Vegetables, Herbs, and Weeds Oh My !

Oh do I have some good brain busters today! I recently returned from my trip up to my parents home. I was in serious need of a break from my old routines and needed to see my favorite people. It’s funny how much I miss the mountains. I never really gave it a thought when I moved to south east Georgia, but then being down here for six months or more at a time where EVERYTHING IS FLAT, I cannot even express how much I appreciate the beauty of mountains. On my drive up, I go through part of the smokey mountains and I always love how I feel so small like those mountains down give a damn that I am there. However, I am not going to be talking about mountains in this one. Instead, I am going to talk about how crazy wild and awesome my garden was when I returned.

Now I was not raised in a farming family so I am just “winging it” and learning as I go, which has been fun and infuriating all at the same time. When I returned, the first thing I did was go into my yard to check out all the plants, I couldn’t believe that my lettuce was FIVE FOOT TALL with the cutest little flowers on top ready to bloom. There were weeds everywhere in all of my garden boxes. (I cannot plant any food in the ground since Bryar is a boy and would love to cover it all with his urine.) Unfortunately, my zucchini and butternut squash had taken a hit and the leaves were wilting and starting to die. So I panicked a little and immediately started weeding and researching organic and all natural ways to get rid of bugs and fungus. This was all after an eight hour drive so I decided to take the rest of the night off and come back tomorrow ready to whip this garden back into shape.

When I came out early the next day I was on a mission. I felt like I started at 500 mph and was slowly taken down to 20 mph without any hesitation or reluctance. I was enjoying. Sometimes I talk to the plants, whistle, or hum. I think its deemed as an Old Wives Tale that plants like to be talked to. As I slowed down, I started to notice a pattern. The small weeds were growing in and around the established veggies and herbs. Not out in the open. Well now wouldn’t it be easier for them to grow in the bare dirt? Wouldn’t their seeds fall there more naturally? It was almost like the weeds were trying to camouflage themselves into the others so I wouldn’t notice them. But they weren’t competing. It wasn’t like the weeds were trying to choke the other out or vice versa. They were living and all of them looked healthy. Well this had my brain turning and I felt bad because if I wouldn’t be trying to grow food, I probably would have just left the weeds there because if my flower beds have a weed and it’s a pretty flower; it has earned its right and it stays. Who am I to even say what a flower is and what a weed is. If its pretty and harmless, it remains. Anyways, I started applying human principles to this scenario all thanks to Peter Wohlleben because we now know the environment is very similar to human life. Okay now I know I am ridiculous and over-think way to much but could have the weeds been trying to camouflage themselves as a defense mechanism to stay alive? Do they know they are weeds so they try to hide amongst established plants? I didn’t do any research about that yet, I don’t even know if someone in the world cares enough about weeds to figure that out but hopefully! I was also thinking since plants have defenses with warning each other about potential predators then wouldn’t an established plant be able to send some kind of signal or completely take away the weeds needs for survival? Or can the weeds completely disguise themselves to fall under the radar to the plant they are trying to hide with? “Things that make ya go hmmm.”

Another one of my observations was with plants that weren’t doing so good. The zucchini had some kind of problem and were all starting to wilt so not much mystery there, they just got sick. But my fascination came with the tomato plants. I had no idea that tomatoes are so picky! They need to have the right amount of vitamins in the soil to ensure they do not rot or get an array of other diseases. On certain stalks I could see that some leaves would turn brown and start to fall off but then the next set of leaves above or below the one that died would turn brown too only with a day or two delay. Okay now I know this just sounds like it has a disease and is dying how it should but just hold on and stay with me. But to my surprise, the stalk would recover from the loss of those two steams and look completely healthy. This wasn’t just one scenario, I saw it happen on a majority of my tomato plants. My thoughts: Does the plant see it is in trouble (like most do) and sends all its defenses to that area to protect the stalk? Does it take the vitamins from the closest neighbor on the main stalk and that is why another stem dies with it? Or does it say, “Oh crap I need to cut off that part because its sick” and that is why the two closest stems die together? Is it just because of the natural spread of disease my plants got lucky that only two steams died and the rest didn’t catch it? Is it because those stems didn’t successfully grow actual tomatoes so the stalk said, “You failed, byee!” Or is it because the stalk felt bad that only one was dying so he sent another stem to die alongside it for comfort?

OKAY I know the last one is a stretch into the abyss, just wanted to make sure you’re paying attention. You have to understand that I am the type of person that decorates my house for every season and if I see a cute lonely trinket sitting on the shelf that probably won’t be picked…it usually comes home with me. Not far off from the scenario with Percy the Puny Poinsettia. In the end, I am hoping to get my spark back for research and I can tell you all if everything I just said has some truth or if I am full of crap. I really enjoy going after ideas and scenarios that aren’t discussed, I like the unknown, the unseen, the things that sit behind the curtain that not a lot of people know about. They usually need to be talked about but in a space that people can truly sit and listen. I think that is why I tend to believe in myths because I want there to be things in this world we simply do not know about. I so desperately want there to still be “magic”. I think that is why I am pulled to nature so stronger because there is still something extraordinarily confidential yet familiar about being out in the woods. It just doesn’t seem to tell you what that is. Wander.