Controlling weeds or being controlled by weeds

Summer is here.  Weeds are growing so fast along with cover crop and tea.  In some area certain kinds of cover crops are growing more vigorously than common weeds so that they suppress weeds quite effectively.  At the same time tea plants getting shaded by 6-7 foot tall grass.  I wonder which is better, cutting back weeds or cover crop.  At least the difference is more obvious in the soil.

This is another cover crop post.  It may be obvious that I spend so much time studying cover crops.

Being controlled by weeds
A lot of times we go out to the field and do some weeding, we are controlled by weeds.  We have to go out there and remove weeds.  This obsessive thinking of getting rid of weeds create rather polarized view toward the nature.  Nature does not judge what good weeds are and what bad weeds are.  They grow where they are supposed to.  They grow where they are called for.  Each type of weeds has their own intention and purposes.  Dandelion grow in disturbed open field and hard packed ground because they can stabilize the disturbed condition.

Controlling weeds
You want to be in this position when it comes to weed control.  Since it's farming, we still have to get the result and get harvest in one way or another.  In natural farming we have to remember that plants build soil since there is no fertilizer applied.  The best way is to select the desired plants for the current soil condition.  or we can also mix various types of cover crops, vegetables and weeds then they find where they belong and create beautiful landscape based on where they are most needed.  This idea somewhat harmonizes very well with Mr. Masanobu Fukuoka's seedball technique.

Mr Fukuoka describes that we just have to know that we don't know anything and nature has her own way of doing things and we just need to assist the great cause.  

Plants decide where they should grow, that's why seedballs make perfect sense

All the cover crops are big and some are taller than myself.  I went to care for tea plants that are totally buried in cover crop jungle.  I cut back some 7ft tall cover crop grass and uncover tea plants.  While I was doing this, I realized that certain cover crop plant grow only in certain places.

Whether it's soil condition or shading or moisture condition, some plants just don't do well while some other ones grow prolific.  For example, grasses grow in rich soil much better than legumes or vetch and clover type.  Then I also realized that when I planted cover crop there was some rich soil and some poor soil.  Parts of the field where some trees dropping their leaves were naturally richer in soil condition and it made total difference in how cover crops grew.

Typically richer soil favored grasses and even legumes germinate, they tend to get overgrown by grasses while poor soil favored legumes and grasses stay small and look stunted.  The same thing happened throughout our fields.

 Mr. Fukuoka describes in his book that his trial to find good cover crop was long journey, tried so many and learned from trial and error.  He finally reached conclusion that seedballs as a mix of various types of seeds are the best way to build soil naturally.  They find when to germinate and where to grow.

We have tried so many different types of cover crops from commercial high yield cover crop to vegetables to neighborhood noxious weeds. Over time I realized that our approach in establishing cover crop system was more and more similar to seedball style.  In natural farming we just need to know that we don't know what nature does.  We can provide options and nature will pick which one to use.