Ep. 10: How to Get Rid of Weeds in a Food Forest

Weeds, which are often referred to as the right plants in the wrong places, can be a nuisance for some food foresters and gardeners.  In this episode, we'll share ways to control weeds in a food forest or agroforestry system.  Before we jump in, we'll talk a bit about why they are there in the first place. Understanding the concept behind their presence in the landscape will help us navigate them in our own garden spaces.  

This episode covers weeding strategies like hand-pulling tips, smother crops, edible weeds, adding beneficial understory plants, utilizing chickens and livestock, burning, and more.  Weeds and other understory can be utilized in a way that provides for pollinators, cover the soil, and build organic matter.  However, as land stewards, it's our job to orchestrate their presence and work with the natural processes. 

So, instead of working against what nature is doing - let's learn to help nature accomplish its goal of covering the soil and building organic matter.  

Link to the food forest designer website! 
https://permaculturefx.com/how-to-plant-a-food-forest-part-4-installing/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And welcome to the Obsessed with Plants podcast. I'm David. I'm Obsessed with Plants with my co-host here. And I'm Chris. I go by Permaculture FX, and I'm a terrible dancer. I am the like whitest dancer, no rhythm. I can't even clap in rhythm. Like I was that guy at church that was like one guy throwing everybody off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am the stereotypical, like white guy, clapper, dancer, just really bad. The tea that I got, you got ginger peach. I'm doing some uh Japanese senti or Chinese senti. But the um honey that's in both of our tea is my friend Phil and Kathy Robertson um out of Altamont Springs. Um his real name is Phil Robertson, and his uh bee company is called Bee Dynasty because Phil Robertson is also Duck Dynasty. So he did the whole Bee Dynasty thing, but super good honey, so that's what's in our tea today. So we are doing a kind of a mini podcast episode. Let me quick, one, a little bit shorter. Um, but I do think it's a question people ask a lot when first getting started in the food forest. You know, they talk about the first question is how long do I gonna have to wood chip? But then they also go, Hey, I got weeds, how do I how do I deal with the weed problem, you know, that's in my garden.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

And that's and that's always where people start getting a little bit stressed as you start seeing things pop up and it's just it gets out of hand really quick. You're depending on your ecosystem setup.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yes, and in the ideal world, we're all doing a little bit every day and it looks pristine and it looks nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

But let's be real. Life, life ain't nobody, ain't nobody doing that. Yeah, unless you unless you're retired and you're just doing it to stay physically fit.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

And even then, shuffleboard board calls your name, you know. It's like you gotta go to the pool. Yeah, oh man, the the golf cart times like in the villages, it's like it's a thing, you know? It's crazy. You know, life happens, so the garden is not gonna be pristine all the time. Even if you go to like Harry P.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Lou Gardens, they have weeds that are in the garden, and they also have full-time staff plus interns, plus volunteers, plus plus, plus and still have weeds, and they still have weeds.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

So it's okay. You know, so I think looking at it from the perspective of it's okay to have blemishes, you know, it's okay for us to not do TikTok filters on our faces while we're doing this podcast, though sometimes I feel like I need it.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

And kind of controversial take to and people who you know may not like this take, but um, the weeds are there for a reason. They are there for a reason. And so it's you know, if you if you if you get rid of them, you're just they're just gonna come back.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah. And the primary reason for that is nature wants to cover the soil. Nature will find a way, it will always find a way to cover the soil. Nowhere besides the desert is there bare soil open. It's it's this weird thing that in the, you know, the early, you know, probably World War II really was when people started going, okay, we gotta do these gardens, and they didn't know how to garden. So bare soil with their row of corn, their row of beans, that became the thing, more out of necessity, and they just didn't have the experience then to know. But they were dealing with weeds all the time, and nature will find a way to cover the soil, whether it's with grass, it's with weeds, it's killing your plants and they fall over, and your decaying plant matter becomes the thing covering the soil. Nature will cover the soil.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Well, and if you think about like, you know, your well-kept lawns and stuff, that was a bragging rite because you were rich enough to employ somebody as their full-time job to make sure you didn't have weeds in your lawns and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

