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I have not pulled a weed by hand in more years than I can count, and my garden is the better for it. My mother did not pull them either, and neither did her mother before her. We learned long ago that the weed you yank out by the root is back within the week, and your back is worse for the trouble. The soil does not want to be bare. Leave it open and the Lord fills it with whatever blows in. So we stopped fighting the bare ground and started covering it instead.
In this one I walk you through the way the old women in our district kept their gardens — deep mulch, laid thick and patient, so the weeds never get their start. It costs next to nothing, most of it you already have, and it does more than smother weeds. It holds the water in the ground through a dry July, it feeds the soil as it breaks down, and it saves you the hours you would have spent bent over in the heat. I will tell you what to use, how thick to lay it, when to do it, and the one mistake that lets the weeds right back in.
I will be honest with you the way I would with a neighbor over the fence — this is not a trick that clears a
https://eliasyoder.com
I have not pulled a weed by hand in more years than I can count, and my garden is the better for it. My mother did not pull them either, and neither did her mother before her. We learned long ago that the weed you yank out by the root is back within the week, and your back is worse for the trouble. The soil does not want to be bare. Leave it open and the Lord fills it with whatever blows in. So we stopped fighting the bare ground and started covering it instead.
In this one I walk you through the way the old women in our district kept their gardens — deep mulch, laid thick and patient, so the weeds never get their start. It costs next to nothing, most of it you already have, and it does more than smother weeds. It holds the water in the ground through a dry July, it feeds the soil as it breaks down, and it saves you the hours you would have spent bent over in the heat. I will tell you what to use, how thick to lay it, when to do it, and the one mistake that lets the weeds right back in.
I will be honest with you the way I would with a neighbor over the fence — this is not a trick that clears a
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You walked out to your garden this morning, coffee in your hand, and there they are again,
00:05yellow heads scattered across the grass, green pushing up through every crack in the walk.
00:11You pulled every last one of them not two weeks ago. Your hands still remember the work of it,
00:17the ache in your knees from kneeling, the dirt you scrubbed out from under your nails.
00:21And here they stand, like you never touched them at all, like the whole afternoon you spent on
00:27them was nothing but a dream you had. I want to tell you something my mother told me when I
00:33was a
00:33girl, kneeling beside her in the kitchen garden, frustrated near to tears because the weeds kept
00:39beating me. She said, Esther, you are not losing because you are weak. You are losing because nobody
00:45ever taught you what you are actually fighting. And that is the truth I want to hand down to you
00:51today,
00:51the same way it was handed down to me. We are the Amish. We have kept a garden on this
00:57same land
00:58for as long as anyone in my family can remember, every single season, through good years and lean
01:04ones. Seven children I have raised on what comes out of that ground, fed them through long winters
01:10from what I put up in the root cellar. And I can tell you, the weed has not changed in
01:15all that time.
01:16The dandelion my grandmother fought is the very same dandelion in your lawn this morning. It has
01:22not gotten cleverer. It has not gotten stronger. Only the way folks fight it has changed. And I am
01:29sorry to say it has not changed for the better. It has gotten more expensive and less honest, both at
01:35once. Because here is what is really happening when you pull that dandelion. You feel the leaves give.
01:41You see the green come up in your hand. And your heart says, there, got it. But that plant has
01:48a root
01:49that runs straight down into the earth, deep as your forearm sometimes, thick and pale and stubborn.
01:55And when you pull from the top, that root stays right where it is. You snap the plant off at
02:01the
02:01shoulders and left the whole body of it alive underground. You did not kill it. You pruned it.
02:07You did that weed a kindness. The very same kindness you do a rosebush when you cut it back
02:13so it comes in fuller and stronger next spring. And in a week, sometimes in only a few days,
02:20that root pushes a brand new crown of leaves up through the soil to laugh at you.
02:25That is the whole sorrow of it. And I want you to hear me, because this part matters.
