Report From PIA – September 1
Last spring I was the keynote speaker at a Master Gardener conference in Western Massachusetts. The topic was Myths, Lies, and All The Latest Dirt. One of the illusions I addressed was that there is an easy way to control weeds. People want to believe that if they just use this garden chemical, or that landscape fabric, weeds will be gone forever. Not so, I told this audience.
A month or so after the event, the conference organizers thoughtfully sent me the feedback forms. They were overwhelmingly positive, but one respondent had written, “I wish C.L. had spoken about the ways we can control weeds.”
I think that if I had asked that person how weeds are controlled, he or she would have known the answer: you use mulch to discourage germination and hand-pull those that do appear. What that person was hoping, I suspect, was that there really is an effortless way that I didn’t talk about.
I was thinking about this today as I weeded the blueberry bed. We planted this berry patch in 2008, with bushes from Nourse Farms. For small plants, they produced a good number of berries this year, but since we didn’t mulch around the shrubs we also grew a sizeable crop of weeds.
Sitting in between the blueberry bushes this morning, sipping a cup of coffee and keeping an eye on my dog, I enjoyed being out early in the day and I relished the sense of accomplishment. I don’t mind weeding, but I’m very willing to look for the quick fix in other areas of my life. Show me the shortcut to weight loss, or the new book contract, please!
The weeds in the berry patch remind me that most times, like it or not, we need to put in effort to get results.
Where did all these weeds come from?
The Dog lays on the cool, weed free soil. I imagine him thinking, "Well, that was easy... now when can we go swimming?
