Last Updated on March 14, 2024 by Brian Beck
Oh boy, this is a fun subject with a lot of confusion. Weeds are best seen as a nutrient deficiency in the soil rather than an infestation. There I said it. Some people have the mistaken idea that weeds are a pesticide deficiency and there are companies that gladly accommodate this belief. Listen if you have your lawn crop dusted every few weeks you are approaching this whole game in the worst way possible.
In nature, a forest if you take time to look while you are there next time, exists with biodiversity. Each plant pushes and pulls nutrients in and out of the soil and is shared and competed for in the soil food web of the microbiome. Monocultures (one kind of plant) in nature are extremely rare and are almost always made-made. This can be best observed in a corn field. I am using corn as an example because it is technically a tropical grass and similar to turf grass requirements. Corn is a juggernaut with nitrogen. It is a monster and takes an enormous number of resources to grow. When the crop is finished and if the farmer is wise, he will plant a nitrogen fixing cover crop or a legume such as vetch, clover or soybean that actually has the ability to turn atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form of nitrogen. Biodiversity can be achieved by crop rotation but what about turf? You are not going to dig up your lawn and plant something else for the purpose of biodiversity, right? That is crazy talk! This is one of the reasons why turf lawns need to have supplemental inputs as they cannot achieve them through a natural process.
So, where am I going with this can I just pull out my weed killer and be done murdering some weeds already you ask? Hold on, you don’t need to just yet. Let me explain further and you will learn to “read your lawn” rather than punish it, or rather the soil I should say. You must understand the natural progression of plant life on this blue ball we call earth. If you take a bare patch of soil and watch one thing will most certainly happen. It will start to grow broadleaf annuals. These are usually called weeds. Some are indigenous and some are from the other side of the planet. Most weeds have health and medicinal properties but that is outside the scope of this book. I will use two weeds that everyone is aware of. Dandelions and tumble weeds. You will probably see dandelions as your bum of a neighbor has a few thousand of them in his lawn and because he did not deal with them you have them thanks to a gentle wind from the west. Tumble weeds are called Russian thistle and are from the steppes of Russia and Ukraine (bet you didn’t know that! Hollywood has it all wrong). Also, I am mildly allergic to them as I was forced to mow a field about 15 years ago that was 5 acres and 3 of them were guess what? Yup, Russian thistle. I was so bad that when I got home my wife thought I had gotten into a fight from the reaction, so I have a bit of a grudge with these weeds despite their iconic presence in Western movies. They are a fraud plant that got here by getting a free ride on a ship sometime back in the early part of the 19th century. If you have these on your lawn you are probably going to get a call from code enforcement. Dandelions, however, are an interesting little plant, technically a perennial plant meaning it will come back year after year. By the way those dandelions that come up in april, you know before the possibility of germination are from last year, you just didn’t see them while they were germinating following the wind from your neighbor. They are from the Europe and Asian continents, and you can thank your ancestors on the Mayflower for bring them over here for you to complain about. They are eaten in the far East for their health benefits and are really groovy in a salad and can help an upset stomach. OK, a bit on a tangent but this is interesting. Dandelions with other plants are indicators of soil conditions. Dandelions like to grow in three remarkable areas. Soils that are acidic, soils with calcium deficiencies and soils that are compacted.
Since we have typically and notoriously alkaline soils in an arid climate and because Colorado used to sit under a lake, we have an abundance of calcium thanks to the micro shell life that existed in the trillions, we don’t typically have an issue here. What we do have, however, is highly compacted soils due to the use of you know what.
Getting back to my story, the natural progression of plant life is annual broadleaf followed by perennial broadleaf, annual and perennial grasses, small trees and shrubs, and then larger trees and shrubs, all of which have the intended purpose of retaining water in the soil and cooling the temperature of the soil to support microbial life which likes the soil to be at room temperature, around 72°. This is how a forest is created. You won’t see this in your lifetime as it can take hundreds of years sometimes to create but that is the formula for a forest. So, when you see a dandelion on your lawn you will know that it is probably a result of compaction from a lack of biology in your lawn and isn’t so much a scourge as you have been led to believe. That doesn’t give your neighbor a reprieve. He still needs to be talked to.
As far as treating the weeds please avoid using synthetic pesticides as they affect the biology in the soil. Believe it or not there are some products that we will recommend that are made with non-toxic materials that work just as well without any risk to you, you kids, your pets, wildlife (bees, gotta love the bees) and the microbes (gotta love the small critters you can’t see).