Weeds are indictors of our failure

Weeds are counter-ego of planters.

Unwanted plants keeps on coming back to cropping fields as we keep farmers busy in killing them- a never ending warfare that drains out farmers of time and resources. In reality so called weeds are great indicators of shortcomings of farming practice. 

Weeds are mostly indigenous and thus more resilient to climatic adversities, pest and diseases. While crop plants which have been domesticated over hundreds of years through process of natural selection and huge research and developments, the weeds sustained onslaughts over generations to remain in being. And they make their unwarranted appearance to hurt our ego and telling bluntly where we have gone wrong. The irony is that the targeted audience is often geek to it. 

In the natural realm every organism has a role cut-out to play- so for the ‘weeds’. We might find them obnoxious and irritating but all of them are WIP- the work that has been assigned by the nature in balancing out. If we are able to see the relevance of apparently unwanted plants, no more we would term any plant ever as weeds and would rather learn from them to improve our farming.

Biodynamic agriculture teaches one to be respectful to all lives and learn to understand hidden messages at the farms. To throw some examples, obnoxious ferns indicates excess moisture and increasing nature of soil-acidity so more than the requirement of killing those ferns, one has to resort to a better drainage system and correcting soil acidity. Thatches, against which tonnes of chemicals and mandays are spent can best be addressed by adding more compost in the soil as thatch primarily is at the place to break stones in the soil and binding transformed sand particles  with an aggregating work that involved root exudes, biofilms from bacteria, glomalin from fungi, secretion of earthworms and much more. Thus you could find dominance of grasses only at loose sandy soil and rather than hating appreciating them.

Soli which are already hard panned or have cement like cast on the upper layer are great indicators of excessive use of chemical fertilizers and deep ploughing / repeated soil works in rains / waterlogged condition. Here generally we find plants with flatter leaves that arranges close to the soil surface horizontally. Plants like dandelion, wild radish are great examples and by virtue of their deep root they tend to bring up tapped calcium down below to the upper crust and make the soil more crumbly and fertile.

You hate nettles? In used to do that a lot in my youth till that time when I got enlightened of its beauty. A bunch of nettle plants can convert an infertile land in very few years to a productive one. You need to pick up a nettle from soil to mark dark humus it produces around the root zone. The composition of the plant, its balance with fiber and moisture make it a perfect crop to be mulched and composted and mind you Nettle grows well in relatively infertile areas.

Nightshades are mostly considered weeds in farmlands and these tend to grow where there are localized accumulation of heavy metals and semi digested organic matter thus this group always have the plants which are toxic when crushed- Datura is a glaring example.  

But my wife loves Petunia and I know that nightshade plants widely regarded as toxic do also have plants like beautiful Petunias which are relatively less toxic- the deeper hollow you see in a nightshade flower, more you should be worried about their toxicity. You are not worried about domesticated potato or brinjal but there are enough reasons for that if you ever encounter with their wild varieties.