Why do weeds grow almost anywhere so easily, but growing food crop requires so much care and is so difficult?

Question

Why do weeds grow almost anywhere so easily, but growing food crop requires so much care and is so difficult?

In: 47

Answer 1

Weeds thrive in depleted soil. In fact you can tell a lot about a soil by the weeds growing there. For example, field horsetail, field mint and creeping buttercup indicate severe soil compaction and excess moisture, while nettles and chickweed indicate that the soil is rich in humus.

Food crop requires constant maintenance and renewal to grow that specific plant. And if they’re not doing crop rotation on that field, requires artificial means, which can be insufficient to address the needs of that crop.

Whereas good soil with a healthy balance will have ‘weeds’ that are very nutritious like nettles and lambsquarter.