose pull them up throw them back on the bed throw them in the path throw them in
your compost bin don't be afraid to compost weeds that have not gone to seed i see a lot of people
talking about bagging things in their garbage that are weeds that are perfectly safe to compost if
something has not set seed by and large unless it is something that spreads by rhizomes vegetatively
very easily like mint it's okay to put it in a cold compost even weeds that we consider a
nuisance like bittersweet nightshade things like that if you don't have the berries and the seeds
in the compost they won't proliferate they will break down and become soil again so again there
are some caveats so do your due diligence but okay for the most part so let's talk about some
of the ways that i take those blank spaces in the garden and i am prepared after all of this
rain to make sure that i am helping nature paint with the plants that i think would be most useful
on those open spots so first off if i am looking at the forecast and i know that it's going to rain
and i know that that rain is going to be followed by warm weather because you know it's late may
then my strategy is going to be to get a jump on nature again permaculture we design from patterns
to details what is the pattern that nature demonstrates to me that nature communicates to me
it is that when we have rain followed by sun we get plant germination so i might as well say
okay i need to get ahead of her i need to get my seeds in the ground so that i don't have to water
them nature's going to water them for me and she's going to create the circumstances for germination
i saw that we were gonna have a ton of rain in the forecast what did i do i planted zucchini
i pulled back my mulch here and i've created a situation with bare open soil and i let my
zucchini get a jump start on the wheel in that way i'm not fighting mother nature i'm working
with her i'm working with the known patterns and i'm using them to my advantage in the garden
so we have that blank canvas we have that open soil that is primed and ready to be painted with
plants and we don't have time to get on top of it and get plants in the ground ahead of the weeds
what do we do there's two options available to you so the first one is i have whole areas of the
garden where i put in lots of leaf mold and some of those places i have gotten my wood chips down
over okay so in the areas where i have put down wood chips you can see here i have some calendula
i have some hearty geraniums and borage and some other things i also have dandelions i've put back
some bark chips over some wood chips over excuse me not bark and these will extend the benefit
of the rain by holding moisture like a sponge and holding it against the soil and preventing
desiccation by the sun and the wind but the additional benefit is that they will block
weed seeds from germinating so in the places where i've put down wood chips i'm not super
worried about weeds and what i'm looking at is those idyllic pictures of rose with widely spaced
plants and bare soil because people love that look it looks tidy to them it's not how nature works
so in areas where i have mulch i'm not worried about weeds it's those areas with open ground so i
have those where i have not yet put back my mulch and it is bare open humus sorry my neighbor's dog
is just gonna bark it is a very barky dog hope it's not too distracting for y'all so here i have
under this juneberry here which you can see has set many berries this is an improved june berry
i got from rain tree nursery that is developed for superior fruit production and flavor not
the same thing as getting a service berry or a june berry for landscaping this is one for food
much better tasting so underneath i have put down lots and lots of my
rich organic matter which is just again that open canvas that playground for
weeds and i haven't had a chance to underplant with anything yet so my solution because i haven't
gotten mulch down i haven't under planted is i use rhubarb leaves now first i'm gonna come in here
before i put down this other rhubarb leaf and i'm gonna get mr sluggy
and we're gonna take him down to the ducks for a snack and now
so now i have these rhubarb leaves they work really well
as a quick easy mulch that covers a large section and suppresses weeds so don't have time to put my
wood chips down chop and drop works real well especially broad-leafed plants like a rhubarb
like an artichoke i'm already harvesting rhubarb almost every day anyway might as well use those
as weed suppression until i have time to get out here and put down the rest of my wood chips
so if we're dealing with the reality that once it rains and the weather warms up nature is going to
sweep in and take advantage and things are going to grow why not grow the things that we want
so if i see rain in the forecast followed by warm weather i'm going to sow seeds in the ground ahead
ahead of that process right i'm going to get a jump start on it i'm going to work with the
patterns in nature work with the systems that i know are going to be successful and that is
understanding that i have to work with nature and not fight her when we have that open bare soil
we constantly have to hoe up our weeds to keep some kind of
visual aesthetic of open dirt which doesn't happen in nature and is a set up for erosion and
desiccation that's not reality i don't know why that has become such a popular
ideal for how a garden should look but it's not working with the way nature wants to work it's
fighting her and it's causing more work for you and it's actually not good for your plants or the
soil health so let's use permaculture let's use uh working as a partner with the natural processes
that we already have and reduce our labor reduce our effort and have more success
in the garden without having to combat nature but instead being her partner understanding
her language and working with her to push toward abundance if you enjoyed this video please give it
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