9 Pasture Weeds That Are Trying to Tell You Something

Long before soil tests existed, graziers read their pastures by what was growing in them. The Roman writer Columella, around 60 A.D., taught his readers to judge land by the plants already thriving on it before deciding what to grow or graze there. English farmers a thousand years later knew rushes meant poor drainage, bracken meant acidic soil, and nettles marked the rich ground where animals had concentrated. They didn't need lab reports. The pasture told them what they needed to know. How to learn about soil from weeds