So the American dream, the green front yard with only grass monocrop, you know, it's just not normal.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

But you know, you're gonna have weeds, and if you don't want weeds, well, you gotta plant something you want. I always go from my go-to sliing, plant the weeds you want, or you're gonna get the weeds you don't want.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

That uh yeah, I I need to start using that phrase actually.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Plant, say it again, plant the weeds you want, or you're gonna get the weeds you don't want. I do like that. I do like that. I mean adding that to my repertoire. You just gotta fill the space with something. Yeah, and you know, you can have it can be beautiful, it can be pretty. Yes, or just something that's easy to get rid of. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Back in the early 2000s, there was this documentary called the Back to Eden film. Um, and there's two gals like out of Texas, I believe, or no, no, no, no, sorry, Washington State are the ones that kind of filmed it and went up there with this guy named Paul, and he just, you know, dives into that nature was created in a way to cover the soil. And that's one of the most important things that we can do is just keep that soil covered pretty much at all times. So for people that have let it get out of hand a little bit and it's got a little wayward, it's got a little crazy. How do you get it under control? Because it can be overwhelming if you don't know ways to do it. So, what we're gonna do today, we're gonna talk about six different ways. There's probably eight, but we're just gonna say there's six.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

This is what came to mind. This is what came to mind.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

These are go-to's, our go-to methods. So, six go-to methods of how to reset your food forest in the way that you want, because there's a lot, a lot of ways that you can do this. Tons of ways. Now, the first way I will say um is weeding by hand. And my mom does such a good job at weeding by hand. Yep. She is so faithful, like beside her flower bed in Michigan, and you can see her cute little Martha Stewart basket there. She walks around the garden every morning. She's got her tea in her hand because she doesn't do coffee. Uh, and she's sipping it, and she fills up her basket one time with either deadheading spent flowers or weeding, and she does a little bit every day. And and that is just her little act of faithfulness. She doesn't listen to music, she listens to the songbirds, but she enjoys that that time in the morning of just I'm gonna deadhead a little bit. So she doesn't ever have those days where I'm gonna weed all day long because she does a little bit every day, and she is so faithful with that. And there is a real benefit to weeding by hand, like you were talking a little bit earlier about like the soil disruption in it.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I mean, if you're going through by hand, you're obviously gonna be more careful. Hand doing anything in the garden, whether that's watering, whether that's weeding, you're gonna be so much more careful about your precious plants. You can get up underneath things if it's like a bush or whatever, you can really pull wheats right up to the thing versus if you're using like a weed eater, scythe, or whatever. That was my sound effect. Do you like that? That was real. That wasn't even like a you know curious thing. It wasn't a soundboard. But um, yeah, you're gonna damage things if you're just gonna quickly, you know, run through with something versus weeding by hand, obviously. It's you're gonna get every last little thing, you're not gonna get any roots, you're not gonna disturb stuff. So totally your careful way of doing it, your heavy labor, heavy reward.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah, and you hit on something really fast about making sure you get all the roots, and that is one benefit by hand that if you get in there and you rip it out, you can get all the way down where that root is gonna be less likely to come back and do damage, you know, as time goes on.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

