[3759allen]

while sowing some herbs and lettuce seeds today i got wondering if you could sow a little more natural?

i'll confess i'm absolutely useless at succession sowing. no matter how hard i try or plan i still seem to end up with a glut and a large gap between crops. time is quite often an issue, not knowing when i'll have time off work and having to do plenty of other things when i do get time off doesn't help.

anyway back to the topic. i was thinking if i could try what i'm going to call a wild veggy bed, thinking prob herb and salad would be a good start.

i have a small herb patch already with the herbs that have over wintered, but rather than sowing seed in pots then planting out in neat little area's i could just mix a small selection of herb seeds up and scatter.

i have planned a section of raised bed for my lettuce and thinking to divide that space into 4- 8 smaller sections and mixing and scattering seed. then do the same to the next area a month later and so on. i'm thinking as i cut the crop it may release other smaller plants or un germinated seeds to pick up and grow as well as cut and come again plants re growing.

i know i may still get a glut, but i get that now anyway. it may look a little untidy and take an extra minute to harvest a bowl of salad, but i do like the idea of foraging and making use of what ever is growing at the time.

have any of you tried or still do this? am i being silly or just plain lazy? all opinions and views welcome.

[New shoot]

With the salad, I can't see it would be much different to sowing a salad mix.  The only disadvantage I could see would working out what was salad seedlings and what was weed seedlings when it germinated.  What about a series of small drills across the squares?

The herbs might be a little trickier.  What were you thinking of sowing?

[al78]

One way to deal with the weed issue is to prepare the ground for sowing, then leave it alone for 2-3 weeks, by which time any weed seedlings in there (and maybe some perennial weed roots) will have sprouted. Then hoe everything before scattering the seed.

[3759allen]

the bed is too bad for weed issues as it was a new bed last year and i kept pretty on top of weeding. i was thinking just let everything grow big enough to identify weather it is weed or crop.

as for the herbs i have rosemary and sage established, a few bunch's of chives come back to life. thinking of scattering basil, dill, fennel, tarragon and may be few others i may find and letting them get on with it. if any want to take over then remove or cut down to give others a chance.

i may give it a go and report back with result, good or bad.