Over seed weeds

You how once in a while you learn something that just hits you between the eyes? You have that 💡 moment.   I was watching Dr. Patrick Jones on YouTube. If you have never seen him and interested in herbs I really like him I always learn a lot, and he's funny, so it's always fun. Anyway he commented on the fact that a lot of herbs that are basically weeds should be over seeded, because they produce tons of seeds to compensate for the fact that most won't germinate. If course he said it better, but it made me feel better.  
I've learned over the years not to start a hole package of veggie seeds, because most if not all will grow, and I will have ridiculous amounts of seedlings.
Last year I tried to start comfrey seeds.  Only 2 of the 6 seeds I planted germinated.  I assumed I did something wrong, or didn't do something. Now I realize I probably didn't do anything wrong, it's just not a veggie seed.  Some seeds aren't going to have a high germination rate, and it's not because it's bad seed, or because I did something wrong, but because that's just the way it is. I just wanted to share this little tid bit. From now on if it's a weed like plant, I will be more generous with the seeds, and assume or cast no blame for low germination.
Happy gardening

Thanks, Jen, for the reminder that seeds don't all have the same behavior.  Isn't it correct that seeds from the same wild species and maybe even the same plant don't all germinate at the same time to moderate their risk of sprouting during unfavorable conditions?  Makes sense in an uncertain world!

It's great that you are taking up that topic. i have learned the same thing. This year i mixed together a lot of seeds, that i thought had expired and used them as a cover crop. Among them were some lettuce seeds, that i had tried to grow, but that never really worked for me. My daughter and I didn't even plant the seeds. We just sprinkled this mix of lettuce, radishes, kale and whatnots on top of the soil, thinking that whatever covered the soil, would be great. Well color me surprised. We have an abundance of lettuce with radishes, kale and boc choy sprinkled in. its like a treasure hunt finding things, but fun, and a crop I didn't expect. I have learned so much from this experiment, and i am definitely going to do it again next cold season. I see it with herbs too. Dill transplanted or sowed with a soil cover, dont do as well as those I just spread around, and I need a lot more seeds than the package says. Some times I just feel like, you should just spread some seeds and let nature take its course.

the first year i planted carrots i dug tiny trenches along my bed, carefully placed the seeds the recommended distance apart, gently covered them with the proper amount of dirt. the second year i spread/dumped them on the ground(that's how my landlords brother does it)of the prepared bed, lightly spread some soil/dirt over them. both years i kept them moist and once growing watered them deeply but not to often. guess which year produced the best/most abundant carrots. you guessed it, first year, not!
a friend gave me a comfrey plant last fall that she dug up for me. i broke the root apart, put the pieces in pots with some dirt, added water and now i have 25 comfrey plants ready to go out once the weather turns. go find a well established comfrey plant, dig it up and pull the root apart and spread it around. you don't have to take the whole plant, just shove your shovel down the middle and split the root if you don't need a lot.
the last 2 years i brought my herbs in to over winter them, they died. this year i gave them a whole lot less water and they are still alive. sometimes it's the simplest things.

I like to seed heavily.  My objective is to have more desired seeds than weed seeds.  That way I have a better chance of getting plants I want.  To achieve this, I let things like carrots, lettuce, cilantro, dill, spinach go to seed… I harvest and eat plenty, but leave some to go to seed.

Lettuce seed is like dandelion seed, floating with a small “parachute “.  When most of the seeds are mature, many have already floated away…. So it’s a toss up when to pick the seed stalks and put  them in a paper bag for later… I leave the top of the paper bag open, for air circulation, but I am in an arid climate.  In humidity it may be different, but if the seed stalk is able to dry without molding, more seeds will mature after the stalks are gathered.  Most plants in the sunflower family can do this

Anyway, gather seed stalks and or heads keeping different veg and flower  seeds each in their own bag,

I copy Ulla, mix them together and spread them thickly anywhere there is bare soil, anywhere I am going to be watering, anywhere I want to prevent weeds .  The way I look at it, I am choosing what will grow as plentifully as weeds.

