Jane Alvarado of The Pond Blog and Loch Ness Water Gardens sent me this interesting infographic. I guess I’m a little bit of a sucker for infographics, and I like this one. I’m not sure about the making money part, but the rest looks good to me.
Weeds in a Gravel Path
I don’t do many posts on request, but I guess this is an exception.
In 2009 I wrote this post and mentioned I was going to use vinegar to try to kill the weeds in the gravel. At the time I was hoping for feedback from others who had tried something similar. Not only did I not get a lot of feedback, but pretty soon I gave up on the vinegar. It took a lot of vinegar, and it wasn’t really working very well. Since I made that post however, I’ve been getting a lot of traffic via Google, from people looking for solutions to weeds in gravel paths. Rather then let all those people end up on a post that lays out something that doesn’t work, I thought I would make an updated post here with what I find works well!
We have gravel paths all over our community garden complex, and the picture above is one that hasn’t been maintained in a few months. You can see it’s pretty well covered with weeds. You notice there are gardens on both sides, so the weeds either escape from the gardens next to the path, or more likely are from seeds blown by the wind. In a situation like this, I find a weed burner works pretty well to control the weeds.
Below is a picture of a similar path as the one above, but where I’ve been using a weed burner regularly to burn the weeds.
I last used the weed burner here a few weeks ago, and I’m pretty sure the gardeners on the sides have pulled a few weeds by hand too. You can see the weed burner is not perfect, but it does a pretty good job and is a lot easier than doing it completely by hand. The entire path in this picture, all the way to the end, takes about an hour to do with a weed burner and if the weeds are kept under control it only needs to be done every month or two during the growing season. Once it gets to the point of the path in the top picture, it has to be done weekly for a few months, until the weeds are under control.
The weed burner only burns off the tops of the weeds, and doesn’t kill them right away. It takes going over them a few times before they die completely. Some weeds aren’t killed by the weed burner, and have to be pulled by hand, but these are mostly the larger and easier to pull weeds. You also have to give some thought to what you have alongside the path, and in particular avoid flammable things like dry mulch or dry rotted wood. You also can’t use the weed burner in dry weather or when fire is otherwise a hazard.
As a rule it works better to make a number of quick passes over the path, a few days or a week or two apart, rather than one intensive burn. When you singe the tops of the plants, rather than turning them to ash, they are more likely to die completely over time. This is because singeing damages them, and causes the plants to expend more resources trying to repair the damage. Occasionally weeds respond better to having their tops burned off completely, and this tends to make the path look better, so it can help to do this from time to time too.
Above is an example of a path were the weed burner doesn’t work. This path has a garden on the left, and a grassy patch on the right, with no barrier between the grass and gravel path.
You can see too the picture includes the path in front of two different gardens, the one in the back is not quite as diligent in digging the grass out, and the gardener in front I know has a system of chemicals for spraying on the path. I don’t know what chemicals he uses, but he also says nothing he tried really works.
The weed burner just won’t kill the grass in this way. All that happens is you spend hours burning and reburning the grass, and it just comes back.
Above is a section of path, with my garden on the left. In this case, I burn the path in front of my garden, but not my neighbors garden. While I’m an organic gardener, this neighbor is beyond organic, and doesn’t want any power tools used in his garden either. He rightly considers the weed burner a power tool.
I’m not very diligent at burning in front of my own garden for some reason, and I hardly ever pull anything by hand that doesn’t get killed with the weed burner. That’s why there are still a few weeds in front of my garden. My neighbor can hardly be bothered to pull his weeds by hand. It actually works okay in this way, and the weeds don’t really spread much to my side of the path.
In the picture above, from time to time I burn the path on the left. One day I got into a big fight with the gardener on the right because I was burning his path (I previously had his agreement to do this), but he felt it was a too environmentally friendly way to get rid of the weeds. He said it was only temporary, didn’t get all the weeds, that the weeds come back too quickly and RoundUp was the only real way to get rid of weeds in gravel. He then got out his spray bottle of RoundUp and made a big point of spraying his path at the same time I was using the weed burner.
Since he made such a big obnoxious scene, and since I burn the paths around his so they look clean all the time, he’s under a lot of pressure to make sure his path stays clear or he’ll lose face. He has to prove RoundUp is better than the weed burner! He’s frequently out digging and redigging his path. From time to time it also looks like he sprays it, but that doesn’t really work because it doesn’t kill everything and he still has a path of dead weeds he has to dig up later anyway. You can see in the picture, his path has a lot of dug up dirt mixed in with the gravel, and it’s always about as green as it is in this picture.
I have heard from others that RoundUp doesn’t really work. There’s always lots of discussion over alternatives, but I’ve never heard of anyone finding anything they found satisfactory.
Algal Blooms
The canals around the garden are really bad this year. They are all full of algal blooms.
In some places the algae is so thick trash floats on it.
The water plants floating on top here look pretty healthy. When the infestation is a little lighter the ducks and other water birds eat it. I haven’t seen any water birds in the canals for months now. Underneath the surface is slimy green algae.
I don’t know for sure what the cause of these algal blooms are, but I suspect they’re caused by excess phosphorus in the water, and probably excess manure being spread on the surrounding land. Farmers pay land owners to accept their waste manure spread out on it, and this in turn contaminates the water. Because of a soil test I did a few years ago, I already know there’s a lot of phosphorus in the ground and water.
