Pear Paradise: Getting to Know the Roots of Pear Trees

Having grown up on a farm, I had never realized just how vast the weeds spreading across nearly nine fen of land could be, because the herbicides used in conventional farming always kept them out of sight and out of mind. At most, bothered by the sight of a large patch of "yellow-crying" weeds along the field ridges or ditches, I volunteered to plant white clover, red-stemmed water spinach and mint on nine ping of land to suppress the weeds. At first it took some effort to help cut back the weeds, but once the "puppet government" I had carefully propped up gained the upper hand, it was truly like grass bending before the wind, imposing wherever it went. It saved the cost of herbicides and spared me the annoying sight they create, and I could not help but feel smug in front of my family.

It was not until I was hired to manage a pear orchard of nearly nine fen in the Xizhou area of Changhua that was trying out chemical-free cultivation that I realized I had never seen the wider world at all. After spending several thousand yuan to hire someone to carry a brush cutter and mow the entire orchard, I excitedly bought cover crops and green manure crops such as perennial peanut, bahia grass, Bermuda grass, and soybean green manure Tainan No. 7 to sow, plus my ace mint, preparing to wipe out all rivals in one stroke and seize political and religious power over the pear orchard. Who would have thought that after a spell of overcast rain, the several thousand troops I commanded were instantly surrounded and buried by the millions-strong weed army long entrenched there, a case of grossly overestimating myself orz.

So I turned my thoughts to a push-type wide-angle mower, which would spare me the hard work of carrying equipment and cutting through the whole orchard, and whose wide angle meant I need not fear missing weeds under the trees. Immersed in this wonderful vision, I was immediately shot down -- this machine simply could not cut weeds with thicker stems. The pear orchard, which soil tests showed lacked organic matter, badly needed this kind of coarse-fiber weed to add to it, so constantly pushing the machine to cut small weeds was not feasible.

In the end I resigned myself, rolled up my sleeves and slaughtered the weeds under the sun, dripping with sweat. At first the weeds spreading endlessly across the orchard left me frazzled, but then I thought again: were they not also a display of the soil's fertility, the embodiment of fertilizer? Even if practical considerations for the crop harvest made compromise impossible, why torment myself over their ubiquitous growth? So my mood settled first, and only then did I find a steady rhythm and breathing when cutting grass. After that I picked overcast rainy days, when I did not need to gasp and gulp water, as the best time for me and the weeds to keep each other company.

But mowing over a large area, even if not tiring, inevitably felt dull and boring, so I began planting vegetables while weeding. Thus the act of hoeing weeds also opened a path for the crops, and at the same time served to mulch and fertilize (who says weeds are not a kind of fertilizer?). At the thought of achieving three or four things at once, I truly set about weeding with all due diligence and propriety -- who does not like doing twice the work with half the effort?

Once I was calm and unhurried, my earlier mood of seeing weeds as thugs to be executed as quickly as possible slowly changed. Why must every weed be cut down and uprooted, its whole clan wiped out? First, tens of thousands of weeds will wear you out with cutting; second, some grasses with strong soil-holding power, if you insist on clearing all the soil from their roots, will only make you more annoyed and slower; third, if you pull up a whole patch of grass by the roots, you are effectively clearing space for other weed seeds in the soil that are eyeing the chance and waiting to spring, and even giving strong grass species such as hairy beggarticks a great opportunity to show off their might; fourth, if you cut only the stems and leaves while leaving the roots in the soil, not only can the weeding speed up, but the roots in the soil can work for you -- conserving water, conserving soil, conserving warmth, conserving fertilizer, and providing a place for soil microorganisms to live. Of course, the cut stems and leaves can all be laid over the weeds still barely hanging on to keep them from quickly surging back.

Following this direction, I also began using existing materials under the pear trees, such as pear trunks and stone pillars, to roll and press rows of weeds so that they lay flat on the ground without affecting ventilation or passage. In fact, some professional pear growers warned instead that if all the grass were cleared, insects with nothing to eat would have no choice but to climb the pear trees to survive.

In summary, as long as I do not see weeds as mortal enemies that must be hunted down and eradicated, then they can be of use to me, I need not wear myself half to death, and more importantly it benefits the long-term development of the pear orchard in many ways. But what amazed me most was that weeding actually became a kind of pleasure -- no longer killing, but a kind of production and balance. Thus this mechanical swinging of the arm could express my beautiful imagination of nature's ecology.

Weeds have no voice and cannot protest the bad name humans have pinned on them, but they may well count themselves lucky to understand one thing better than humans do -- the land is the final home and paradise of all things, and there is no other place. Every time I pull up a clump of stubborn root and soil, it reminds me of this once again.