Our garden is out of control. No, not with wonderful fresh produce. Weeds. Yes, I know, “What is a weed to one person is a edible plant to another”. Yada yada yada.

I’m not eating this stuff.

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The solution? A new toy tool. Michael bought himself a propane torch. Just what every man wants, a method of shooting fire and burning everything in his path. (insert Tim the Toolman grunt here)

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Why would we want to burn all the weeds? Well, pulling them would take forever and burn way to many calories (ok, I could use that).

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We knew that we didn’t want to till the soil for multiple reasons such as; bringing weed seeds to the surface where they can sprout and grow, we want to preserve the rhizophere, which is the part of the soil that contains the roots and microorganisms. Preserving this top soil is something scientists are realizing is very important. We also don’t use chemical weed killers in our garden.

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The torch kills not only the weed but also the weed seeds. Yeah! no seed left to grow new weeds. I don’t know about you but that always bugged me. I weed for hours and then in a couple of days…”Oh look, more weeds!”

It also leaves behind a dead plant that will compost in our garden adding nutrients to the soil. You don’t actually burn up the whole plant. When Michael told me what he was going to purchase I pictured the whole garden on fire. Nope. You actually need to hit the weed with the flame for only a couple of seconds to kill it.

Hmmm. Really? Burn it all!

Michael let Joshua share in the fun.

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They both said it keeps you quite warm while you are doing it. Hmmm. Since I’m always cold maybe I should be the one scorching the earth.

Oh, by the way, when I saw the result on the garden I couldn’t help but think of Sherman’s march to the Sea during the Civil War. He took a scorched earth approach to warfare.

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We’ve taken the scorched earth approach to weeds. Grunt.

Michael really loves this life.

Enjoy,
Karen