My garden is completely organic too. And I also have hollyhocks growing wild around my yard, my kind of flower as it seeds itself. (Don't grow them too close to anything you eat -- they contain digitalis.)
While we are on the gardening sidetrack, let me lay out my kale growing scheme, which I use for all brassicas and related vegetables. This is based on compost heaps not being hot enough to kill seeds, which store very well therein.
I always have some kale and such overwintering which I let go to flower in the spring -- quite beautiful and makes the bees happy -- and then to seed. Once the seeds are ready, there is a flock of birds that visits twice a day to feed, and they scatter some seeds on the ground. Eventually I pull the plants and strip everything off the stalks and put that into my special seeding compost, which I do right on the bed so any seeds I drop go right back into the soil.
So the birds and the stripping process have spread my first crop, which is seeded properly when I dig over and fertilize the bed, the fertilizer also including some of the seed compost. The seed compost then gets spread over other beds at intervals of a month or so, so I have a constant supply of various greens at various stages of development. Every few years I might buy a few seeds if one of the species seems to be losing ground, but otherwise it is self-sustaining, unless I buy some manure rather than just relying on my compost for fertilizer.
The kale is so hardy it never needs replenishment, but I find the chards and beets and some of the oriental vegetables need periodic renewal.
LC |