02:30Folks are not failing for lack of trying. My goodness, I have watched neighbors, English neighbors,
02:36good and hardworking people, the kind who would help you raise a barn, out there every Saturday
02:42morning on their hands and knees in the hot sun, pulling and pulling. And the weeds beat
02:47them every single time. Not because those people are lazy. Not because they did not care enough
02:53or work hard enough. But because nobody ever once told them they were pruning their weeds
02:58instead of killing them. They were doing the work faithfully and getting nothing for it.
03:03And that is a particular kind of heartbreak. To labor hard at a thing and have it come to nothing,
03:09not knowing why.
03:10Now I want to give you something before we go any further. If you want my complete method,
03:16the whole way we keep a home, the food savings, the garden, the canning and the mending and
03:21the repairs, all of it the way my mother and her mother kept it before me. I have gathered
03:27every bit of it into one place. You can find it at EliasYoder.com. That is where I teach
03:33the full Amish home saving method, start to finish. And folks write to tell me it saves
03:39them near $6,000 across a single year once they put it to honest use. The link is EliasYoder.com.
03:47Now let us get back to these weeds because I have a great deal to show you.
03:51So here is the first thing you must understand. You do not have one weed problem. You have
03:57two. And they are not the same fight, no matter how much they look alike to you standing on
04:02your backstep. The weeds standing up in your lawn are one trouble. The weeds creeping up
04:08through the cracks of your walk and your patio are another trouble entirely. The old women
04:14in our district understood this plain as day. You do not fight them the same way because they live in
04:20two different kinds of places and the place is everything. Treat them alike and you will lose
04:26both battles at once. So we are going to take them one at a time, patient and proper, the way
04:33you ought
04:33to. Start with the lawn because that is where most folks do the most damage to themselves. When you
04:40have a dandelion, a plantain, a thistle standing alone in the grass, anything with that one deep
04:47root running straight down like a carrot, you do not, you must not, grab it with your bare fingers
04:53and yank. I know the yanking feels good. I know there is a satisfaction in it, feeling that green
05:00come loose in your hand. But you already know now what that satisfaction is worth. Nothing, less
05:07than nothing, because it sends you back inside thinking the job is done. What you want instead
05:14is a long-handled weeding fork, the kind you can stand straight up and lean your weight into.
05:20My grandmother had one with a hickory handle worn smooth as river glass from 40 years of her hands,
05:27and I keep one very near like it to this day, leaned in the corner of my garden shed. You
05:33push the forked
05:34end down into the soil right alongside the root. You rock the handle back and lever against the earth,
05:41and the whole plant lifts up out of the ground, leaves, crown, and that long pale root, all of it
05:48together in one piece. That is the entire difference between winning and losing. You are not breaking the
05:56plant off at the neck and leaving the body to heal itself. You are lifting the whole living thing out
06:02of
06:02the earth at one time, so there is nothing left below to grow back. It works beautifully on anything
06:09with that single deep tap root, and it is honest, quiet work. No spray, no smell, no waiting around,
06:18just you and the tool and the plant coming up whole. But I will be straight with you, because being
06:24straight with you is the only way I know how to teach, and the only way I would want to
06:29be taught myself.
06:31That fork is the right answer for one weed here and one weed there, a dandelion in the middle of
06:37the yard,
06:38a thistle by the fence post. But if your whole lawn has gone over to clover spreading across it in
06:44great
06:44sheets, or creeping buttercup running in wide patches from one side to the other, you will be out there
06:51forking each one until the good Lord calls you home, and you will never reach the end of it. For
06:58that kind of
06:58spread, there is a thing the English call a selective weed killer, and I want to explain it to you
07:04plainly,
07:05because this is exactly where most folks make their very worst mistake. Selective is the important word,
07:12word, and it means something specific. It means the product is made to harm only the broadleaf weeds,
07:19your dandelion, your clover, your daisy, the wide leafed ones, while leaving your grass standing
07:26completely untouched beside them. Now, you might wonder how a thing could be so particular. It can do
07:33that because grass is built different on the inside than a broadleaf plant is. They are made different,
07:39down at the root of how they grow, and the killer is made to trouble the one kind and pass
07:45right over
07:45the other. Now, I will tell you honestly and look you in the eye about it. This is a manufactured
07:51product. It is not something that comes out of my pantry or my grandmother's recipe book, and because
07:57of that, you must follow the directions on that label as careful as you would follow scripture.
