174 animal, vegetable, miracle
tions where a mulching system like ours is impractical, organic farmers
often employ three- or four- year crop rotations, using fast- growing cover
crops like buckwheat or winter rye to crowd out weeds, then bare- tilling
(allowing weeds to germinate, then tilling again to destroy seedlings) be-
fore planting the crops. The substitute for chemical- intensive farming is
thoughtful management of ecosystems, and that is especially true when it
comes to keeping ahead of the weeds. As our Uncle Aubrey says, “Weeds
aren’t good, but they are smart.”
It’s not a proud thing to admit, but we were getting outsmarted by the
pigweeds. We had gardened this same plot for years, but had surely never
had this much of the quackgrass and all its friends. How did they get out
of hand this year? Was it weather, fertility imbalance, inopportune tilling
times, or the horse manure we’d applied? The heat of composting should
destroy weed seeds, but doesn’t always. I looked back through my garden
journals for some clue. What I found was that virtually every entry, every
late June and early July day for the last five years, included the word weeds:
“Spent morning hoeing and pulling weeds.... Started up hand tiller and
weeded corn rows.... Overcast afternoon, good weeding weather....
Tied up grape vines, weeded.” And this hopeful entry: “Finished weed-
ing!” (Oh, right.) It’s commonly said that humans remember pleasure but
forget pain, and that this is the only reason women ever have more than
one child. I was thinking now: or more than one garden.
In addition to weeding, we spent the July 4 weekend applying rock
lime to the beans and eggplants to discourage beetles, and tying up the
waist-high tomato vines to four- foot cages and stakes. In February, each
of these plants had been a seed the size of this o. In May, we’d set them
into the ground as seedlings smaller than my hand. In another month
they would be taller than me, doubled back and pouring like Niagara over
their cages, loaded down with fifty or more pounds of ripening fruit per
plant.
This is why we do it all again every year. It’s the visible daily growth,
the marvelous and unaccountable accumulation of biomass that makes
for the hallelujah of a July garden. Fueled only by the stuff they drink
from air and earth, the bush beans fill out their rows, the okra booms, the
corn stretches eagerly toward the sky like a toddler reaching up to put on