3 Ways Weeds Are Helping Your Land

And 3 ways you can help them.

Let’s be honest for a minute: weeds suck.  They never look as nice as your lawn or neat garden rows, and they always manage to stab you in the foot.  But did you know they’re actually here to help?

Here’s how.

1. They protect your soil.  Some elements of nature are damaging to soil and the life inside of it.  The wind and the sun easily evaporate moisture right off of the soil’s surface, leaving it dry and uninhabitable for soil life, which is essential to growing healthy plants.  Even raindrops are a compacting force of nature, and unprotected soil can become waterlogged or wash away completely.  Weeds are the first plants to pop up in disturbed and unprotected soil.  They shade the soil, protect it from the impact of rain, and they quickly create organic matter which serves to absorb rainfall instead of letting it wash away with the soil.Even the sharp weeds serve a purpose!  The prickles and needles and burrs that stab you in the foot are there to protect the soil from compaction.  Their wicked points are a clear sign that says “Keep Off!”
2. They address problematic soil structure.  You’ve probably observed different structures of soil, from sandy and loose, to cement-like clay.  Weeds attack these problems as well.  Take a look at the weeds you find in your compacted clay soil.  Pulling them up by the roots is a pain in the ass, but you’ll commonly find that they have a singular tuberous root that punches into the compacted clay, breaking it up.Likewise, the weeds that you find in a sandy, loose soil typically have a large, fibrous root network that clings to every possible particle of dirt.  These plants are holding your soil together, preventing it from getting washed or blown away.
3. They nurse soil life.  The interaction between plants and soil life is incredible.  It’s complicated, but it’s my favorite thing to learn about.  Plants and soil life exist in parallel spectrums of ecosystems.  On one end, you have a young, primitive ecosystem: weeds and bacteria.  On the other, you have a mature, flourishing system: forests and fungus.It’s tough to rehabilitate a young, degraded system.  But certain plants and organisms are designed for just that.  Namely, weeds and bacteria.These guys pop up first because they thrive in poor conditions.  They don’t need much.  Weeds sprout easily and early in the season.  They grow fast to reproduce and then die.  This creates lots of carbon and organic matter in the soil, which provides food for soil life in the future, retains moisture, and protects the soil’s surface from harsh elements of nature.  ALL of this is critical to creating an environment for soil life to flourish.In addition, while plants are alive, they release simple sugars (called exudates) from their roots.  These exudates are the perfect foods for bacteria – designed to encourage their growth around the root zone.  This is a mutually beneficial relationship.  The bacteria have an easy food source (often trading nutrients for sugars), and the plants get beneficial bacteria to colonize their root zones, which protects the roots from pathogenic organisms looking to leech off of those same exudates.
   “Before plants can become established on fresh sediments, the bacterial community must establish first, starting with photosynthetic bacteria. These fix atmospheric nitrogen and carbon, produce organic matter, and immobilize enough nitrogen and other nutrients to initiate nitrogen cycling processes in the young soil.”

   – Soil Biology Primer, written by Elaine Ingham

   As the plant community is established, different types of organic matter enter the soil and the food source for the soil organisms changes.  Then bacteria and other organisms change the soil structure and environment for the plants.  This is how nature was designed to advance, gradually evolving and improving ecosystems.

The design and execution are flawless.  All of these systems and processes and traits are built into the DNA of the plants and organisms.  They work together without having to be told to do so.

There’s just one problem.  These ecosystems were designed to evolve.  Slowly.  Over decades and centuries.  But we are depleting and destroying our ecosystems faster than they can rebuild.  Left to its own devices, nature could take a couple of centuries to regenerate and return to a state that could support the human race.  That’s why, as stewards of the earth, we are compelled to help the process along.

Here’s how you can hasten the regeneration of your land: by helping your weeds help you.

1.  Stop ripping up your weeds.  Stop poisoning them.  If you kill the weeds, you kill the soil life, and you knock yourself back to square one.
2. Cover the soil.  Sure, weeds already do this.  But in dry areas where it’s needed most, when these plants die, you’re left with spindly tumbleweeds that blow away, leaving the surface of the soil, once again, exposed.  Using mulch works well, because it retains moisture.  It also keeps the surface of the soil cool, and provides the ideal food source (carbon) for fungi to begin growing and moving the needle.  Growing cover crops achieves the same thing, but it requires more water because you’re supporting living plants.
3. Keep dead plant material in contact with the soil.  Soil organisms can only decompose organic matter if they can reach it.  Weeds often die and dry out while they still stand.  Soil organisms can’t survive up there.  At the end of the growing season (maybe even just before) break down those tall, dry stalks and stomp them into the soil.  Then you can cover them with something like mulch to trap them against the soil.  Over the winter, the combination of soil organisms and moisture will break down those weeds and add more organic matter to your soil.

It’s easy to look out at a piece of land full of weeds and get discouraged.  Just remember that they’re not here to look ugly, get in your way, or make you bleed.  They’re here to help.  If you work with nature, instead of against it, you’ll turn your land into a paradise.