We have a weed here in Florida that I'm sure a lot of Floridians are aware of the Biden's Pylosa or Biden's L. It's a great medicinal herb, it's it's really good, but it has little sticky seeds that it can get on you. But the root system, if you just whack it with a weed whacker, it's gonna come back. The root structure is extremely uh power strong, and so it's you know, but that's one of those things of it's gonna grow in a climate that is maybe neglectful that other things aren't are struggling with. It's doing its job, it's it's trying to fill in the space and in and le and leave other plants better than it found it.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, and weeds are a great way to read the landscape and see what you need to do to adjust. So I'll use two examples of um chicory, for example, grows on the roadside a lot. And one of the beautiful things about chicory, one, it has a deeper root, like a taproot shaped like a carrot. Um, and what that does is it helps break up soil compaction. The second thing is chicory is really good at mineral mining, so it's bringing up the boron and manganese and magnesium and bringing it back on top of the soil, which ironically, those are two things that are severely depleted when you have gasoline or oil damage. Think about the sides of the road. So when we see chicory growing on the sides of the road, it's actually nature doing its job to cover the soil, but it uses the right weed to do the job, which is well, and that and that might be where if you are trying to get an understanding of your garden, maybe if you already have a plan to do some of these other things to control the weeds, maybe just start with the hand weeding at first.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Even if you don't have any intention to doing it long term, yeah. Just so you know what are the characteristics of these weeds. Yeah. Are they shallow root? Are they deep root? Are they showing up in your bare sections of the yard? Because then alternatively, you can do things to discourage those if it's not so much that you don't want growth there, but you just don't want this particular weed trying to you know get it away. You get to know those weeds. Like nuts edge, for example. Nuts edge is a horrible one, and you pretty much have to hand weed it. There's not really any other options, they're gonna come back. They don't like rich nutrient soils, they like something that's a little bit dry, um usually low nutrient, that is occasionally getting water. So, what what do we get it usually in our gardens? Because it's bad soils and you're dumping water on it with sprinklers. Oh, exactly. Perfect. But as soon as shade forms, soon as other things form, they don't like to live anymore.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Nature knows how to cover it with the right thing, it's gonna do its job. So the first way that we control the weeds is weeding by hand. Yep. Secondly, I would say is smothering it, and I use the contractor paper method. So the image there is, you know, contractor paper first, and then we uh put our mulch on top, whether that's straw, grass clippings, wood chips, wood shavings, whatever it is. You know, we mulch on top of that.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And you can use things like cardboard too, if it doesn't have a lot of dyes. The problem, the reason you like contractor paper is because there's not a lot of gaps in it, like a cardboard box.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yes, cardboard boxes. I always get it where it grows up between the cracks and it drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

You kind of have to do like two or three layers where you like overlap them, but then you know, so that contractor paper is a quick and easy, you just roll it.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

You roll it out, and then I always go two layers thick. I like the two layers thick of contractor paper, and it's 14 bucks, you know, in the painting section to get a huge 140-50-foot roll.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Some rolls are like a heck of a lot thicker. I've seen ones that are like double thickness, you can get away with one, but they usually come in a lot shorter, so it's kind of a and I still I still double layer, double layer those.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

And the nice thing with that method of smothering and then putting your wood chips up, it's a great way to handle a reset that hasn't gotten too out of hand. Now, if the reset is getting really bad, like you got three or four foot tall weeds, you probably are gonna have to weed whack that first to knock those weeds down, damage the weed a little bit, and then cover that weed up, and then you know, put your stuff on top of it, you know, that way. So, way number one that we deal with that weeding by hand. Number two is covering it up, smothering it. What's a third way um for you that is really good with you know this weed control thing? Just accept your fate.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, you're you're not getting rid of them. Um, you're you're gonna have them whether you want it or not. It obviously depends. I I think it comes down to identify your weeds. Yeah, because a lot of times, like we talked about earlier, they may be filling a niche that you may need, and it honestly may be the cheapest way of filling it because you can plant things that are gonna fill the space. Um, but if you have weeds like Biden pilosa, like I talked about earlier. I don't know if this is Albert Pylosa, but it's one of those. Um, it's medicinal and it's a good miner of nutrients, and it is able to survive in depleted soils. So, I mean and a great pollinator. Great.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

You know, the butterflies and bees love it. And if you're in the north, dandelions are probably the most common weeds, like dandelions and plantain and chicory are the three big ones. They're all edible, they're all medicinal, they're all amazing pollinators. So it's like, yeah, if I can't beat them, join them.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

