that indicates a soil that doesn't have much breath in it, much air in it, it's waterlogged and very sour. How about sour grass? Sour grass also. That's the dock, or rumex. Sorrel, dock, horsetail, they grow in an environment that's very inundated with water. Knotweed or hawkweed. Hierachium is hawkweed. It's a very interesting plant. It grows in a real sour soil. The seeds, and they don't make such good stands of seed here because it's so damp, but in the wetter places of warmer climates, they make a very good seed. Like in the Cobolo Valley, they make a good seed and then the hawks will go down and eat the seeds and apparently hierachium, which relates to hawks, causes the hawk to be able to see much better. It increases their eyesight. So they crave this plant and they go down and they take it and it comes off the boggy areas, which is also where a lot of their prey lurks.

[01:02]

So there's this whole relationship between the hawk and the plant and that whole world. Now eventually, the acidity of these bogs increases as there's less and less air. And less and less air comes with more water being in the area and loss of humus, real loss of humus. So these plants grow there. And eventually, if you let them just be in the bog, they'll create an environment that makes soil. They have extraordinary roots. The rumex, try to get it. Yellow duck is one of the main medicine plants in China. They have extraordinary roots. And if you shave them, they're beautiful, brilliant yellow, surprising yellow, almost orange. Very, very vital. You can shave them and make tea of them. And I think they're very good. I don't actually know what the medicinal use of duck is. I won't guess because I don't know. And they're very strengthening roots.

[02:04]

That's true, it's a purge. Right. They are very high in oxalic acid, which is an indication of the sourness of the soil. The plant itself is sour. It's really neat. If you can hook up with these plants and understand a little bit how they work, it's fascinating. Anyway, if left to their own guises, those fields and marshlands would create eventually a beautiful soil. Just like the thistle. People complain so much about the thistle. The thistle is one of the most important compost plants known to man. If well managed, thistles make a gorgeous soil. And they indicate a soil that's out of balance, too. Just the fact that thistles will populate a whole big field. Generally, there's a whole range of weeds which follow in the footsteps of cultivation, or bad cultivation. And they fall on disturbed soil, the seed that the thistle does. And they make a colony, a population right there. They indicate a soil that's disturbed and hasn't been cultivated correctly. That's open to their colonizing.

[03:10]

And then they make a whole massive field. If you've ever been through a thistle field, it's almost impossible to walk through it. It's very hard. But as they decay and come apart and rot, they make a very beautiful soil. That is stronger than it was before they came. So you have to look at this in the long term. You can't look only at the immediate effects of the weeds. And try to look at them with some appreciation for the unknown. Indicators of a salty soil. And many of you asked about these weeds when we were in the Equinox walk the other day. Indicators of a salty soil. The shepherd's purse, the Russian thistle, the one we just talked about. Sea plantain. Sea plantain is also called a white man's footsteps. That's a weed that follows in cultivation. And asters. The coastal sage. Follows on a salty soil.

[04:14]

Comes into a salty soil. And mustard. Now, the miraculous thing that happens with these plants is they have an ability in their own bodies, through their own compost, to turn a salty soil to a sweet soil. And this is particularly true in mustard. That's why mustard is a very good cover crop to put on quite quickly. The standard mustard we have down there is an incredible benefit to the soil. It's sweetening the soil. It's sweetening, indicating a salty soil. Because it's colonized that area. That's their home. They'll go to where it's salty. They can take it. They're strong. They indicate it. The sulfur in their own bodies, mixed with the salt, has some kind of chemical reaction. I don't pretend to be a chemist, but it has a chemical reaction that changes the salinity in the soil to sweetness. And makes it cultivatable. So why not use the weeds as our friends and helpers and learn how to incorporate them? By studying what's in the components of their bodies, we can learn a lot about the natural cultivators.

[05:16]

In doing so, does it discontinue itself? It doesn't if you're careful to disc it in before it goes to seed. Again, it's the same thing as this plant. If you let it go to seed, then you're opening up your soil to a long succession. And not always a beneficial one. Just one plant after another. A monoculture that's not any different than monocropping with lettuce or spinach. It's essentially the same thing. So you want to be careful when you cultivate. Always the gardener in the farm, the agronomist, the agriculturalist, the horticulturalist, keeps an eye and an ear and a finger on the pulse of timing. So you're always watching when's a good time to cultivate. Now there's a wonderful story about the chamomile, which also inhabits fields and indicates and creates a good open surface root. I have a picture of a chamomile I want to show you. It shows you when the surface of the soil is open.

[06:17]

An overpopulation of chamomile means the surface of the soil is too open. It's too exposed. So chamomile will inhabit the whole area. It'll fill in that niche and indicate to you what's going on. So if you can read the weeds, just like you can read the moods of the weather, the moods of each other, it's very important to be able to do that. When you have something like, say, the sour grass, or the repotting, is that just, let's say, all over your garden? I'm moving away from your garden to my garden, but I've got these... I know there are these little rhizomes under there. Should I just let that go and let that be there? If that's indicating a sour soil, should I... Well, you can sweeten your soil. You yourself, this is where the gardener begins to be the world changer. The gardener responds to the messages from the wild kingdom of the garden. Responds to it and notices. This garden is totally inhabited with sheep sorrel, dock, shepherd's purse, and...

[07:24]

Is oxalis a... Is that tying to that too? Yeah, yeah. Oxalis is in the same family. Deep-rooted, sour leaves. That's what I'm overwhelmed with. Well, you've got a sour soil. You've got a sour soil that doesn't have any breath to it. It doesn't have any air in it. It needs air, and it needs to be sweetened. And you can sweeten it by opening it up to air. So once you start to cultivate, those plants will... We had incredible numbers of them. Jamie can tell you. We had a lot of sheep sorrel on the north side of our garden where the fruit tree beds are. We began to cultivate, and that balance changed. Now, there's still an occasional dock plant that comes up there because they're very, very deep-rooted. All the sorrels are. All of the sour grasses are. But, you know, that's a little bit more imbalanced than having a massive plain of just that plant. So they're indicating to you what you can do. It needs to be opened up. It needs to be probably given a little lime. It needs to be given air and sweet compost. And the breath has to come into that soil.

[08:25]

What does the lime do? The lime sweetens the soil. In a chemical reaction, it introduces sweetness to the soil. In the right balance. Here's a picture of the chamomile plant and root. I love how much the top of the plant looks like the roots in this particular... Now, if you look at... Notice how the plant grows. It has these tiny little microscopic roots.

[08:54]

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