Most of us have this idea of what a garden should look like.
Everything needs to stay within boundaries, in rows, and free of dead plants, branches, piles of debris, etc.
However, keeping things tidy is great in the kitchen, office or workshop, but it won’t help your garden. Sure, it might look good and be functional, but functionality often goes deeper than superficial appearances.
Nature is a mess—a loud, deliberate, unbelievable, heinous mess. If you let some of the mess into your garden, your plants will benefit.
chaos creates habitat
My daughter and I planted a perennial garden bed near my annual beds.
Everyone knows that ladybugs are nice people.
Or the girls.
Or whatever gender they are. I have no idea.
Either way, we want them in our gardens. They devour aphids and bring joy to children. Both are great reasons to keep them. Yet what happens to ladybugs when we rip out a bed of used tomatoes or chop up the kale left over from the season? They fly off in search of greener pastures.
That’s not to say you should leave tons of rotting vegetables everywhere, it just means you should think twice before cleaning everything out of your bed. I intentionally leave patches of weeds around my yard and garden to provide habitat for beneficial insects.
You can also enjoy:
“How to Avoid Garden Pests and Diseases Organically (Video)”
Also, while it sounds counterintuitive, you also need a place for the aphids to live.
Having a few aphids around will attract ladybugs and increase their numbers. By having patches of plants inhabit them, you create habitat—and ladybugs aren’t the only creatures that benefit.
You’ll also create space for pollinators such as praying mantises, lacewings, rotifers, lizards, frogs, toads, centipedes, spiders, worms, and moths, butterflies, bees, and wasps.
In addition to leaving behind weeds and dead plants, you can add stone piles, logs, branches, and water sources to your garden.
I tend to plant mixed beds of perennials near annuals, which provide living habitat year-round (except for the coldest months).
confusion confuses pests
Let’s say we’re in the golden corral. For those who don’t know, the Golden Corral is an all-you-can-eat buffet of various dishes frequented by many overweight people who could die from just one insulin shot or a heart attack. This is a very easy way to fit within your budget. You can plate mashed potatoes, hot dogs, mashed potatoes, lasagna, margarine-coated mushrooms, brownies, and pizza, then top with gravy and soft-serve ice cream.
No one cares! so interesting!
Now imagine you go to the Golden Corral and find that the buffet has changed. Instead of tons of delicious bad food, the food is scattered here and there with all sorts of disgusting and poisonous stuff in between.
Sure enough, there were mashed potatoes…but they were sandwiched between a dish of dirty socks and a bucket of Lysol. Further down, you might find mushrooms slathered in margarine, but they’re uncomfortably close to a pile of stable manure and a big bowl of tung oil.
If you’re hungry, you’ll probably stay – but you have to admit, the dining experience is really unsatisfying and will likely push you out the door and across the road to the Waffle House.
This is what your garden looks like for pests when you mix things up. The golden corral of death.
Many pests are host specific, meaning they only like to eat certain plants. If the menu is mixed with plants they can’t eat, and possibly even poisonous to them, your garden can go from an insect buffet to an outlet condemned by arthropod health authorities.
Herbs, flowers, beans, greens, creepers, creepers, and shrubs all have their place in the home garden: mix them up, and so do pests.
mess is good for soil
This is real!
as i wrote in my article Film gardening, organic matter is a boon to poor soils, but we sometimes don’t realize how many miles of root systems lie beneath the surface of our gardens. When the plant dies and rots, the roots become compost in the soil. When the leaves fall, their nutrients are returned to the earth. One of the dumbest things a modern gardener does is to clean up all the leaves and throw them away or burn them. Don’t do that! These leaves are full of fertility – throwing them away is like throwing away manure.
Just don’t do it.
Letting leaves drop and rot is a good thing in your garden beds. In fact, you can dig kitchen scraps directly into garden beds and feed the earth that way. I bury paper plates, butchery waste, rotting food, and other organic matter in the fallow field to attract and feed the worms while fertilizing the soil to power later plant growth.
Another Kind of “Mess” That’s Good for Your Soil: Weeds! It’s nice to have some greenery covering the ground, even if it’s not anything you can eat (although some weeds are delicious).
Obviously, you don’t want quinoa or other poisonous plants to set seed in your garden beds; but you don’t have to insist on keeping the soil bare between plantings. At the very least, sprinkle some cover crop seeds on areas you’re not using.
You can also enjoy:
I like to mix together the seeds of ryegrass, mustard, chickpeas, fava beans, lentils, kale, and other hardy plants and rake them into empty beds. I don’t ask for a harvest; I want to preserve the life in the soil, to protect the ground from leaching, sun and erosion. Plus, you can pick and eat what you like, and when you’re ready to plant that bed again, you have green manure that you can turn under, or feed for your compost pile.
Creating chaos may irritate some of us, especially those of us who believe in tidiness, but it’s a great way to invite the good guys in, disturb the bad guys, and keep the soil healthy.
Sometimes it’s okay to put the hoe down, relax, and let things take their course a little bit.
You’ll be fine – nature will have your back.
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