And yeah, you can you can rip these out and try to find something else, but honestly, nothing is gonna grow in your garden better than the weeds that are already growing there. Oh, yeah. So if it's something that's beneficial, we have um, what is it, hairy vetch? Hairy vetch in Florida. It's a nitrogen fixer. Yeah, and it's a little bush, and it's not the prettiest thing, but you know, but if it's growing there and it's not bothering you and it's not getting in your way, just leave it. It's a nitrogen fixer. When you you know weed it every now and again, it'll fix nitrogen. And otherwise, you're gonna be paying for a lot of money for fancy plants that are gonna do essentially the same thing. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

And I would say with that, you can't beat them join a mindset. We also need to be aware that some people live in an HOA where you can't have weeds like that growing, so it may or may not be an option. But I would say in the further back areas for most people, living with the weeds isn't okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

If you have a couple acres, you know, you keep your front, you know, section a little bit cleaner, and that's you know, your pretty area that you go out and have, you know, your patio, and that's where you drink your tea. And then maybe the back sections where it's like, well, you have to go there intentionally. You just mow yourself a little path, and yeah, and that's where I think wildflowers come in.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Yeah, I do love wildflowers. That that image right there has got some choreopsis, um, some blue stem grass, it's got some of the native Fakahatchie grass, it's got some um laatris and gay feather. I mean, it's got some really fun stuff in there. And that was a wildflower area that I did a couple area a couple years ago that I just didn't want to ever weed the food for. So it's just gonna be wildflowers, you know. So I think, you know, planting that understory densely, that's our way number four. Plant the understory densely, it can be with wildflowers, it can be with clover, it can be a cover crop. You know, I'm a big fan of the edible cover crops, like the Daikan radish and the purple top turnips and your wheat or rye or barley or um, what's the other one, the pretty flowers? Buckwheat, you know, grown buckwheat in there. Beautiful ways to do an understory.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

And and there's multiple ways. You don't even have to necessarily have something that's like a grass alternative or like you know, the meadow alternative. You can put things like Fakahi grass where it's a little bit more upright, a little more aesthetic. It might take a little bit of extra work, but it is gonna reduce your weeding because you just have to weed around an already well-established grass rather than having to weed the whole area. Right. And there's there's multiple ways to now.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

When you look at aggressive ground covers to help with that cover cropping, what are some of your favorite kind of Florida subtropical zone nine through eleven? What are some of your favorite go-to's for those ground covers in general?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

I mean, for year-round stuff, you've got the the the Holy Trinity of ground cover, hardy ground covers. You got your perennial peanut, your sunshine mimosa, and your frog fruit. Yep. Um, now you're not gonna be able to do all three because no matter what, I don't think I've seen a single property that grows all three. But they all perform a very similar niche. They are a thick, dense ground cover that can grow in with grass, so you can still keep that grass feel without you know allowing other things because it'll fill in all the little gaps and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Let's touch on each of those real quick. So, frog fruit, I think, is one of people's favorite natives because it's the host plant for the peacock butterfly. Very, very pretty. They have cute little like ball-like little flowers with tiny little petals on it.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

But they they grow very well next to like asphalt.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Yes, yep. They thrive in soil that's really been damaged and they thrive in soil compaction as well. If you have light, airy soil, it doesn't always grow quite quite as well. Now, a little bit about Sunshine Mimosa. What do you like about Sunshine Mimosa?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

I like it because obviously natives, natives are good, yeah. Um, but then also they have such a deep taproot. I mean, their taproot can get like one, two feet deep, and we're talking about a plant that like at max is gonna grow like eight inches off the ground, and that's it, really reaching for it. So it's gonna be growing well with your grasses, it's not gonna compete with them. Good soil stabilizer. Good soil stabilizer. It also aerates because of its taproot. Yep. Um, it creeps in vines, so it does spread quite a bit, but it's never gonna take over anything. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

