Someone who thinks like me

I think I love you Jackie French!

The forever veg garden
A forever veg garden is one that keeps growing no matter what you don't do to it - you don't weed, you don't water, you don't spray, you rarely have to plant feed. You could call it a perennial veg garden, but it's not really that either - some of the veg ARE perennial, but others just seed themselves and as one dies down, or I haul out some parsley gone to seed, there is plenty of seed in the soil to grow replacements.

Earth Garden No. 142, Dec07-Feb08, pp14-17

In short, plant lots, plant thickly to keep out weeds (you can always thin out later), mulch, let the best plants go to seed - the ones that come up and survive are the ones that are best suited to your garden, pull out obvious weeds early on but don't let a 'real' gardener do your weeding for you - you'll more than likely lose a lot of the plants you want to keep. Water once a week in the early years. Feed in the early years, until it becomes self-sustaining. Then pick & eat at will, because the garden will pretty much look after itself. It won't be pretty, but we've already established that I like the wild look anyway :)

There's something about this style of gardening that seems very 'right' to me. It may be my innate laziness coming out, but I think it's more to do with following nature in taking the easiest path - the plants that survive are the ones that will do best in your situation, with the least work, water, fertilising, pest control and so on. If we adapt, rather than working against nature, then we also have the best chance of survival. I want to teach my children to work WITH whatever life throws at them, rather than fighting AGAINST life, and this is a good way to demonstrate it.

Right - I'm heading outside to throw some more seeds in the garden, and see what happens!