Oh won’t you look at that. Another post about weeding! Indeed this is! Of all the activities one can take part in at the University Guelph Urban Organic Farm (or as I like to call simply “Martha’s Farm”), weeding is the most time consuming, labour intensive, and important task.
With only 10 hours of volunteer work, I took part in many tasks, whether it be on the field or at the front helping run the market. I found that I completed tasks fairly quick and always ended up hunting down Martha to be assigned other tasks. When all was completed, she would revert to weeding. This is a task that was constantly being done at Martha’s farm due to the fact that it wasn’t able to get done in the summer as she would have liked. At first, the thought of weeding brought back memories of my mom and I weeding together during summer months in the scorching heat to find myself covered in burrs and tan lines. Naturally, I was a little hesitant.
Martha began by instructing us to wear proper gear. This included gardening gloves, preferably the leather kind, that way we’d be able to weed out any prickly plants, in particular, thistles. Now let me tell you, handling thistles without proper gloves is not fun. The pain is a mild, sharp, irritating and spontaneous pain, comparable to a splinter. Next would be making sure to wear close toed shoes. Doing so prevents any injury from heavy tools or external dangers. Also, to wear comfortable clothing you don’t mind getting a little dirty. By little I mean a lot!
Then Martha took us onto the field and showed us how to properly pull out a weed. All you do is grab the weed as close to the base as possible and pull. Once the weed is pulled. It is important to shake off the soil trapped in the roots as this minimizes the weight and space taken up in the wheelbarrow.
This technique is almost always successful. In the case of plants that are deeply rooted and have a main root with the circumference of a water bottle, a fork is much needed. Using the fork to take out the tough guys was my favourite part. To do this was also simple, you just dig the fork into the soil next to the root at a slight angle and lift upward to try and lift the roots keeping the weed down. I won’t lie, this did require some upper body strength and you will break a sweat after doing quite a few. You do this all around the weed to make the final upward lift as effective as possible in catching the whole root system. Seeing this task took some strength and persistence.
Upon the first removal of a weed that required a fork I was incredibly impressed with how deep this root grew and spread with a great circumference. After clearing all the weeds, they were placed in a wheelbarrow and taken to the compost pile.
Seeing Martha’s excitement over our hard work always put a smile on my face. You could see how much she appreciated our help. This entire experience has been eye-opening to all the other farmers like Martha that put so much passion and hard work into providing delicious fruits and vegetables to local consumers including organizations that rely on donations. The thought of weeding will now be replaced with the feelings of gratitude and accomplishment. Thank you for this opportunity.
Written by: Alexa Alman-Pastor