On Weeds

Summer is in full bloom. All very idyllic. But everything is not what it seems. Lurking below the surface, ready to erupt come the first warm rains, is an army of horrors. Weeds. Thousands of them.

Here I am, pottering about in the veg patch.

The sun is shining. The robins chirrup and come to watch me rake the earth. Bunnies hop about in the hedgerows nibbling the comfry. Over in the neighbouring field, I can hear the plaintive bleating of sheep. Summer is in full bloom. If there was a Disney cartoon about a rural idyll, I’d be in it (singing). All very idyllic. All very Country Living magazine.

But everything is not what it seems.

For this halcyon vision belies the true nature of an allotment in summer. It may look heavenly (and, ultimately, of course, it is) but beneath this Constable painting lurks torment and peril for the gardener. Oh yes, simmering below the surface is an army of horrors just waiting to strike.

Weeds. Thousands of them.

In this warm, wet summer we’re having in the UK, weeds burst forth from the ground like the hands of the undead breaking out of their graves to ruin your tranquillity. Within days of a downpour, your neat, ordered patch can become a tangle of tendrils – more like the forest of briars that keeps the Disney princess in the castle than Snow White’s talking-birds paradise.

Nothing grows faster or with more vigour than weeds in a wet summer. (Except possibly our lawn which currently demands a mow every 4-5 minutes.) So weeding is a must do job most weekends.

Put the effort in now, weed meticulously, and you’ll be rewarded with far fewer weeds in future years. If you pluck them out before they get too big to flower and then seed, it stops the cycle of reproduction and colonisation (or should that be domination). The saying amongst sanctimonious gardeners is this:

One year’s seed, seven years’ weed.

Meaning, if you allow a weed to go to seed now, you’ll be weeding it out of the next seven years. Take a more lackadaisical approach to weeding (ie: my approach), pulling them up as you wander past on your way to the compost bin but generally being too distracted by the radish glut to launch a comprehensive Weed War, and you’ll find your patch beset by the little buggers all year.

Extraction methods matter.

If you do get round to weeding, the method of extraction matters too. Most weeds can simply be pulled from the soil by hand, which is very calming and meditative but time-consuming. This is the necessary approach for weeds that rudely spring up amongst a row of vegetable seedings. Weeds in the open soil or around larger plants like courgettes can be hoed to death. On a damp day you will need to gather up the mangled corpses of the hoed weeds otherwise their roots might resettle in the loose, wet soil and regrow, so all you’ve done there is transplant them to a new location. If the weather is dry and warm you can leave them out on the soil where they will wilt and die of exposure on the rocky earth as if they were in a Greek myth. Very satisfying.

Not all weeds are this easily thwarted. Some like couch grass, bind weed, dandelions and creeping buttercup, which, rather marvellously, are called pernicious weeds, cannot be simply hoed into oblivion. In fact, hoeing is the worst thing you can do. These are particularly spiteful weeds with long, far ranging roots and the frightening ability to regenerate, like a Marvel comic baddie. They can regrow from the tiniest fleck of root, so each fragment left in the soil is a potential new plant. In this scenario, hoeing is just a helpful propagation tool because every piece of chopped up root will become a new plant. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

You can dig up pernicious weeds but it involves the patience of a saint to dig along a root run and excavate the whole thing leaving nothing, not even a microscopic filament in place. I’ve known people dig up whole flower beds, sieve the soil to be sure of full extraction, then return the soil to the garden only to be met with more couch grass two months later. Short of cooking the soil to sterilise it, I think ‘cleaning’ the soil is a pointless extraction method.

One option is chemical warfare. And I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to that. Why would I spray something which comes in a bottle covered with hazard signs and warnings into soil that I had lovingly cultivated to be rich in life and microbes. And why would I do that anywhere near plants that I was going to eat? Nope. Not an option. Even bindweed won’t shake my organic ideals.

The alternative is to treat weeding as a form of pruning. You have to keep doing it, it will never be done for good, but at least cutting things off at the roots keeps them at bay for a while.

Incidentally, why is it that you can invest serious time and emotional energy coaxing your veg seedlings into life, but the weeds will flourish despite you attempting to hoe, hack and flame-thrower them into submission? (Yup, tried a weed scorcher – it’s like a big crème brulé blow torch – and quite successful actually).

There’s only one thing to be done with weeds. Eat them.

Reframe the issue. They are not a pest or a menace. They are a free and bountiful catch crop to keep you going whilst the next sowing of lettuces/spinach/anything else leafy arrives. Most edible weeds taste like spinach. That is, they taste of green. Fat hen, for example. Nettles have a more iron-y tannin flavour but it’s not overpowering. Some weeds have a peppery mustard-family tang too, like dandelion. They’re quite innocuous – inoffensive on the plate in a way they are certainly not in the patch. But my point is you aren’t going to ruin the flavours of a dish by slinging a handful of weeds in to replace spinach.

Over the past few years, I’ve written a weed recipe at least once a year, out of necessity. In the early days, I tried a Fat Hen Souffle which was successful but a bit cheffy for my liking and the fat hen didn’t really bring any character to warrant its title role. The Weed Chicken Kiev was more interesting containing as it did a mix of wild garlic (not technically a weed but still free and foraged), stickyweed and more fat hen.

You might also like my Weed Pie recipe, adapted from the spanakopita in my cookbook. And:

Weed Salsa Verde

Which is the whizzed combination of garlic, capers, olive oil, a splash of vinegar and a selection of weeds of your choice.

Nettle Soup

I made chilled weed soup for a recent supper club, though I called it Nettle Soup because it sounded more appetising and was mostly nettles anyway.

For which, wash a big bunch of edible weeds. Just the new growth and no stalks. Best if that’s not 100% nettles too - too metallic. Try to cut it with some stickyweed, jack-o-the-hedge, fan hen etc, but spinach will do fine. Sweat an onion in butter until soft then add the weeds, a big pinch of salt and 500ml of hot chicken (or veg) stock and simmer for 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat and whizz to a smooth green soup. Adjust the seasoning, add a splash of cream if you have some, then chill quickly to retain the bring green colour. Serve in little cups with an ice-cube. Fancy.

A word of caution before I go.

Do take care. Edible weeds can bear an uncanny resemblance to deadly ones, so if you aren’t 100% sure, don’t eat it. The simplest weeds you can be sure of not poisoning you, entry level weeds if you like, are nettles (give away: they sting) and sticky weed (give away: it sticks to you) and neither have any evil twins that look similar but are lethal . Remember that hemlock and deadly nightshade are not uncommon garden weeds so, well, try to avoid those.

Whatever you do with your weeds – hoe them, soup them or souffle them, may I recommend that if you do just one thing this weekend, get them out of the ground. And if you can make a meal of that, in the culinary sense, then so much the better.

These essays and stories from the plot will be published as and when (roughly monthly) and will be free for subscribers until the day the garden is weed-free, which will be never.

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