Monday 28 November 2016

Self Seeded Kale

On the shoot on Saturday there was a section in the between two parts of the woods that had been sown with a cover crop. 
In amongst the weeds there were hundreds of kale plants standing about 4ft tall, I'm afraid my picture isn't very good but you can just about see a big kale plant on the end of the row. 

When I asked about this one of the guys who runs the shoot said they cleared this patch of land and sowed some kale five years ago, since then they've left these patches to their own devices. The plants have been growing, flowering and setting seed all by themselves, despite the heavy weed competition and how it's bound to have been predated on by bugs and birds. 

Pretty amazing I though. 

It just shows that if you can find a bare patch of land that's not going to be touched then a guerrilla type gardening style could help to feed you! 

What plants do you have that keep coming back year after year from self set seed?

7 comments:

  1. Nasturtiums and rogue potatoes Kev.

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  2. I have TONS of alyssum and heliopsis and portulaca--all flowers. But I'd like to try a patch like this of say spinach or lettuce or kale. Can you imagine how tough-as-nails those plants must be?? Those would be seeds to get ahold of for your own garden! Super Kale!!

    LOL!

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  3. I wondered myself if you didn't pocket some seeds. For me here it's borage planted once four years ago. But it has lovely blue flowers, the bees like it and the flowers are edible and look pretty on cakes. It's allover the garden even though i pull most of it each spring.

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  4. Dill. I have not planted any and I get several good size bunches every year. I love it,I use that herb on so many things.

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  5. I have one particular salad plant that I leave to seed each year, I haven't sown any for years and always have plenty. Unfortunately it's a bit bitter, but better than nothing.

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  6. Parsley grows like weeds in our garden. As I practice chopping and dropping old plants to improve our soil, I noticed that there are even more plants planting themselves...onions, carrots, sweet pepper, tomatoes,potatoes and lots of fruit trees!...I even found an ornamental nitrogen fixing tree - must be sown by the birds:) No excuse to be hungry. That self-sown Kale in the field must be good to eat by now..it gets sweeter in cold weather!

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  7. I don't know yet, we've not been in long enough. It appears the weeds have self seeded before we arrived though.
    You have given me some ideas though....there's a bit of scrub land which borders ours that looks like it could do with something planting in it.

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