The Weeds Are Growing Like... Well, Weeds

It's July, and it's hot.  I'm thinking about water and weeds.  I've observed in previous seasons that immediately after weeding an area, the plants suffer some wilting and shock, and the soil surface dries out and looks like beach sand.  I interplant various species intensively, use mulch, and sow cover crops as religiously as possible. 

Weeds are just doing their jobs, as I am mine, protecting the soil's fertility and host to a multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that support life, photosynthesizing life or otherwise.  Weeds are the pioneers, reclaiming disturbed land, covering it over as quickly as possible, over time leading to a progressing to edge habitat, and eventually woodlands.  I don't hate the weeds.  I don't want to poison them off, or torch them with a flame thrower.  All plant matter that we don't intend to eat is not removed from the garden.  It is pulled out of the ground, left in the sun, and later returned to the soil either on the surface, or spaded under.  I want total biomass retention.  by removing fertility from the garden in the form of edible vegetables, I need to replace what I've taken out.  I do this with kitchen compost, manures, growing green manures like buckwheat, clover, and ryegrass, and keeping all of my weeds. 

In the spring, I brought in a good deal of wood chips, and inoculated them with cultures of Garden Giant mushrooms.  I needed to keep them in full shade and moist, so I built a really simple structure.  It's essentially a low table with the tabletop made out of chicken wire.  We pull weeds and pile them onto this table to dry in the sun, while also shading the mushroom patch.  After the weeds are sufficiently dried (eliminating the possibility of them re-rooting themselves, they're used as mulch.  It looks something like this:

Currently, some of our biggest garden invaders are Purslane, Lady's Thumb, Ragweed, and Mugwort.  Of course we've got the normal crabgrass and other various grasses, too.  I mostly leave the purslane alone, as I don't see it as a big threat.  All Lady's Thumb and Mugwort are pulled out immediately on sight.  The mugwort is never left directly on the soil surface after being pulled, because it's so tenacious at re-rooting itselt.  Once it dies back, though, it's great.  On the property there are some big expanses of mugwort that are left standing for the entirety of their life cycle, and the soil underneath is GREAT because of the amount of decomposing plant matter from previous years' stalks. 

I like to share my successes, but it's also important to note some of my failures.  For the second year, I've tried to grow a small patch of wheat, since I love to bake bread (provided it's winter!).   On account of a dry spring, and a pinch of neglect on my part, I got terrible germination this year probably from lack of moisture.  In no time, my precious wheat patch was overrun with grass stalks going to seed that were well over my head.  I decided it was time to give up on it and mow it down.  This week sometime when it's less hot, I'm going to turn the whole thing under and probably plant radishes.  Better luck next year.  RIP wheat patch 2012: