Weeding your ego

In the natural world plants can coexist and flourish together.  However, in human eyes coexistence of plants appears as a conflict, therefore to grow one plant, the others become weeds, and to grow their crops, weeds need to be removed.

by Masanobu Fukuoka


We conveniently categorize anything that we disregard as weeds.  Whether it is a small herbaceous plants or large trees, when I sprinkle some compost or organic fertilizers, it makes me wonder how much of fertilizers or compost actually goes to our crops, and how much to other weeds and yet more lost to leaching and air.  Often times I find roots of large trees in the rows of tea.

Then I realized that there was beautiful dark soil even before I started farming.  Who created that?  Apparently certain types of plants are better at building soil than others.  Under some trees soil is always better than open field.

If we leave some weeds and do not fertilize, it is possible that they enrich soil as they die.  Of course, it is not just any weeds, but certain weeds do certain things, just like some people are good at math and others cooking, others writing, etc.


It is more about controlling our ego than controlling weeds. 
I kept thinking that some weeds and big trees are stealing fertilizers from my crops, then I started to see those unwanted weeds as potential enemy.  I searched ways to rid this negative feeling of hating weeds, the answer was no-fertilizer.  When I stopped using fertilizers, I started to see weeds helping build soil.