Pig farmers in particular are known right now to be having a problem with excessive manure from their pigs. I suspect this is where at least some of the problem is coming from.
Because the canals are so close to my garden, I suspect this is causing a lot of the problems I’ve been having lately with plants not growing well, and weeds like bindweed growing very quickly. I understand bindweed grows in ground where something is interfering with the natural decomposition of organic material, and I suspect this is being caused by the lack of oxygen in the surrounding canals because of the algae growth.
I’ve been reading in the US, in particular the lakes of Wisconsin, there are similar problems with phosphorus and algal blooms. The formula of dishwasher detergent was recently changed in the US to reduce the amount of phosphorus, which is a very American solution to the problem of factory farm waste. Why not after all blame the consumer with something irrelevant?
If anyone complains about the change in formula of dishwasher detergent, you can look at them with a blank stare and ask them if they believe in unnecessarily polluting the environment, and if anyone complains about the factory farming you can tell them every thing is under control because the formula in dishwasher detergent has been changed.
Anyone else having problems with phosphorus pollution and algal blooms?
Japanese Gobo
This is a very strange looking plant, almost like a faux Joshua Tree or something. I got the seeds last year from Alan Kapuler’s seed company, Peace Seeds. It’s a big plant, about 2.5 meters high.
It didn’t seed the first year, so it’s either biennial or perennial. If you want to know before me, I’m sure about 30 seconds with Google will give all the details. These prickly buds are sticky and detach easily. They’re very annoying if you get too close when weeding, and get one tangled up in your hair.
It’s about to bloom, and I’m planning to save some seeds. It’s supposed to have a very long root that’s very tasty. It’s supposed to be popular in Japan. I’ve seen the roots for sale in Asian supermarkets here, but I’ve never bought one. I dug up one of my plants last year, but the root was too small to be interesting. After I harvest some seeds, I’ll dig up another plant and see how the root looks.
Anyone have experiences with this plant? Anyone have any advice or thoughts? Recipes?
No-Weed Beans
Over the last couple of years I’ve discovered a really interesting variety of beans.
They are Yellow Forest Beans, an old variety that used to be grown in Friesland, in the northern part of the Netherlands and probably parts of Germany too. They are what Americans would call bush beans and British would call dwarf French beans.
What’s interesting about these beans is they require little or no weeding, at least in my climate!
Ordinarily, this type of bean will grow to smother any weeds, but usually needs a little hand weeding at the beginning or the weeds will overtake them. This bit of hand weeding at the beginning is most of the work required to grow them!
Below is the bed of beans where I didn’t do any weeding.
You can see a few weeds poking their way through, but it’s not very serious. Here’s a picture taken straight down.
Okay, because I’m a diligent gardener, I’ll probably do a little weeding here later, but it doesn’t need much!
Here’s a similar bed of beans of a different variety. Can you see any weeds here? This is going to be a lot more work.
For the sake of clarity and honesty, I did use a weed burner on both of these beds before planting them, and this does reduce the weeds. Next year I’ll try the Yellow Forest Beans without burning the ground first, and I expect to see more weeds.
I also haven’t had a chance to eat these beans yet, because I’ve been trying to bulk up on seeds. I’ll try them in a few weeks. They may not taste good.
All of these beans above were grown on rich soil, where I’ve grown beans within the last few years and so I know there’s good availability of rhizobia bacteria. These things are important, because I think the ability of this variety to compete against weeds comes all or partly down to the plant’s vigor. It’s possible however there’s more than that, for example a growth inhibiting chemical in the roots, that makes weeds grow slower.
Why It’s Important
You might think I’m a lazy gardener, and perhaps that’s part of it, but I do everything I can to avoid pulling weeds or digging in my garden! The problem is weed seeds, once covered, remain in the ground for decades or even sometimes centuries. When you disturb the ground, you bring these seeds to the surface where they grow. This means every time you pull or dig weeds, you’re just creating a self-perpetuating problem. By using no-dig methods like mulch or weed burning, you reduce this problem.
The problem is even compounded further when you grow something like beans, because they fix nitrogen in the ground, which makes the weeds grow all that much faster! If you don’t manage the weeds, not only will the beans not grow well, but the benefit of nitrogen fixing will be at least partly lost as the weeds consume it.
On the other hand, if you have a nitrogen fixing crop that smothers weeds and is largely carefree, it’s of much more value to grow, even just as a cover crop!
When it comes down to it, the limiting factor for almost all of us is the amount of effort our garden takes to manage. By not weeding, much of the effort needed to maintain a garden is gone and we can manage a larger piece of land with more crops if we want. This is also true commercially, where a variety that needs little or no weeding can make all the difference in profitability.
These days of thinning ozone make me a little worried with every hour I spend in the garden. Growing anything that requires less weeding means fewer hours in the sun.
After all, all of these benefits of reduced weeds are what make RoundUp ready crops so attractive. This on the other hand is a sustainable and organic alternative.
The Genetics
Like I mention above, I haven’t tasted these yet. In many ways, it doesn’t make that much difference if these taste good, but rather I’ve discovered genes that can be used with further breeding.
