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Writer's pictureMarianne Bergmann

Weeds and Water


A flower doesn't compete with the flowers next to it, it just blooms right? Wrong. Sorry, I know the sentiment of that quote is beautiful, unfortunately it's just not what happens in nature. Flowers and all plants are in constant competition for resources. Sunshine, water, and minerals from the soil. There is a reason that farmers plant crops specific distances apart. It's for optimal growth and production, and the same goes for flowers and vegetables. After soil quality and temperature, Weeds and Water are two of the factors with the greatest ability to affect the success of your garden. It doesn't matter what your ideologies are about farming, weeds are never a good thing.

We get a lot of questions about landscape fabric and why we don't grow our plants in it. Landscape fabric is all the rage these days, and it has benefits. It's important to remember that farming and gardening will never be one type fits all... and what works for one may not work for someone else, and that's ok! It's all about finding what works for you, For us, landscape fabric isn't a viable option for a few reasons. The first is our water system. Due to reasons I'll discuss later in this blog, we use only overhead irrigation (sprinklers). To use fabric most effectively it's best to use drip irrigation. The next reason is that plants do best in fabric when it doesn't get too hot. Fabric helps retain heat, which is great in cool temperatures, but we are coming off a 40-degree day, and the plant roots could quite literally cook in the ground if we used fabric! Fabric can also lead to major issues with cutworms and fungus. Laying down fabric causes a perfect habitat for cutworms to multiply and makes it nearly impossible to try to irradiate them until it's too late. Since our soil is heavy clay-based soil (we do lots to lighten it, but its still clay based) it retains moisture, in a wet year with lots of rain, the fabric traps in moisture and doesn't allow for ventilation of the soil or plants. This can cause bacteria to grow and can-do major harm to your plants. That clay soil also makes planting into small holes in fabric a bit of a nightmare. I've seen people planting seedlings into fabric using a butterknife... that wouldn't work for us, and it would take a ton of time to get our garden planted.

Those were the cons, and for us the reasons we have opted to not use fabric. There are of course pros to using fabric, so if the things listed above aren't a problem for you, try it! It really helps with weed maintenance, which is very important to the success of your garden, plus weed free looks great! If you have a long cool spring, it can help retain heat and help your plants grow faster, and if you have sandy soil, it can really help retain moisture! Those are the biggest perks, but they really can make a huge difference especially for a farm our size. I really like to keep a weed free garden, and I wish fabric was an option for us simply because it seems like that would be so much easier if we used fabric. Maybe we'll try it in a section next year.



I mentioned earlier that we use only overhead sprinklers instead of drip-line irrigation. This too has its pros and cons, but rather than being a choice at this time, it's based on our water source. We use Red River water to irrigate our flowers. It's the best water because it's warm in summer which is ideal for plants, and it's free of any softeners. Plus, it's free so that's always great too. The downside is that it has a lot of sediment. It's red for a reason... and if we used drip-line irrigation it would be plugged constantly. That's just a battle I'm not willing to fight. If that isn't an issue for you, drip line has perks! For one, you can water only where you have plants growing - which means the pathways and weeds stay dry while the plants get the necessary moisture. Also, and this is a big one; watering at the roots like drip-line irrigation does is better for the plants. It causes them to develop strong roots and gives more moisture to the plant where it needs it. It also lessens the probability of damaging flowers, and breeding disease due to overhead watering.



Drip-line irrigation does have a few cons though, and for us this is a big one - it does nothing to protect your plants from frost. If it weren't for our overhead irrigation, we wouldn't be able to protect our large fields from frost in early spring (like we did last week! We saved some of our plants during last week's frost using our sprinklers) and fall. If we were to get a light frost early in fall that could destroy our gardens without overhead watering. But with it, we may get a few extra weeks of season and for us could mean a big financial difference!

Like all decisions, you must decide what works best for you and go with it! When it comes to gardening you always have next season so don't stress it too much. Hope this helps explain the why behind some of the ways we do things, and maybe helps you with some of your own gardening choices!


M

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