"Unfortunately, when you have a vegetable garden, weeds can be one of your biggest crops," Wirzburger says.
Every spring, gardeners rhapsodize about how satisfying it is to
be "digging in the dirt" once more. Weeding is the dark side of that uplifting tale, and just about everybody hates it.
Sure, some relish the instant grat of pulling the offenders, the calming repetition and neatness of it all. Guilt and fear drive the rest of us: If we don't get rid of these unwanted plants, the plants we want will be overrun - outcompeted for water and nutrients - by the rambunctious likes of bittercress, mugwort, purple deadnettle, and chickweed.
"Some of this stuff, like mugwort, we swear the roots go to China," says Wirzburger, who, like her two pals and several other Burlington County master gardeners, spends up to six hours a week here during the 20-week growing season.
Wirzburger is a homemaker from Medford who raised five children and volunteered like crazy while the rest of us went to "work." Hogan is a retired marketing manager from Tabernacle. And Wargovich is a retired intensive care physician from Hainesport, who never tires of telling the same joke, over and over.
"I'm out-standing in my field," he announces from the middle of the garden, then waits for the predictable groans. And they come, always do.
These friends are unanimously old-school. They hand-pull weeds, with help from shovel and pitchfork; stirrup hoe (handle with stirrup-shaped blade on the end); mulch fork (like a pitchfork, with 10 tines); three-pronged cultivator (sharp-tined hand-rake) and serrated weed knife; garden rake; and trowel.
They kneel on foam pads, strap on plastic knee pads, occasionally wear gloves, and work in two- to three-hour stretches at a time to minimize injury.