And I would say the one thing that's little flowers, yeah. I the Dr. Seuss Horton Hairs of Who flower. That's a great thing. The thing that I would be careful of, like you said, it has a very deep taproot, is don't plant that one around septic. That's the one that I would just owe. Immediately avoid your septic areas. Now, perennial peanut's the opposite. That has a very shallow root system, very fibrous. It's a much easier one to grow over a septic area. Um, it doesn't grow as densely all the time, but it's an easy one to mow and reset.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I was gonna say the Sunshine Mimosa doesn't really handle getting mowed very often.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Right. It I mean it can, but the peanut's gonna be better for the better for the mowing. And I would say a fourth one to throw into that, it's not a native, but is pan at all, the uh plectoranthus barbados rough. Um, and it's it's arcanus rough, and it's a really good, smells a little bit medicinally like cannabis, um but it's great at keeping rodents away. So it's a good one to have under avocado trees, around a feed shed, mulberries. You do not want it in an area where you're walking through a lot because you will smell like cannabis. So don't go into the your pick up your kids at school or into the library afterwards, you'll get some looks, you know, or some offers.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Well, yeah, but you know, they try to smoke that. It's that and what uh cassava. It's my two things. You plant those together, and you're gonna have somebody break into your about to win big. Yeah, they're crazy for a bad day. Oh, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

All right, way number five to control the weeds. Well about northerns. Did you say too many of the oh, I didn't say any northern? So some of my favorite, yeah, northern climate ones for zones three through eight. I would say first is sweet woodruff, grows really low to the ground, pretty white flour. The white flour I used to use to basically make um uh a cordial. So you can add it into like Kool-Aids, you know, for kids. You can add it into a white wine and sweeten it up. So I really like sweet woodruff. I love wild ginger. Wild ginger, it's not really an edible ginger, but it gets these cool, like lily pad-shaped flowers and can grow right up against the trunk of the tree and then spread all the way out. So I think it's a very, very attractive one, you know, for a ground cover. So those are probably my two favorites. Like lily pads almost. Really like lily pads. If you like that like aquatic look, it's cool. We actually used them at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, um, which we helped do a lot of their landscaping a couple years in a row, um, in the mermaid cove because it looks like underwater, you know, fun. So it was it was kind of a neat, neat adventure. So I would say those are my my favorite ones for the colder climate. But then, but then how do you manage all those things? You know, though both of those go dormant in the winter and they come right back in the spring. And that's it. And they both grow so dense, weeds don't really grow up through them hardly at all. They do better in shade part sun, um, not as much in full sun, um, but they do better in that part shade um kind of avenue. So way number five, which has my favorite picture because there's chickens unashamedly. Um way number five is hire your chickens or hire your livestock, whatever you've got.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Your sheep, your goats, to go through and do the weeding.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

The nice thing with hiring the animals, which those are some of the birds that I had up in Michigan, and they're going through the like clover field in there. And anytime I would let them go in the clover field, they're so happy. They're just like just talking to each other, talking to me for days and days and days. This photo has so many more chickens. I just had to prop it down in the one, but and a lot of clover. That was in our apple orchard, just super pretty. Um, so using the chickens is great because it's not just getting rid of the weeds, they're turning it into compost. They're fertilizing at the same time, they're doing bug control, they're doing insect control, they're scratching, and so they're aerating the soil, bringing in good, healthy bacteria, you know, back in and mic into the microbiome. So I love hiring the birds to go in, also because it's free food and organic chicken feed is like$35 to$38 a bag right now. So it's like anytime I can offset that by weeds, absolutely. And if you can't let your chickens go through it, I would say at least, like my mom, put the the weeds in a basket or the deadheads in a basket and be willing to throw that over to the birds and let them just put the weeds in their chicken coop. So if you have a stationary coop that's not mobile, you can still throw all the weeds, all the scraps, all the garden waste back into the chicken coop.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Well, and you can really get them really thinking about stuff too, because like I've seen a lot of people who have a stationary chicken coop and they have like a mulch pile or a scratch pile, depending on where they are, and that's where they throw all their weeds and stuff too. So even if you're hand weeding and you still want to get the benefit of the benefits of that, lots of benefits from it.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Just don't throw it away. Like that's the main thing. Don't put it in a bag and send it out to the road. No reason for that.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

