Chop ‘til you drop
Weeding at the edge of life and death
Chop ‘n drop:
It’s kind of a cliche in permaculture at this point, but it’s one of those elements of the superset of best practices for gardening that is not only one of the cornerstones of my (evolving) technique, but which ably goes back to this question of where life starts and stops, more fully explored here:
Comfrey grows freely on our property, and I thought I would see if it really does have the magical effects permaculture-adherents attribute to it. Results seem to be basically “whatever” from a purely observational perspective. Nothing special looks like it’s happening. At least not relative to my much higher-order globs of chopped weeds, chicken manure, straw and woodchips. Compared to the activity in soil areas treated with that, comfrey looks pretty lackluster.
But you can chop and drop anything, including whatever weeds you pull out of your garden. (Okay, not “whatever” weeds — there are exceptions, which you’ll most likely do best to learn “the hard way”) But in general, the name of the game seems to be composting in place, letting things break down relatively close to where they themselves chose to grow — unless there is some higher-value transformation you can do with them (for food, sale, etc). It doesn’t have to be comfrey. It can be dandelions, grass, whatever. The concept is the same (though watch out for plants with aggressive rooting — these might be best removed and fed to animals)
Once you’ve chopped and dropped your plants — whatever they are — when exactly do they stop being “alive?”
At the second you cut them, of course. Wrong. Many plants can be re-rooted from cuttings, for example. So the point of harvest or separation from the parent material may not just be not the end, but may actually be a fully new beginning.
Do plants, then, only “die” after they have dried up and shriveled on the surface where there is no hope of reproducing them?
Maybe.
But by the time they’ve reached that point, have they somehow miraculously leached out their precious “life juice” which has been dranken up by other (mostly micro-) organisms?
Probably.
But the barrier line seems even more fluid when we consider that the substance of their bodies, the fibers, plant parts, etc continue to break down and feed the soil long after their reproductive “living” lives are over. Their dead lives still have a lot to give.
In fact, decomposition seems to be the best proof of “life after death” out there.
And certainly that’s not the last word on the subject — but now I have to convince myself to go outside and take my own medicine: by weeding in the rain.
