Have you ever planted a "chaos" garden?

[grow_my_own]

I got this idea from reading one of the many gardening blogs that I read on a regular basis. A lady took all her left over seeds, mixed them up in a jar, and had her kids sprinkle them in a prepared bed. I thought this would be a fun thing to try, so I did.

I am just now starting to get seedlings popping up. There's everything in there from flowers (blue flax, nasturtiums, Echinacea, amaranth, sunflowers), to herbs (parsley, sage, lemon mint, marjoram, thyme, basil), to vegetables (pumpkins, peas, beans, celery, carrots, tomatoes, sweet peppers, zucchini, eggplant), and greens (chard, lettuce, kale, mustard, spinach, bok choy, cabbage, radicchio), and I can't remember what else!

Have any of you ever done a "chaos garden," and if so, what were your results? I'm erecting a bean pole/trellis today in order to train the climbing plants from an early stage.

 

[canesisters]

LOL! Most of my gardens end up chaos. I'd love to see picts of your experiment as it grows.

One thing to look out for is the size of some of the plants. In my little garden right now - the summer squash have completely overgrown their 'space', invaded the beans and smothered several plants, and are shading the tomatoes into late ripening.
Also, some of them need different growing conditions - some like the early, cooler season - some prefer the warmer, mid season.

 

[Smart Red]

If you've noticed from some of the photos I've posted, most of my gardens end up in chaos.

 

[Carol Dee]

Never intentionally planted one but have ended up with one! (A heavy rain washed all the seed to one end in a jumble.)

 

[lesa]

Pretty much describes my garden on any given day! I will pretend I did it on purpose!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

My garden's usually end up as chaos gardens as well. A big part is because most of them very quicky end up being "patched" gardens. That is I plant the garden, stuff comes up, the animals come and eat nearly all of it (often this happens largely BEFORE the previos step i.e. "the animals dig up most of the seed and eat it before it ever gerimates), I plant more stuff to fill in the holes they left, the animals come back, and the cycle repeats. So what is actually there when it finally reaches the point where the animals quit thier assault is usually a hodgepodge of the leftovers of all of those plantings, all mixed up haphazardly. Usually what has been re-sown is different from the original, since I usually run out of seed for anything before the animals run out of appetite.
My current stump garden is a perfect example. There are two clumps of rice beans which are a double chaos, as they are also more along the lines of a snarl (planting them by the handful close together seems to be the only way to ensure some make it past the critters, and since something like 90% of the rice beans never actually flower or produce currently (I'm trying to pull them to a shorter season, which is why I plant them in the first place, but I am still on F0 stock) it means that I can't actually ever thin them, so they rapidly move from bean vines into bean snarl. There is one lone Rice bean plant as well, a relic from the individual plantings I made of selected seed (basically any pattern I didn't have enough of to plant en masse.) The cowpeas are the same if reversed in time; one leftover single plant, and a clump of seeds I planted later when I though all of the first ones were going to croak. Then there is a clump of adzuki's I stuck in when I though that the rice bean snarls were not going to do anything. And to top it off, there are the four gourd plants in the middle, which have now extended so much they are basically tying all of the other clumps together, along with the black walnut tree seedling I left in one corner to dig out and move in the fall. It's a mess down there.

 

[Jeni Ann]

I am going to do it next spring. On purpose.

 

[baymule]

Is there any other kind? I've heard that nasty rumor of straight rows, but I don't believe it!

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Every year, I SWEAR I will make sure my corn is in a perfect 10x10 grid; each hill EXACTLY 1 foot from the next. I even bring a ruler out with me to sow to make sure. And every year, I wind up giving up halfway through and planting where I guess is spaced. Invariably I end up getting some too close together. On some occasions I have would up planting a corn hill ON TOP of another corn hill (I don't actually "hill" until some corn actually come up out of the ground, so there's no real tell sometimes.) starting the mess up which the critters end up completely shattering with thier predation. On those years when I DID manage to get corn to the point of tasseling (at least five years ago; every year since then, the critters have manged to kill off every sprout long before it even got close to maturity.) I have invariably gotten little to no pollination, since by that point no two remaining plants are in line with each other and anly pollen the wind catches tends to wind up either on the ground or in the driveway.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

On those years when I DID manage to get corn to the point of tasseling (at least five years ago; every year since then, the critters have manged to kill off every sprout long before it even got close to maturity.) I have invariably gotten little to no pollination, since by that point no two remaining plants are in line with each other and any pollen the wind catches tends to wind up either on the ground or in the driveway.

No, wait it would be at least SIX years ago; I forgot that; the last time I managed to get some corn to adulthood, I was making use of my "jackpot" of colored Peruvian corn I had found the fall before; so none of the plants actually silked (technically, I had one Peruvian silk and cob last year; but it was a spontaneous plant. (the same squirrels who eat all of the corn I actually plant have a tendency to take the leftovers I toss on the ground for them to eat ON PURPOSE and bury some of them in odd places; so occasional sprouts showing up is not uncommon); and in any case, the cob developed no kernels.

Actually the corn patch is a very good example of the form my chaos garden usually takes. When I first plant it, I tend to be very careful about selecting compatible kernels to get to whatever end corn I would like. Say If I have decided I want ornamental flint corn with a good stipple, that's all that will go, in nicely stippled flint kernels (on occasion, because my patch is so small, I have made plantings where every plant is a cob sibling just to make sure I got what I was looking for) All well and good. But then the critters come in and immediately chow down on 95% of the seed. I then need to re-plant the destroyed stuff so, as I said the plants will have pollen neighbors (and so
there are enough to make sure there is pollen to go around. Problem is, by that point I have usually exhausted the reserves of what I initially planted, so I have to do as close as I can from my "corn box" In it goes, and of course the critters come and chew up that (along with most of what the left the first time) So by try 3 (which is usually when I just give up and decide to spend the season figuring out some way within my skill and budget and the neighborhood rules I have to abide by to keep the damn beasts the heck OUT) I'm basically almost tossing random kernels in to fill in spaces. Flint by dent, field by sweet, Andean by local, full size by mini. So if I ever DID get some plants through, the results would probably be so genetically mixed up garbage; both for eating and for ornamentation. Actually that's what happened to the kernels six years ago; none of them had the traits I had planted the corn for (and all were rather undersized) so I think I just chucked them.