If you can wait two weeks between clearing your garden


area and planting it, the stale seed bed technique is a fabu- lous trick. The principle of this method is based on the fact that most weed seeds germinate from the top 2.5 inches of soil. After you’ve prepared your garden area, the second step of the stale seed bed technique requires you to sit back and do nothing. After a couple of wherein your weed seeds have germinated into a sea of tender white threads, it is time for your attack. On a sunny, dry day, run your rake gen- tly over your planting zone deep enough to kill the seedlings, but shallow enough so as not to bring up the deeper weed seeds. It is important to restrain yourself from till- ing the soil deeper than 2.5 inches — less is more in this case. Once the sun has dried out and killed the weed seed- lings, it is now time to plant on your nearly weed-free soil.5 After your plants are in the


ground, a thick layer of mulch will suppress much of the remaining weeds, and as a bonus, mulch will increase the water retention and nutrients in your soil. The type of mulch you use depends on your budget and sense of aesthetics; shredded leaves, wood chips, compost, and bark mulch all work well. The only mulch I steer clear of is compost that has not heated above 140 degrees. Otherwise, you will find that you have just added an infusion of weeds that will leave you wishing that you owned a flame-thrower! Incidentally, using dehydrated manure from ruminating mammals such as cattle and horses is ideal because weed seeds can’t survive the passage through a lengthy intestinal track. A mulch layer between 2 and 4 inches works best; just be sure not to crowd the crowns of your plants, as this can cause root rot. Plant roots need air, too, and too much love can suffocate even the hardiest of native plants. If your garden has just


been planted and your plants are at the correct distance from each other, you are going to have major gaps of open soil until your plants flush out. And you know what grows in the meantime? Weeds! My favorite way to prevent this is to plant annuals such as Ange- lonia, Cosmos, Geraniums, or Marigolds that can stand up to the hot summer sun in the empty spaces. Lately, I’ve seen a variety of colorful, low-growing Zinnias in the nurseries. If you are budget-conscious, many annuals are wildly easy to grow from seed, and my students love to help sow seeds in containers and compare the marvelous diversity of seed


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shapes and sizes. If you’ve ever started a Calendula from seed, you know what I mean! The important thing is to select annuals that harmonize in color with your existing perenni- als, but won’t grow so large as to compete with the growth of your beloved perennial natives. The final method for weed reduction was a discovery I made quite by accident. The Courtyard Gardens was initially constructed as a wildlife habitat and nature preserve for biological investiga- tions by my students. But I quickly discovered that the more rocks I put into the garden, the less weeding I had to do. The big- ger the rock, the better, so now large boulders make up a significant part of the garden. Our garden has a geology section that fea- tures sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic boulders, which are ideal for Earth Science labs. The remainder of our garden contains boulders designed with the principles of Jap- anese landscape gardening in mind.


Traditionally, rocks in Japanese gardens are used to evoke the feeling of a miniature, stylized land-


scape. Karesansui, or dry landscape gardening, uses rocks that are tall, arching, reclining, or flat. Some rocks mimic the feel of mountains, hills, lakes, and others symbolize Buddha himself.6 My students and I have also added stone bridges, rock “islands,” and “seaside” cliffs to our garden. The only species that are unhappy are the weeds! Suppressing plants in the wrong places allows you to focus on helping plants you would like to see flourish else- where, but you might have to enlist help from an unlikely source: predatory insects.


Bug off through better real estate Even the most ecological- ly-minded gardeners have their limits with how much insect damage they can tol- erate. Having pesky insect invaders destroy your favorite garden plant is dispiriting. The usual solution of rotating your


vegetable plants on a yearly bases is not practical in a native garden.


One factor the native gardener has in their favor is diversity. Insect pests are fairly specialized


in what they like to eat, so if you grow 45 different plants and one or two are under insect attack, well, then you still have 43 or 44 more plants to enjoy. A more direct solution is to see the presence of excessive


herbivory as a symptom of a larger deficiency in your garden: the need for more native predatory insects.7 Even beneficial


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