Weeds grow, well, like weeds, out of the cracks of the pavement with nothing but municipal runoff to keep them alive. Meanwhile I have to work tirelessly to keep my tomato and pepper plants happy and fruitful. Why do weeds dominate a garden?
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Some weeds are invasive species. They grow aggressively, because they are away from some checks on their growth that they have in their native range. The native wildlife might not like to eat them. Hopefully you aren’t trying to grow invasive species.
If you’re growing fruits or vegetables, they’ve been selectively bred to taste good. Some of them taste good to wildlife, too. Plants that the wildlife don’t eat are going to have an advantage over the ones they do eat. Fruit and vegetable plants have often been selectively bred to not have some of their natural defenses against being eaten, as well. Wild squashes, for example, contain a chemical called cucurbitacin, which tastes bitter. It’s one of the plant’s defenses against being eaten. We want to eat them, so we make sure to plant varieties that have less cucurbitacin. But that makes them more vulnerable to being eaten by other animals as well.
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