What Do Your Weeds Tell You About Your Soil?

Pulling out weeds growing in your garden, yard, flower beds, or between cracks in your driveway is a tedious job, especially when they seem to grow back overnight.

But rather than blaming and then evicting weeds that supposedly don’t “belong” to our perfectly trimmed yards, we’re better off leaving them alone and learning from them, according to British horticulturist Alice Fowler .

In an article she wrote for The Guardian, Fowler explains how weeds provide us with important information about our gardens and soil, and how to understand what they are telling us. Here’s what you need to know.

What do weeds say about your soil?

Instead of seeing them as a nuisance, Fowler encourages us to value weeds. Not only do they provide insight into our soil’s characteristics and deficiencies, but they also “act like a life jacket for the soil,” protecting it from harsh sunlight, wind and rain, she notes.

So what are our weeds actually telling us? Here are some translations of their messages, courtesy of Fowler :

• Dandelions : The soil is slightly compacted and lacks surface nutrients, especially calcium and potassium.
• Nettle : There is too much surface nitrogen in the soil.
• Watercress, chickweed, and mouse weeds : The soil is full of bacteria.
• Thistle, sorrel, green alkalan, comfrey : The soil surface is devoid of nutrients; For plants to thrive in this soil, they must have long taproots to reach the nutrients from the subsoil.
• Blackberry : there is a lot of nitrogen in the soil; the earth was mostly left alone
• Mushrooms : soil rich in carbon

If you find any of these weeds in your garden or the rest of your yard, the more you see a particular type, the more soil problems they cause, Fowler explains.

Once you know what your weeds are telling you, you can make the necessary soil adjustments to accommodate the plants you would like to grow. In addition, you can grow plants that thrive in those specific soil conditions.

In addition to listening to weeds, Fowler also discusses other aspects of “laid-back gardening” worth learning, including accepting rot, forgoing a shovel, and being patient with plant growth rather than overfertilizing.