casual vegetable gardening

Some things I put in the ground exactly where I want them. Other things I put in once and let nature take care of the rest. Way back in the Pale­o­zoic era I’d bought some red romaine let­tuce plants. There were more than we could eat, and a few went to seed. They looked a lit­tle unkempt, but the lit­tle yel­low finches loved the seeds and made a ruckus in the yard as they fed on them.

After the next rains, tiny let­tuce plants began to sprout all over. The plants that were in rea­son­able spots I let grow, and the baby greens from them were as tasty as the red leaves were great to look at. I let a few of those go to seed again, and the cycle started all over. Here are a few plants from the cur­rent crop, pro­vid­ing a nice red coun­ter­point around a green rosemary:

lettuces.jpg

Veg­etable gar­dens so often seem to be dis­ci­plined, mil­i­tary spaces with their per­fectly aligned rows of exactly the same plant, one after another. Instead of that, why not plant the veg­gies like they’re an exten­sion of the gar­den? And why not let some of them go to seed and repop­u­late themselves?

March 09 2008 04:54 pm | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • •

5 Responses to “casual vegetable gardening”

  1. TopVeg on 10 Mar 2008 at 12:47 am #

    Rose­mary flavoured let­tuce look great! TopVeg

  2. fernmountain on 10 Mar 2008 at 12:34 pm #

    I love self seed­ing let­tuce! Nature always knows the per­fect ger­mi­na­tion moments.

    I am hav­ing let­tuce envy.…to cold yet in the mountains.

  3. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » sharing with the birds on 02 Jul 2008 at 5:43 am #

    […] mak­ing a most excel­lent squawk­ing racket. And when the weather turns cool again, there’s a nice lit­tle col­lec­tion of baby let­tuces, all from seed, some plants for the salad plate, some to make more seeds for the birds. Share: […]

  4. [ Lost in the Landscape ] » organic, kinda sorta on 03 Jul 2008 at 4:41 am #

    […] posted before about the sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship some fungi and crit­ters have with ants. Since then I’ve read […]

  5. Vegetable Gardening Web RoundUp : GardenFingers on 06 Jul 2008 at 10:13 pm #

    […] Com­ment on casual veg­etable gar­den­ing by [ Lost in the Landscape … […]

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