And in most cases, not every animal, I'm gonna disclose that you know there's always that one niche case of that one animal that likes to eat the poisonous stuff. But in the for most cases, a lot of the animals won't eat things that they're they're not safe to, especially chickens. And so they'll just kind of step on it, they'll poop on it, and then it'll just decompose. Yep, exactly. That's been my experience. I know. Easy, easy.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

And then I would say way number six to control the weeds, if you're trying to like reset this food for us, is kill it with fire. Fire, fire, fire. What was that old? There was that old video of like muffins, and at the end of it, he was like, fire muffin. And that's what I think of every time we'd say that. So I like this method. It's stress relieving to me. This is how I weed the driveway where the rocks are, is I don't do hand weeding, I don't spray it with vinegar, I burn it. It's just so much fun. I'm a pyromaniac. I've always got like candles burning, incense burning, I'm lighting a campfire. I could sit by the fire all the time. So using that torch, it's so much fun. But you gotta be wise. You've got to be wise.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Be careful.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Especially right now, that like it's drought. It's drought in a lot of places, very, very windy, and you don't want to get too close to your existing plants because homeboy, you'll kill your fruit trees. Like, and you get too close to those trees, you know, with the torch because the heat radiates a foot or two feet. So you may have to, you know, burn around the tree and then do something else next to it.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

And it depends on like how big your weeds are, if they're you know, if you're getting up to your knees, then fire may not be the best option because not so much. But I mean there's some native sections that I have like up in the front where it's all like drylands, pine lands, things, and those can handle a little bit of fire. And so that's actually more mimicking that natural cycle of fire and then rejuvenate. I personally like if there's a new area I'm setting up, I like to burn it all. And then I like to come in and then put the contractor paper. That's why then you have that comp that you're stressing out the plants you want to smother already. That's good. Then you have all those chemicals and minerals that come with burning it.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

So you get that, you know, 100% all that carbon and potassium and yada yada yada you get all the things. And the the only downside I would say with the burning method is that you do have to go back and then cover your soil anyway. Well I think that's with all these though. Yeah. I mean all of these nature's gonna cover it.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Yep because you I mean you you stunted them but then in most of these cases you don't want to take nutrients away from the site. You want to leave it there in some capacity whether that's your composting it bring the compost back you're using birds or whatever to eat that and they're leaving their manure. All of these things you don't want to take away from your garden you want to leave the nutrients well then that nutrients is still there and something's gonna try and eat it. So you're just gonna be back where you started with the same weeds unless you do one of these methods.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So really it's a two part question. It's how do I control the weeds but then the second part of it is what am I going to fill that void with? Am I gonna fill it with wildflowers, with compost and wood chips, with a cover crop, with you know whatever it happened a cover a cover weed or whatever, but you're gonna have to cover it with something the bare soil is only going to be bare soil for a minute. But it gives you that nice instant gratification I've got a reset I can get this under control. And there's a different application for everything. You know for some people the burning method is going to be the best for the next person just smothering it covering it with wood chips that's gonna be the better option. But the thing to keep in mind is that we are working in synergy and in harmony with nature not against nature. These weeds are doing a job that we need to be doing with nature itself. Absolutely and also my uh tea is done too hot I've been able to drink more it was great. So while we he finishes his tea if you could just take a minute like comment subscribe uh feel free to ask questions there in the comments below it was a great time hopefully this was a little bit helpful to you to have a few extra tools in the tool belt and we'll see y'all on the next one. Yep yep later