Easy, Natural Gardening

We have been eating lots of greens this year. I didn't plant them, they just came up from last year's plants, that I allowed to go to seed naturally.

Lettuce was the best, we had several varieties of lettuce big enough to eat before most people even got their gardens planted. In the fall I allowed a few plants to mature, they flowered and set seed. When the seed looked mature I just shook the plants over the garden where I wanted the lettuce to grow. Some of it sprouted in the fall, and I covered the young plants with leaves. They survived the winter and started growing as soon as the ground warmed up a bit.

We also have several other varieties of greens, including rocket, and some Japanese varieties, all from last year's plants. Free seeds!

We had a lot of pumpkins last year, and I threw the old ones, after Halloween, onto the garden and spread the chunks aground. Dozens of pumpkins sprouted and I just left them to grow. When they got bigger I thinned out the weaker-looking ones and left the ones that looked good. Should have plenty of pumpkins again this fall. This will be the third year for these.

Tomatoes will also grow from last year's plants. This can be hit-or-miss, as they don't always come back as the same variety as you had before. Sometimes I get great tomatoes, and sometimes they are tough and tasteless. In that case just pull out the plants that don't produce well as soon as you find out, late summer, and plant other vegetables in that space. We had good results the last few years, some really excellent tomatoes, but one plant had tasteless lumps not even worth cooking.

You may have to dig up and replant some things, if they are not in a convenient spot where they happen to sprout. I replanted several tomatoes and may still do a few pumpkins.

Last year I decided to try growing peaches. I threw the pit of every peach I ate, out onto the garden. This year I have two peach trees growing. I hope they turn out to have good fruit. It can be a toss-up with fruit, whether seed-grown trees have good fruit or not.