They don’t all germinate the first season, but that doesn’t mean they are no longer viable.  It just means the conditions weren’t met for them to break dormancy.

Or, I take the seed stalk and hit the ground with it and seeds detach …  my whole objective is to get the seeds spread around.  They will germinate when things are right, and be much more vigorous for having germinated in place.  I have had sunflowers germinate long before last frost, or the soil is “warm”… because they were beside a rock, or in the tiniest crevice of the chip mulch…

And at the price of seeds, the only way I can afford that much seed is to grow my own.

You've sown some costly seed, few in the pack, sat back and waited - and waited - and given up. But don't waste the compost - use it for something else. Sometimes your original sowing springs up. So never extract an unexpected seedling until you know what it is!

I bought a bag of organic potting soil a few years ago, planted a bergamot (citrus) tree in a large pot with it, and watered it regularly on my deck through the summer.  Very quickly a tight clump of maybe a dozen sprouts popped up in the pot.  Curious, I left them there to see what they would become.

They became some kind of smallish sunflowers!  I let them grow as they would, being careful to allow the bergamot tree enough space, sun and water as well.  By "harvest time" I had several 2-3" sunflower heads to feed the chickens and wild birds!  Who knows how long that pocket of seeds lay dormant in that soil bag?  It was a fun experiment.  

(Oh, as a side note, my growing bergamot tree now has a bit of iron deficiency, so perhaps the sunflowers took a lot of that out of the soil.  Am looking for a rusty non-coated nail to stick into the pot to give it some iron.)

I have also chucked a bunch of seeds on the ground. I got mixed results.  I loved it when I did it with a bunch of old flower seeds.  It was fun to watch and try to see if I knew what it was before it flowered, and looked wild and beautiful.
I did it in my winter garden the year before last. Since I was growing a bunch of veggie I wasn't very familiar with I didn't like the results quite as well. A lot of the veggies I grow in the winter look remarkably alike.  Is it spinach or sorrel, or lettuce?  Kale, or broccoli.  We still ate the veggies, and we eventually figured things out, but it wasn't as easy as it seemed like it should be. So for a ground cover it's a fun adventure, but for my veggie garden I try to write down what goes where. With a few exceptions. It's not unusual to me to toss carrot, or onion seeds all over. Mostly because they are easy to identify.
I wish comfrey was so easy for me.  For me comfrey is quite difficult to get started.  It's down right embarrassing how many comfrey roots I planted everywhere I could think of. 0 grew for me. I finally got a True comfrey crown to grow in the fall of 2021 I think .  Spring 2022 I started true comfrey from seed and it actually was much easier to keep healthy then the crown.  I live in N California zone 9 b, it's not impossible, but it's not the super easy plant many people are used to.  
Thank you everyone, I enjoyed reading all your comments.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:I have also chucked a bunch of seeds on the ground. I got mixed results.  I loved it when I did it with a bunch of old flower seeds.  It was fun to watch and try to see if I knew what it was before it flowered, and looked wild and beautiful.
I did it in my winter garden the year before last. Since I was growing a bunch of veggie I wasn't very familiar with I didn't like the results quite as well. A lot of the veggies I grow in the winter look remarkably alike.  Is it spinach or sorrel, or lettuce?  Kale, or broccoli.  We still ate the veggies, and we eventually figured things out, but it wasn't as easy as it seemed like it should be. So for a ground cover it's a fun adventure, but for my veggie garden I try to write down what goes where. With a few exceptions. It's not unusual to me to toss carrot, or onion seeds all over. Mostly because they are easy to identify.
I wish comfrey was so easy for me.  For me comfrey is quite difficult to get started.  It's down right embarrassing how many comfrey roots I planted everywhere I could think of. 0 grew for me. I finally got a True comfrey crown to grow in the fall of 2021 I think .  Spring 2022 I started true comfrey from seed and it actually was much easier to keep healthy then the crown.  I live in N California zone 9 b, it's not impossible, but it's not the super easy plant many people are used to.  
Thank you everyone, I enjoyed reading all your comments.

