It Feels Good To Play In The Dirt

Playing in the Dirt
I've read that getting your hands in the dirt is somehow good for your health. I am not a psychologist, but I know that I get great satisfaction out of getting my hands in it. There is something very therapeutic about digging holes to plant things and in getting down into the soil to pull weeds. Today, like every day, I pulled weeds. Some folks ask if my new landscape requires me to weed. Of course it does. I do not find that to be an onerous task. Pulling up the bad actors and freeing up space for the plants I want gives me pleasure.
We know now a great deal more about how plants communicate with each other. There are vast underground and above-ground networks that allow plants to know who is around them. They provide some help to those in the network that are relatives and they compete with those that aren't. How exactly they do that is for the researchers of the future. It's just enough for me to iknow that it is happening. We also know that plants form communities and somehow thrive better when they have one to live in.
As I pull the unwanteds out of the spaces around my desirables, I imagine that they thank me. Whether they do or not is irrelevant. It's just enough to know that their root systems are no longer having to compete with the plants that are taking up space and valuable water and nutrients. 
As my landscape develops, I weed every day. I guess that I am fortunate to have the time to do so at this point in my life, but I've always found a little time each day to survey my planting areas and to pull a few of the things that I have not purposely planted. Daily weeding at this point in my landscape is critical to its long-term success. The seed bank in my previous lawn does not contain anything desirable. What comes up in the now-bare soil are invasive pests like diamond flower, nonnative lawn sedges, Asiatic dayflower, green shrimp plant and Richardia. They are easy to pull when they are at the several-leaf stage of their lives, but much more difficult once they are fully established. Their seeds have laid dormant beneath the turf for years and the disturbance and the sunshine are stimulating their growth now. If I can rid the plated areas of my new landscape of these emerging weeds and before they can produce new seeds, the seed bank will eventually be "overdrawn."  In the future as my plants gain stature, there will be far less weeds to contend with.
I always recommend to new gardeners to not to bite off more than they can chew. Too many folks that get drawn into this new "religion" of creating living landscapes get overzealous. New landscapes need maintenance. They don't have to be created overnight. If you can't get into the dirt on an almost daily basis, the weeds will out compete your plantings and your landscape will fall apart. It took years for me to reach a point in my former yard to find balance and it will take years for these plantings to do the same. That is fine with me. I like to play in the dirt and I accepted that responsibility when I dug my first hole and planted something purposely. Life is appearing around me even though I began this venture only nine months ago. It will continue to develop, I hope, as long as I fulfill my obligations to these plants, get a bit dirty every day, and remove their competitors.

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 9, 2019 at 7:58 AM

    I am a poster child for what you termed "overzealous" and am paying dearly for that mistake. Mostly I didn't have a clue how horrible Bermuda grass is and how difficult it is to deal with. Can I start over? Hahahaaa. But yes, indeed I get a lot of satisfaction from pulling it. My husband and I have competitions to see who can come up with the longest and most complete strand of root!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ethics of Collecting Seed

Image
I've been writing lately about seeds and using them to create what is often called a pollinator meadow. A great many of the plants in my new landscape were grown from seed. Frankly, I have always loved sowing seeds and watching them sprout. I started in early childhood and I've been doing it since. It's rewarding and the anticipation of waiting for seeds to sprout is difficult to match unless you play the lottery. I rarely purchase seeds. I collect them. When I can, I purchase a few plants of a species I wish to add to my landscape and I then collect their seed after they bloom. If a plant doesn't prosper sufficiently to set seed for me, it is not a plant I wish to continue to grow. Over the years, I've tried a great many plants that I've failed to adequately provide for. Today in my landscape, I'm trying a few that I've never tried before. The exceptions come from plants that are not available in the trade. To grow these from seed, I need to collect
Read more

Wildflower Meadows - The Importance of Grasses

Image
A Natural Wildflower "Meadow" - Apalachicola National Forest I grew up in the prairie Midwest and was fortunate to have been caught up in the prairie restoration movement that blazed brightly in the last few decades of this past century. Very little of our original prairie ecosystems remain as the rich prairie soils were quickly converted to agricultural uses as European settlers swarmed their way over the continent.  These ecosystems are extremely diverse, regardless of where they occur. From the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest to the rockland prairies of the Mid-South and the true dry prairie systems here in Florida where I now reside, there are several universal characteristics - they are some of the most species diverse systems in the world and they are dominated by grasses. Grasses, in all their many shapes and forms, are what form the foundation of any "meadow." That must also be true for all the "wildflower meadows" I see extolled on s
Read more

A Pollinator Garden is More than Wildflowers

Image
A natural grass-dominated meadow in the shade Splitbeard bluestem - Andropogon ternarius Lopsided Indiangrass - Sorghastrum secundum Sites on social media that are promoting pollinator gardens are rife with posts about wildflowers. Folks seeking to make their landscapes pollinator friendly seem to be almost-universally focused on wildflowers. What these well-meaning people seem to not understand is the importance of native grasses. Meadows, prairies, and other wildflower-dominated systems are mostly grass. Grasses form the backbone of every one of these plant communities. It isn't the wildflowers. They simply provide most of the color - but a living landscape is not about color, it's about creating habitat, and this habitat requires us to incorporate native grasses. It is true that the vast majority of grasses, and their graminoid relatives, are wind pollinated. They do not provide nectar and pollen for the most part, but despite that they are significant. More s
Read more