5 THINGS I LEARNED PULLING WEEDS

A good day's harvest at the UW-Episcopal Center.

1. Trowels are fine, but a well-centered pull from where the stems meet the soil, using two hands if necessary, is at least as effective and far more satisfying. (In your encounters with weeds, being centered and grounded can up make for a lot you might have thought that you lacked.)

2. If you wonder if something's a weed, pull it. It's okay to guess wrong. The true plants will pull back. 

3. In an untended garden, the weeds are the tall ones.

4. Weeds have incentives toward weakness: if they break when you pull them, the root is preserved. You win the weed only when you pull to the strength it has no incentive to claim.

5. The roots of weeds grow in one direction. The roots of the true plants reach both deep and wide.