Hello Neighbor from the North. I am as far south in California as you can get.
I only use those seeds as cover crops, between my transplants. I always have filled vegetable beds. Some vegetables I will direct sow, but I mostly start plants indoors and then transplant when the temperature is right, and I have the room. I do a lot of succession planting too.
This year, I had one bed with mainly onions and garlic, plus some cassava I had started to see if they would grow during the cold season. Since the cassava didn’t sprout, it was great, having a different crops to eat. That’s one of the places I spread them out. It helps prevent the nettles from going crazy and other weeds I don’t like, so I spread them on any bare soil I can see.  The ones I like, like mallow, sorrel, mustard cress and purslane I leave alone to spread. I love how it cuts down on the time I would otherwise use weeding.
I spread them out around my broccoli and cauliflowers too, which meant that the earwigs and bugs, left them alone and went for the lettuce and the napas, I also have over-planted on purpose.
I do hear you, about just spreading seeds all over. I don’t do that unless it’s herbs, or are being used as a cover crop. I keep close track of where I put thing and when etc.
It’s different in our orchard. I am still slowly building it to what I want, but I try to encourage useful weeds, compared to the destructive kinds, and I have tossed out wildflower seeds each year.
I have still not had any luck with comfrey though. Like you, I find, that they need a lot of babying which I don’t have the time for right now. Someone in another thread suggested that I plant borage instead of comfrey for my trees, so I am going to try and do that, this summer.

It's kinda funny Ulla, I think I'm the person who suggested borage. I planted it maybe 3 years ago, and haven't had to plant it since. If you don't pick the flowers it will spread everywhere. If I don't like where it comes up I just pull it, and unlike comfrey that the end.  Once in awhile I will transplant it. I read you can't, but I have done it successfully many times.

I love the way you deal with weeds. Out compete them with a eatable plants.  I over plant my veggie garden for many reasons, keeping weeds out is one. I never thought of doing it in my weedy areas, it's so smart .  Thanks

Jen Fulkerson wrote:It's kinda funny Ulla, I think I'm the person who suggested borage. I planted it maybe 3 years ago, and haven't had to plant it since. If you don't pick the flowers it will spread everywhere. If I don't like where it comes up I just pull it, and unlike comfrey that the end.  Once in awhile I will transplant it. I read you can't, but I have done it successfully many times.

I love the way you deal with weeds. Out compete them with an eatable plants.  I over plant my veggie garden for many reasons, keeping weeds out is one. I never thought of doing it in my weedy areas, it's so smart .  Thanks

😂 that’s really funny. I think you might be right. I am making big changes in our orchard this year, because of these forums. There are so much inspiration here, so I decided that you guys are right, and we need a forest garden. So I have decided to make some changes in the orchard to more of a forest garden.
I am learning so much from the MGC about soil, roots and insects which was what inspired me to spread food seeds in my weedy areas. This also means that I can see where our problems with the orchard comes from, and how to fix them. So I am planting raspberries and blackberries in cool and slightly shady spots, in the hope that they will be able to handle the heat that way. I also bought the mulberry tree some of you suggested, and I am going to spread borage seeds around the bottom of the more mature trees.
I am feeding 5 adults, and working toward food independence, so it’s a lot of hard work. But, as I have learned here, I have started adding more and more perennials to the garden, since that means less work. Btw it’s very funny, that while I have never been able to grow spinach here. The two types of perennial spinach I grow, are thriving.
I love you all, for sharing and caring.

I also try to use choose you weed as my living much, but not so much the traditional weeds.  I decided to plant strawberries in my perennial flower beds because its the perfect micro climate to keep the flowers from freezing and 'why weed grass when you might not have to'.  This came from seeing the small wild strawberries in the asparagus bed in my back garden and in the walk ways, which I now encourage by selectively weeding and mulching around them, as well as the asparagus.  