08:03Put it down only on a dry, still day, never with rain coming in the next day or two, because
08:10the rain
08:11will wash it off before it can work, and never on a windy day, because the wind will carry it
08:16where you
08:17never meant it to go. Keep your little ones and your animals well off that grass until it has dried
08:23all
08:23the way through, every bit of it. Then give it two to three weeks of patience. The weeds will yellow,
08:29then curl, then die back down into the ground, and your grass will quietly close over the empty places
08:36where they were, healing the lawn on its own. And now here's the part that nobody ever tells you, the
08:43part that actually keeps those weeds gone for good instead of just for a season. You must stop cutting
08:49your grass so short. I mean it. Folks scalp their lawns right down close to the bare dirt because they
08:56think it looks tidy and trim, and all they have truly done is throw the front door wide open and
09:02invite
09:02the weeds back in. Here is why. A weed seed needs light to wake up and sprout. It can lie
09:09there in the soil,
09:10patient as anything, waiting for its chance. And when you cut your grass down to the nub, you let the
09:16sunlight
09:16pour straight down onto that bare soil, and every seed lying there wakes right up. But when you let your
09:24grass
09:24stand tall, three good inches, four even, thick and full, that grass shades the soil so completely that
09:32the light never reaches the seeds at all. No light, no waking, no waking, no weed. Your own lawn becomes
09:39the wall that keeps them out, standing guard for you day and night without you lifting a finger.
09:46My mother never owned a single bottle of anything in her life, not one, and her grass was thick as
09:52the
09:52wool on a sheep's back, deep green and soft to walk on. And it was thick precisely because she
09:59understood this one thing that the bottle sellers will never tell you, that a strong, healthy, tall
10:05stand of grass does the guarding all by itself. The tall grass is the one that survives and holds the
10:12ground season after season, and the survivors are the ones that hold. She did not fight the weeds.
10:18She grew grass so strong the weeds never got a foothold to begin with. That is a different way
10:24of thinking about the whole business, and it is the older and the wiser way.
10:29Now the walk is a whole different matter, and you must not carry your lawn methods over onto it,
10:35nor your patio methods back onto the lawn. The weeds coming up between your paving stones and along the
10:41edges of your patio, these you are allowed to fight a good deal harder, and here is the reason why.
10:46There is no good grass there for you to protect. It is just stone and seam. So you can use
10:53stronger,
10:54blunter methods on the walk that you would never dare bring near your lawn.
10:58But here is the mistake I see folks make most often, and it is a costly one. They reach for
11:04a total weed
11:04killer, the strong kind that kills everything green it touches, and they go spraying it all up and down
11:10across the stone with a heavy hand. And it does kill what is growing on the stone, sure enough. I
11:16will
11:16not say it doesn't. But the least little bit of that spray drifts sideways onto the lawn. And it will
11:22drift, hear me, it always drifts. There is always a breath of wind you did not feel. And now you
11:29have
11:29got dead brown patches scattered through your good grass that will take you months and months to coax back
11:34to green. You have traded a few weeds in your walk for bald spots in your lawn. That is a
11:40poor trade. So on the stone, we use older and gentler methods, methods that stay exactly where you put them
11:47and do not go wandering. The first one costs you absolutely nothing, not one penny. And it is the very
11:55one
11:55folks overlook because it seems far too simple to possibly work. Boiling water, that is all. The next time you
12:03drain your kettle or pour off the water from your boiled potatoes, do not tip it down the sink. Carry
12:09that pot out to the walk and pour it slow and careful right down onto the weeds growing up between
12:14your
12:14stones. The heat tears the plant apart on contact, breaks the cells of it right down, root and crown
12:21together. Give it a day, maybe two at the most, and those weeds will be brown and finished and easy
12:27to
12:27sweep away. No bottle to buy, no chemical residue left behind on the stone where your children play, no money
12:34spent at all. Just be careful now, that water comes off the stove hot enough to scald you badly, so
12:40wear good
12:41shoes, pour slow and make certain your little ones are well clear and inside before you carry it out the
12:47door. The
12:49second method is a mixture the old gardeners have leaned on for just about as long as anyone can remember.
