Growing annual vegetables with minimal effort?

I saw this video on Youtube where a guy put 6000 seeds of various vegetables in a small bed, and checked what happens:
   
He got some good results with some vegetables like bok choys, but not so good with carrots. But most importantly, it seems like this strategy shut down the weeds.

This intrigues me. I don't like and don't have much time for weeding. I have a lot of space, so I don't need to maximize yields. Mulch is great with transplants, but more tricky with seeded plants.

Does anyone have experience with a more calculated version of that? Seeding things so densely you can't see soil and still getting good results? What plants would go well together? Peas and lettuce?

Does that video mention biointensive?

While it is a system that I have seen big farms use to grow corn it appears that it works for home gardens too.

The following outline of the methods approximates the descriptions found in the popular biointensive handbook, How to Grow More Vegetables (and fruits, nuts, berries, grains and other crops) Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, by John Jeavons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive_agriculture

That book was one of the first books that I bought after finding the permies forum and I bought it due to a recommendation from someone here.

There is a forum dedicated to Biointensive:

https://permies.com/f/231/biointensive

Here are some threads you might find interesting:

https://permies.com/t/129405/Biointensive-Farming-tips

https://permies.com/t/165672/Integrating-bio-intensive-row-gardening

Jerome,

I did not watch the video yet, but I frequently get overwhelmed by stuff in the summer.  I still plant a garden and I take steps to minimize weeds but I don’t really do any weeding once things get planted.  I still get food.  And that is my objective.  I like that I get food—lots—with minimal effort.  Maybe I would get more if I weeded more but I still get a good harvest nonetheless.  And if I have to do a lot of work to get a little more food I have to wonder if it is worth the effort and energy.

My 2 cents,

Eric

As an experiment this year I want to see what mulch worked best for me. I used wood chips, no mulch ( wanted to use straw, but couldn't find any organic straw) and living mulch (basically over planting).  A gopher made the experiment impossible. But the bed that had the mass planting did amazing.  Not only did everything grow, but they produced better than ever.  No weeds, less water, no disease, and the only pest problem was aphids on my beans in late August.
One of the beds over planted is 4'X4' this bed has a tomato, eggplant, 3 cucumber, basil, radishes, marigolds, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, salvia, and a bell pepper.
The other bed is about 3'X 5' it has a tomato, cherry tomato, zucchini, pepper, chives, cantaloupe, beans, radishes, salvia, zinnia, cosmos, bachelor buttons, and nasturtiums.
The only thing that seemed to suffer over crowding was the nasturtiums. I think they germinate slower, so they didn't get enough sun.
The pictures start with the photos I took today 10/1/21 it's hard to tell, but you are looking at both beds behind the cement block bed. You can no longer walk between the beds, and can tell where one begins and the other ends in the pictures.  The cosmos that go above the photo are about 8' tall. The other photos are the same beds in the first photo going back in time.
I was thrilled with the results and and will definitely plant this way again.

Vegetable gardening requires a commitment of time and effort, but growing your own fresh vegetables doesn't have to take over your life. If you start with a few easy-to-grow vegetables that don't require daily care, you will be eating fresh. You don't even need a full garden: Most of these vegetables can be grown in containers and kept at a hand's reach.
Leafy Greens
Herbs
Cherry Tomatoes
Beans
Garlic
Onions

Personally I only pull weeds that annoy me, like thistle and grasses. Everything else I sont pull since most of me weeds currently are wood sorrel (edible) and borage I cant seem to kill off and some wild native flowers that decided to stay.
I put the most time into the garden in the spring, just make sure to watch spacing for some plants like radishes and onions, they dont like to be crowded even as seedings, but then they can be used as green onions and for radish seed pods. Cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, etc can handle growing over eachother and do quite well and shade out most weeds by the summer.
Good luck!! Make sure to keep your soil nice and rich with organic matter like compost or manure.

A couple of years ago, I cleaned out a bunch of old seeds for various greens, carrots, and radishes that I didn't care to test the germination of, mixed them in a bucket, and then thickly scattered them all over my raised beds in the early spring. I figured I would just fill in the gaps with the seedlings I was starting inside with my more precious seeds. Ha! There were no gaps! It was the year of the salad bar garden! The various lettuces and spinach grew beautifully even in the heat of summer. The radishes did well too but we never saw any carrots. No weeds except for the volunteer tomatillos and cherry tomatoes that squeezed out and then towered over the greens. Oh and my 2nd year leeks that were growing for seed did well in the mix also.

I tried to recreate it this year in my row garden where I planted my tomatoes, eggplants and peppers but it didn't work as well. I think because it was at ground level and the rabbits were eating the young greens as they sprouted up. But I also planted a ton of green beans along with the radishes and leafy greens and those had filled in all the gaps by the end of the summer. But I had to weed at the beginning of summer.

I've seen the video and from my point of view it is a great way to garden IF you know what plant is what.

For me starting out it really helped to plant in rows and patterns so I could identify the seedlings based on the pattern. As I learn to identify all the plants in growing it becomes less of an issue.  My garden had a few dangerous volunteers like poison hemlock. Once I find it I purged it from my growing space, but it scared me... Because I'd been nibbling on a few weeds that were purportedly edible. I'm more hesitant now.

That said, I've learned a lot and have planted two beds that way this season. The seeds have begun germinating and are starting their slow cool season growth. I'll post the results in my home garden thread.

As long as the soil is covered with something, weed seeds will be discouraged from sprouting. There are several ways to go about this.

Dense planting, aka biointensive
Mulching with leaves or straw, aka the Ruth Stout method
Mulching with compost, aka the Charles Dowding method
Mulching with plastic/cardboard/burlap/etc

What will work best for you will depend on your local pests, mulching materials available, and your own personal preference. For me, I have a lot of slugs and snails and undecomposed things on the soil attract them so I use Charles Dowding's method with some more intensive plant spacings.

Also don't forget many weeds are useful and edible too! I recently made some tasty dandelion pesto.

I've seen the video and from my point of view it is a great way to garden IF you know what plant is what.

In my very unexperienced opinion, MIGardener forgot to thin out the plants as they grew. It's fine to have all of them together when they are small, but as they grow, some plants have to go to let the others achieve their potential. You don't need to know which plant is which. You only need to recognize plants that are of the same family so you can thin them out before they conflict. This is a pretty work intensive method, if the gardener has to come and thin out some plants every few days.

Maybe if he had chosen just 4 different seed varieties it would have been easier.

I do something similar with herbs since that’s how my mother grew them. I grow mint, dill, lemon balm, catnip, curry plants, sage, thyme, mug wort, rosemary  and oregano in the same bed. I rarely get weeds in this bed and all of the herbs are thriving. It also seems to keep the more aggressive spreaders, like mint, under control. There are no leftover space in there, until August when most died down because of the heat (105+F most days). It works very well.