Now I buy strawberry species especially for their ability to set runners, which annoys some people, but I love it.  The perennial bed strawberries have jumped the curb, and are in every crack in my walkways, so I've been transplanting them to a newer asparagus bed up the hill.  Did I mention that I really hate weeding grass?  

I'm definitely doing more overseeding this year.  One thought for caution is that the more conventional food producing plants when inter planted probably increase the need for fertility in the soil.  Less demanding nonfood plants like true weeds probably survive better on the leftover fertility.

Kathy Vargo wrote:

I'm definitely doing more overseeding this year.  One thought for caution is that the more conventional food producing plants when inter planted probably increase the need for fertility in the soil.  Less demanding nonfood plants like true weeds probably survive better on the leftover fertility.

This might be more variable than we know at this point.  Some interplantings may compete for fertility, while many others contribute to fertility, rather than rob or out compete the food plants.  The very shallow rooted plants (eg love in a mist) probably don’t enter the nutrient question.  

(I use my composted goat bedding as mulch, and tell myself the fertility loss is taken care of.)

Many of brassica relatives are pioneer plants in sandy soils with almost no fertility, even growing in beach sands high enough to avoid most of the salt.  From this I conclude -without evidence- they don’t require much.  In garden soil they probably take more, making more tender tasty greens.  

Dandelions have very deep roots, and I think are accumulators.  They provide a couple harvests for those who value them.  White clover is low growing, spreads, can be pulled out with out too much difficulty…. Or better cut at the soil surface chop and drop style, all the while hosting nitrogen fixing bacteria.

We just have to do whatever works right?  I love the strawberries idea.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:It's kinda funny Ulla, I think I'm the person who suggested borage. I planted it maybe 3 years ago, and haven't had to plant it since. If you don't pick the flowers it will spread everywhere. If I don't like where it comes up I just pull it, and unlike comfrey that the end.  Once in awhile I will transplant it. I read you can't, but I have done it successfully many times.

I love the way you deal with weeds. Out compete them with an eatable plants.  I over plant my veggie garden for many reasons, keeping weeds out is one. I never thought of doing it in my weedy areas, it's so smart .  Thanks

It’s kind of funny Jen, that I now figured out how to get both borage and comfrey to grow in out hot weather.
The borage I spread out (over seeded) and mixed with wild flower seeds in February. Before I would do it in May/June. I now have over 20 borage plats growing. One are slowly trying to overtake one of my apple trees. As for comfrey, I figured out, that they like shade in our climate. I planted on is a raised bed last year, together with mullein and they grew enormous. So, I took some root cuttings and planted them in shade in the front yard, and now they are all growing well. So my conclusion is, that they need to be planted right after last hard frost, so they get a cool period before the hot weather sets in.
How did your experiment turn out?

I love throwing vegetable seed around!
My wife just brought me a bag of lentils, which I will under seed in any bed that isn't mulched.
This spring I used whole peas from the Indian grocery  store to feed the soil.
We have harvested a lot of greens for the rabbit, and a handful of peapods, while leaving roots in otherwise bare soil.

I feed my chooks everything, including tons of dumpster produce.Because of this my favorite weed is the tomatoes that pop up wherever I've used chicken compost.
They WILL overwelm most annual vegetables , so I transplant them in and among the perennials, along with green onions grown from scraps, that are currently going to seed.

I use all kinds of seeds to cover the soil, but I have to take into consideration that I grow all year round in my raised beds, so the soil needs some real TLC. To do this, I plant clover where and when it’s possible and use it as living fertilizer/cover crop. I find that I can grow it around other crops and then till it in before I plant the next crop.
Before I just added compost, but I find that the clover helps me grow bigger crops. Other things I use between and around crops are cilantro, lettuce, Boc choy and radishes. This also gives me a bonus crop of cilantro and coriander seeds. It’s also the only way I can grow radishes this time of year. If they are alone, they get too hot.
As for onions, while I still do plant onions, I won’t need to for long. My walking onions grow fast and are ready to be split and spread out. Eventually they will ensure I have fresh onions all year round.