12:55You take plain white
12:56vinegar, ordinary table salt, and just a small squeeze of dish soap, and you stir them all together. Each one
13:04does
13:04its own particular job. The vinegar cuts straight through the waxy skin on the leaf, the part that normally
13:11protects the plant and sheds water off it. The salt pulls the moisture right out of the plant and dries
13:17it
13:17down to nothing, the same way salt has cured and dried meat in cellars for hundreds of years. And the
13:24little bit of
13:24dish soap makes the whole mixture cling to the leaf and stay put, instead of beating up and running right
13:30off onto the ground. You lay it directly onto the weeds on a warm, dry day when the sun will
13:36help it
13:37along. But you must hear me very clearly on this next part, because it is the part that gets folks
13:43in
13:43trouble. That salt sours the ground where it lands, and it does not forget, and it does not forgive. Salt
13:50poisons soil for a good long while, and nothing wants to grow where it has soaked in. Now, that is
13:56the very reason it works so wonderfully well down in the dead cracks of your stone walk, where you want
14:02nothing to grow ever. And it is the very same reason you must never, ever let that mixture touch your
14:08lawn or splash into the soil of your garden bed. Keep it strictly on the stone, far away from anything
14:15you
14:15ever hope to see grow green again. Used in the right place, it is a fine old tool. Used in
14:21the wrong place,
14:22it will break your heart. For the stubborn ones, the weeds that have rooted themselves down deep into a
14:28joint and will not be pulled or poured out, you want a wire brush or a narrow patio knife. You
14:34work the
14:35blade right along the seam between the stones, scraping the root up and out of the crack, and then you
14:41sweep all
14:41the leavings clean away. It is a bit of work for the arm, but it is sure work, and it
14:47gets the whole
14:47root. And if you happen to have a great long stretch of walk or a wide patio to clear all
14:53at once, the
14:54English make a flame tool, a little torch on the end of a long wand, and one slow, steady pass
15:00of the
15:01flame finishes the plant right where it stands, withers it on the spot. No spray, no salt, nothing left
15:08behind in the cracks. I will only say this, mind the dry season carefully, keep that flame well away
15:15from anything dry that would catch and spread, and never use it near your house siding or a wooden
15:20fence. Fire is a good servant and a terrible master, as the old folks said. But now I want you
15:27to stop
15:27and think with me for a moment, because pulling and pouring and burning and scraping is only the half of
15:33it, and it is honestly the lesser half. Here is the question almost nobody ever stops to ask.
15:40Why are these weeds in your walk in the first place? Why there, of all places, up through solid
15:46stone? And the answer is this, the gaps between your paving stones are not gaps at all. They are
15:52little open garden beds, soft, sheltered, protected places where a wind-blown seed can land, settle in,
16:00find a bit of grit and damp, and make itself right at home. So you can clear out that weed
16:05a hundred times
16:06over, but if you have done nothing about the bed it grew from, you have done nothing at all that
16:11lasts.
16:12You must close the bed itself, so you fill those joints. You can use what they call kiln-dried sand,
16:20or the better kind called polymer sand, and you will find either one waiting for you at any builder's yard
16:26or garden store for just a few dollars a bag. You sweep that sand down into the seams between the
16:31stones, and you wook it in hard, packing it down tight with the broom until there is no open gap
16:37left anywhere for a seed to fall into. The polymer kind is the better of the two by a good
16:42margin,
16:43because once you wet it down with the hose, it sets up firm, almost like a soft mortar,
16:48and then there is simply nowhere left at all for a seed to take hold and grow. It is one
16:55single
16:55afternoon of honest work, and it saves you every weekend you would otherwise have spent down on your
17:01aching knees for the whole rest of the season, and the season after that. My grandmother used to say
17:07that the wise woman does a job once, and does it properly, instead of doing the same small job over
17:14and
17:14over forever. Sealing those joints is exactly the kind of once-and-done work she was talking about.
