weeds or food?
“Don’t let your vegetables go to seed. Going to seed is bad.” I’ve no clue where I picked up this piece of gardening advice. Maybe it was a confusion on my part. Vegetables like lettuce taste bad when they go to seed, but going to seed isn’t bad. Nope, it’s not.
Grow Food Not Weeds
In fact if your vegetables go to seed you can grow food instead of weeds. Pictured here are some self-seeded spring greens, growing in the wrong place. Technically they are weeds. It’s a fact of nature that whichever seeds are in the ground will tend to sprout and grow. Would you rather have weeds, or food, spontaneously sprouting in your garden?
Letting Nature Take it’s Course
This year, as well as spring greens, I have self-seeded tomatoes. I’ve also had self-seeded lettuce and I’m looking forward to some self-seeded garlic. It’s not all good though. Generally it’s advisable to rotate crops to keep down diseases and to prevent the soil from becoming depleted. If you leave seeds to sow themselves they’ll be very close to their parents – over time that can lead to problems.
Saving Seeds
If you want to be a little organized about this and start saving seeds for next season it matters which varieties you plant. Some kind of planning and management will get you better results. An enthusiast can even develop new varieties of their favorite veggies. Still, a tomato will produce tomato seeds and spring greens will produce seeds which grow into spring greens. There’s not much wrong with that.
Go Wild!
Don’t be afraid to experiment a little, or just let things go a little wild. Go on, live a little dangerously. You’re sure to learn something! You may even end up passing some veggie plants along to your neighbors.
Have you had veggies self-seed in your garden? Have you learned about saving seed? Would you like to?
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I don’t save seeds but I do get local seeds at a farmer’s market nearby. There is one particular vendor that saves tons of seed and then has them for her customers to take home in little handmade packets. I just got some black beauty zuchinni and some pea seeds today. I am about to try to get a fall harvest of peas, so wish me luck!
Maybe I should try that. Instead of deliberately planting seeds I’ll just throw them anywhere. It couldn’t be less successful than I am right now.