We’re into the New Year and with it comes New Year’s resolutions. What’s yours? One of mine is to care less what other people think. I know I’m not alone here, it’s a common one. Most of us do care what everyone else thinks. We are a social species after all and being approved of and belonging to the tribe is what ensures our survival.
We see this deep, usually unconscious, need play out all the time when people come into the Kandanga Farm Store looking for a way to ‘get rid of weeds’. They don’t want poison (that’s why they come to us instead of another store) but want an organic product that does exactly-the-same-thing as common synthetic herbicides (there isn’t one by the way). By asking some questions and in delving deeper, we have found, nearly without exception, that the reason most people feel compelled to poison their landscapes is because they want to be seen to be doing the right thing. Hmmm.
‘If you have weeds you are lazy, if you have weeds you are a bad manager, if you have weeds they will take over, and not just your place but your neighbour’s place too and that means you are irresponsible’. These are common drivers of decision making. At this time of year, with the heat, moisture and humidity, plants are shooting out of the ground. It’s wonderful, but also very upsetting for everyone who wants to Control their landscape. It’s why this is the time of year when chemical sales spike and when we get asked the most for ‘chemical-free alternatives’.
But weeds are just plants and nature does not differentiate. Functioning landscapes are abundant with a diversity of plants, on multiple layers – ground covers,
shrubs, trees and everything in between and at varying stages of their life cycles. This green leaf cover provides habitat and food for a multitude of species
above the ground and the unfathomable plethora of life below the soil surface – life that only exists when there are plants photosynthesizing for, and because of, them. These plants are also instrumental in regulating the climate. Killing these plants might make things look your version of tidy but what is the opportunity cost?
Are we saying just do nothing? Noooooo!! We are advocating an active relationship with your landscape. Nothing sits still in nature, nothing stays the same and it is only the dynamic forces of ecosystem function that enable stability and resilience. Work with them. How? Start by focusing on what you want rather than what you don’t. Do you want abundant life, diversity, palatable and nutrient dense food/fodder? Then focus on that rather than getting rid of the things you don’t want; rather than killing. Your weeds are natures free place holders, actively contributing to nutrient functioning until such a time as the conditions are right for another plant to come along. Destroying soil life by poisoning it, (even indirectly when poisoning plants, burning or tilling) is going backwards not forwards and gives the soil something else to address rather than to work with.
So, this year stop worrying about what the human neighbours think and start thinking about your other neighbours – the natural community you belong to. Contributing to that community will be far more rewarding in the long run.