17:21It is the difference between a household that runs steady and one that is always chasing the same
17:26trouble around in circles. Now I want to be honest with you about who all this serves,
17:33because I will tell you plainly, it troubles my heart. Walk into any garden store in the springtime,
17:40and you will see a whole long wall of bottles waiting for you. A different spray for every kind
17:46of weed, a different powder for every season of the year, a fresh jug for every patch of trouble.
17:53And every single one of them needs buying all over again the very next year, because none of them
17:59ever quite solves the thing for good. There is awfully good money in a problem that never quite gets fixed.
18:06Now, I am not standing here telling you there is a room full of men somewhere plotting in the dark
18:12to keep your dandelions coming back. It is worse than that, and stranger than that. It is a system,
18:19and the terrible thing about it is that nobody anywhere has to sit down and coordinate it.
18:25Everybody up the line does just fine for themselves when you keep coming back to buy another bottle.
18:31And nobody up that line does well at all when you solve the thing once and for good with a
18:37kettle of
18:37boiling water and a few dollar bag of sand. So the simple answers, the cheap ones, the permanent ones,
18:45the ones my mother and grandmother knew by heart, they just quietly slip right out of the conversation.
18:51They are not hidden away. Nobody burned them. They are just never mentioned. And a thing that is never
18:58mentioned might just as well be lost entirely, because it does nobody any good sitting forgotten.
19:05That, truly, is the whole reason I sit down and make these videos for you. Just to mention again the
19:12good, plain things that stopped getting mentioned somewhere along the way. And if you want to lower
19:17your bills, waste less, repair more, stretch your groceries further, and run a steadier, calmer home,
19:25I would be so glad to have you join our Amish home savings system and community. You will get the
19:31lessons, the home saving challenges, and a place to ask Esther and me your questions whenever you get
19:37stuck on something in your own home. The link is in the description. So that is your weeds. The lawn
19:45fought
19:45one way with the fork and the tall grass. The walk fought another way with the kettle and the salt,
19:51the joints sealed up tight afterward, so all that good work actually holds and does not undo itself.
19:58But I will tell you what is coming, because I do not want it to catch you by surprise.
20:03Once you have lifted out those big deep tap roots and killed off those thick spreading patches,
20:10you are going to walk outside one morning and notice something brand new staring back at you.
20:15Bare dirt, right where the weeds used to be. Ugly brown spots, thin and empty and sad looking,
20:23sitting right in the middle of your good green grass. They come from the old weeds that crowded the grass
20:29out, from feet wearing the same path day after day, from the dog who lies in the very same cool
20:36spot
20:36all summer long. So I want you to do something for me. Go look at your lawn, really look at
20:42it,
20:43and if you have got those bare patches showing, tell me about it down in the comments. Tell me your
20:48county and the age of your house. I read them, every one, and it tells me a great deal about
20:55what kind
20:55of ground and what kind of climate you are all working with out there. Because how to heal those
21:01bare spots, how to coax thick green grass back into them fast and make them disappear is exactly what I
21:08am going to show you in the very next video. There is an old comfort in this kind of work,
21:14you know,
21:15and I feel it every spring. The dandelion has been coming up through the same kind of cracks since long
21:22before my grandmother knelt in the dirt and longer still before that. And a kettle of plain boiling water
21:29answered it then exactly the same as it answers it for you now, this morning, in your own garden.
21:37Some things in this life do not need improving on. They do not need a new bottle or a better
21:43formula.
21:43They only need remembering. So come on back for the next one and we will get that good grass growing
21:50green
21:50and thick again together.
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