Welcome!
This is the beginning of what I hope will be a shared journey with you to look at some of the amazing new ways of thinking, increasingly surfacing, which are shaping how we think of and relate to plants. How can this make our gardens, farms, and lives, better?
Though some of the thinking seems very lofty and esoteric, or just plain 'out there', it is increasingly backed up by advances in such scientific areas as Quantum Mechanics, and fits in with what the Eastern Philosophers and Yogis have been saying for thousands of years.
But really it is very down to earth, and actually translates into something that we already know instinctively but may be a bit rusty at - listening to our 'gut feelings', and re-learning how to use and trust them to help us take in useful information from our living environment.
To test all this theory out I will be planting a brand new vegetable garden, working with Nature, using the techniques explored in the book list on this page and elsewhere, new ideas I've stumbled over in my own garden, and incorporating your ideas too, so start sending them in! I'll upload pictures of the 'virgin patch' shortly.
It will be a first time effort trying some of them out for me, and with your help and suggestions we can see how this all works in practice.
I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you out there as we work out what it means to be Planting Partners with Nature, and see how we can apply the knowledge we gain for the benefit of our gardens, the plants, ourselves and our planet.
Happy Gardening!
The Intuitive Gardener
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3 comments:
Hmm- good idea. Would love to know how your anarchic garden grows. But what happens if you want to eat, say, tomatoes and beans, and the indigenous bully-boys of thistles, buttercups, dandelions say, simply want to strangle your delicate plantings? They will, you know. (I'm writing from the UK incidentally....)
Having said that I have nasturtiums in my salad bed, and the caterpillars prefer them to lettuce. Now I have a lot of fat and amusing caterpillars on the sorry-looking nasturtiums, and not one on the lettuce, rocket, beans etc.
The nasturtiums seeded themselves, too. I just let them as they are very pretty and chuck the flowers in salads. So now I have a tiny eco-system - butterflies and caterpillars for the birds feeding on leaves that seemingly plant themselves for that purpose. And my plantings are left untouched...
So you may be on to something.
Hello Composter! As it happens I am English too, but now living here in Los Angeles and gardening on the edge of the wild chapparral, so I know a thing or two about those bully boys!
And that is exactly it. Look at how strong and vital they are compared to our pampered tomatoes.
I'd like to see how tomatoes grow in the wild in their original environment, surrounded by just the plants they like, and full of local knowledge that have enabled them to adapt to the local horde of insects, other plants, soil microbes etc. They used to have just as much of a society as we do, with some of the same problems!
Anyway, I'll post some pictures later, but what I do is politely move the very closest bully boys that look like they might swamp the beans etc, to the compost heap, leaving the roots to compost into the soil.
In actual fact I rarely have to do this, as the plants seem maintain their own distance, more or less. I am just now getting into the second generation (saved the seeds) of my first crops, and I will be interested to see this growing season, how much they have learned about their environment, and if they are stronger and more vital for having had community with other wild species, and had the chance to 'learn' their new home....
DO try it in England and tell me how you get on....
Best,
well my first lesson in gardening was to water the weeds, grow em, dig them in, and repeat until you have good soil, maybe three years; this is because the weeds want to nourish the soil, and the right ones grow on soil to do that; if you talk to the weeds- so called- they will tell you this and lots more-- every weed has a special secret name, once you know that you can ask them anything you want to know. If you need the name, ask me.
PC1
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