Weeds are specialists at unlocking minerals in soil that might not support much other life. Each weed has a specialized set of sugars it exudes (called “exudates”) to feed an equally specialized population of microbes.  These microbes trade minerals for the sugars that the plant sends into the soil.

Weeds serve as an indicator of diseased areas of soil, where a farmer might prefer to see good pasture. But weeds, even many of the “invasive” varieties like Milkweed can really be thought of as dynamic accumulators. Milkweed tends to spread in Zinc-deficient soils but itself accumulates Zinc. There is a special relationship with each weed and the deficiencies of the soil in which it grows. A weed “tea” made from the most noxious weeds can prove to be a culture of indigenous microorganisms (IMOs) that are not just specialized in correcting deficiencies, but being cultured on your own farm they are all uniquely adapted to your climate and to your soils.

To make a tea, one can collect as many specimens of the weed in question as possible, taking care to include the roots. Filling a barrel with these weeds and harvested rain water and letting them ferment for several weeks will result in a strong smelling liquid that is full of those specialized microbes. Be sure to keep it far from your home! But keep it close enough to stir once a day to keep it digesting rapidly.

The tea can be made as dilute as necessary to cover the area in question. If you have collected for a small garden or for a large farm, it is not important. What is important is that you make sure that some of the “yeast” of the tea makes it to most of the soil in question.

A good time to apply such a spray is in the evening, when the air is approaching the dew point. Many people do not know that the cool air that settles every evening is almost always over 90% saturated with moisture. Spraying in the evening guarantees a moist environment for the microbes you have applied to your garden or fields. During the dark hours, they reproduce rapidly! In a single day, one bacterium can reproduce so many times that there can be 300 million bacteria before the day is over! Again, the quantity of the tea applied is not as relevant as you’d think: you aren’t applying it as a fertilizer, but as an inoculant. You don’t need much yeast to make good bread!

What are your most difficult weeds?