Shhhh don't tell the plants.

I'm lucky to be able to grow year round. I messed up one of the beds last fall. I switched the Bush peas with the climbing peas. I was having a lot of trouble with critters, I think birds eating everything I planted. To fix this I made chicken wire tops for several raised beds.  The peas grew through the wire (because they were vining instead of the Bush peas I thought  they were) making it impossible to remove. This kept everything except the peas from growing.
When it got to hot I removed the top and cleaned up the bed. The carrots were small, but there, so I left them and planted new stuff.
I had planted bok choy last fall, but it didn't germinate. It's to hot for it to grow now in our zone, but no one told the bok choy that. Not only did it germinate it looks amazing.
I also have sweet peas blooming, and eatable peas popping up all over the garden. It's way too hot for them to do anything, but I'll let them grow and see what happens. My veggies are very confused this year, but I'm not going to tell them.

Welcome to chaos gardening
Here the critters will do at least 10% of the seeding. Sometimes I will shake my head in wonder at what happens in our gardens. One of the beds, I know I planted with corn, are growing sorghum. In another bed, where I planted sorghum and beans, I now have collard greens growing, even though it’s the wrong time of the year for that. The beds I planted turmeric and ginger in, don’t have any growing, but I have many popping up in other places. I have a 2 inch space between our porch and my carrot planters. Right now I have a cabbage and sorghum growing there. I didn’t seed or plant them. It’s just the birds and critter trying to help.
It’s life, so I try to just go with the flow. According to science parsnips is a cold season crop, but mine didn’t start growing until we entered the warm season and are still growing large and long. I think that these things partly happens because of the temperature fluctuations we get here in California. I try to just go with the flow, otherwise I would go crazy. Things rarely go the way I want them to, but that also means that sometimes I get a larger harvest than I expected and sometimes I will get a smaller one. This year we got sunflowers popping up everywhere. I tried growing some last year, and didn’t get any. This year I started a few indoors, but I didn’t direct seed any. We still got the largest and most beautiful sunflowers I have ever grown. They just popped up everywhere and became large and beautiful. Lots of people complimented me on them, saying I am a good gardener. I didn’t have the heart to tell them, that I didn’t plant most of them. This is real life, created by Mother Nature and isn’t that wonderful? It’s wild, crazy and chaotic, but it’s life confirming too, which makes me happy.

I love your post Ulla. yes Mother nature likes to remind us ultimately she is in control. Beautiful sunflowers, they are so cheerful.
I did plant the bok choy,  just months ago.  The peas are coming up in all the beds that had peas growing in them earlier this year.
I'm very familiar with what you are talking about. Under the bed with the bok choy, a bok choy and large leaf plantain are growing quite nicely, I didn't plant them there.
I have tomatoes popping up all over the place, and the most annoying to me are the walnut trees seedlings. I'm constantly pulling those little suckers out of well any place with loose soil(and the wood chip pile). Thanks to the squirrels, who are making sure I don't get board in the garden.
Chaos gardening is an interesting term. I don't just scatter seeds out, but you would never know it looking at my garden. I plant policulture (I'm a terrible speller, so please forgive me if it's spelled wrong) and over plant, so it doesn't take long to take on a wild jungle look. This method has really worked for me, so I don't mind fighting my way through my own personal jungle.
Happy gardening

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I love your post Ulla. yes Mother nature likes to remind us ultimately she is in control. Beautiful sunflowers, they are so cheerful.
Chaos gardening is an interesting term. I don't just scatter seeds out, but you would never know it looking at my garden. I plant policulture (I'm a terrible speller, so please forgive me if it's spelled wrong) and over plant, so it doesn't take long to take on a wild jungle look. This method has really worked for me, so I don't mind fighting my way through my own personal jungle.
Happy gardening

I do polyculture too. Both of my gardens are organized chaos, which is how I like it. Seeing plants come up in unexpected places tells me, that the soil has healed up and now are healthy. When we started out, not even weeds would grow there, which is why we started out with raised beds. It took 3 years, before the soil had healed enough for us to start the food forest garden. Now I toss out seeds in February and spend the rest of the year, removing poisonous plants which I don’t want in there. The neighborhood kids will stop by for a self picked snack, so I make sure not to removed anything dangerous. The kids knows that I don’t mind them picking a peach, some berries or what else is in season.
When you move from traditional gardening to poly and perma culture it is a lot about changing ones mindset. Wide spreading mint for example becomes gopher food. Strong low growing weeds, cover the soil to preserve moisture and give the soil nutrients. This is why I love the term chaos gardening. It’s embracing the fact that things don’t have to be neat and tidy because Mother Nature knows what she is doing.
Happy gardening

I was so excited today to find eatable peas, and they tasted great. My son was with me when I discovered them. I told him how cool it is, I didn't think they would produce peas, it's way to hot for peas.
He blew me away with a comment I didn't expect from him. He said I should leave them to produce seed, and maybe get a heat tolerant pea. All my kids are adults. This son is my youngest 25. Anyway for the most part I do all the gardening. There good kids/people if I need help all I have to do is ask, but it's my thing, and besides harvesting, I do it all. So it surprised me he would think of something like that. You never know what they are picking up.  I think it's a great idea.

I found 2 broccoli plants today. I planted broccoli in this bed months ago, and several came up, but I planted them  too late and they bolted before they made broccoli. So these are just late, or maybe seeds from what bolted? I'm not sure I left it long enough to become viable. They will probably do the same, but I will wait and see. I didn't think I'd get peas, and I did, so who knows.

Every day is an adventure. Today I found ripe tomatoes underneath my peach tree and several blackberries. The tomatoes went into the fridge, the blackberries into my mouth. My carrots died, because the battery for the irrigation ran out, and it took a while for us to notice it. The rose I had recommended for hips, does produce any, the other type of  rose hip roses I found, are full of them. I will probably get at least 2 pounds this year. Last year I got a total of 6 hips LOL.