Today's Q&A is kind of interesting because I received it as a question like I normally do

these Q&A episodes, but it was also a question that my 14, almost 15 year old son asked me the

other day when we were in the garden together working in the garden. And before you get too impressed,

his sister was at an overnight camp for the week and he started getting bored without having

her around and a lot of times he will ask me what he can do to help me in the garden to trade

that for screen time. So that's being fully transparent and understanding that I hope someday he

will like working in the garden. But for now, I'll take what I can get. But he asked,

how important is it to

weed? I had him removing the weeds underneath my blueberry bushes, and he, I have to say,

did an excellent job. I was very proud of him. But he had a good question. Like, what's the big

deal? Like, why is it so important that we take these weeds out? And for me, I like to get things clean.

Like, I like things to look nice. It drives me nuts when I see a bunch of overgrown stuff in my garden.

But it's one of those things we have to deal with because I don't know about in your garden, but in mine, the weeding is never done.

It's always going to happen until it freezes. Even then,

there's some weeds pop up during the wintertime here. But let's get back to the question. How

important is weeding? I think one thing we need to keep in mind is weeds will compete for water.

They will compete for nutrients with your plants. So while they don't look the greatest,

they also can take nutrients and water away from the plants that need them. So that's one reason why

I don't like to have them in my garden. I don't like to have them too close to my plants if I can

help it because I want my plants to be able to get all that they need.

Another thing that having a weedy garden can introduce is more pests.

There are pests on the top of the ground.

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