There is something to be said for hand weeding. While the hoe makes weeding from a standing position easier and relatively painless, getting down to the level of your plants allows you to see up close what is going on in the garden. You see things you might miss from five or more feet about the soil, like toads the size of your thumbnail. Wow, cute.
A properly weeded garden looks great and is more productive. Under the weather for the better part of the weekend and in desperate need of solitude, I took to weeding the garden while on my knees. It was not pretty but it was effective.
I saw busy earthworms working alongside the plastic snakes I put in place to deter unwanted vermin. An unidentified fuzzy caterpillar was immediately moved to a distant location on the other side of the property, and a cabbage white butterfly seemingly flitting innocently about was sacrificed, forgive me, for the sake of the brassicas.
The most common weeds in my garden are crabgrass, oxalis, purselane and spurge.
A shallow root system makes it easy to pull these weeds without too much struggle.
Crabgrass never seems to show up in my lawn; that is where the ground ivy lives, but it appears more than any other weed in the garden. Early prevention in the form of pre-emergent herbicides when the lilac is in bloom is simply not an option in an organic garden, so I just chop it up or pull it. Natural pre-emergent remedies like corn gluten meal have never worked well for me. Crabgrass continually produces new seeds from midsummer to fall. The seeds can stay viable for up to 30 years. That thought generally makes me want to throw in the towel, but I soldier on.
Oxalis, also called yellow wood sorrel, looks quite like clover. I remember eating it when I was a child and delighting in its tangy flavor. Turns out, it is edible even though it contains oxalic acid. While warnings tell us eating anything with oxalic acid can be harmful, beets, chocolate, nuts and rhubarb contain it and I have never had any ill effects. I dont fancy it nearly as much now but it is good to know its there if I need it. Hand pulling oxalis before it has a chance to set seed is the simplest way to eradicate it from the garden.
Purselane is another edible plant and while I just see it as yet another weed, there are many cultures that see it as food. Purselane grows from seed and from stem pieces and it is important to completely remove it from the garden. Chopping it to pieces will only make more plants.
Spurge, even the name sounds horrific, like a plague. Spurge is a late germinating, low growing, mat producing summer annual. Prostrate spurge, the type we see in our region, has a shallow taproot with secondary roots. Just pull it as soon as you see it.
While I was close to the soil, I was pleasantly surprised to see nearly every plant in the garden was healthy and thriving. Even the cabbages and Brussels sprouts that had sustained a fare amount of damage from the annoying cabbageworms have made a recovery.
