From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: advantages of intensive planting
Followup-To: rec.gardens
Summary: appalling fecundity in the plant world
Organization: out in linguistics, ohio state, stanford,...
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 18:11:51 GMT

(this takes off from two recent posts, one about the possible
advantages of tilling by night, the other about the jungle of weeds
that appears after only a few weeks of disregard.  but first...)

most of our gardens are planted intensively - massed perennials,
tightly planted or sown annuals, and, yes, densely planted vegetables
too.  we spread the seeds over an area, cover with a layer of topsoil
or black peat or potting soil, to the appropriate depth, tamp it down
with a hoe blade or pat it down with our hands (i like the feel of the
soil under my hands), water the bed regularly, wait for zillions
of seedlings to appear, and just let them be.

my man jacques had some trouble getting into this scheme.  intensive
planting was fine for *flowers*, in his book, but *vegetables* were
supposed to be spaced out in rows, preferably straight rows.  (there
are no straight lines in my gardens, so when he moved in he had to
give up this passion for straightness right away.)  he argued that it
was wasteful (so many seeds that fail, so many plants that never get
eaten) and that it made for much smaller vegetables (leaves, fruits,
roots, whatever) than we could get by standard methods.  i pointed out
that the cost in cash was only a few bucks - seeds are not that
expensive - and that everything that didn't get eaten did contribute
to the compost heap, and i observed that neither of us was into size
for its own sake anyway.  he went along with the idea.

one thing we got that we hadn't expected was all these fabulous
textures in the garden.  this year we had four varieties of lettuce,
of different leaf colors, in irregular blobs in one bed, two
solid beds of flat parsley, and other patches of rocket, japanese
mustard spinach (really *great* green), slow-bolting coriander
(our thanks to rec.gardens for the tip about this), and basil.
all of these - especially the lettuce, kale, and parsley - would
be worth growing in masses just for their colors and textures,
especially against massed flowers.  (the rocket also is very
pretty in bloom, or so we think.)

another advantage, one we *did* know about: hardly any weeds grow in
intensively planted beds, and the ones that do are easy to see and
easy to pull out.  we had not fully appreciated just how many weeds
were being suppressed until we tore out the lettuces, once they had
reached the somewhat-grotty-looking and too-bitter-to-eat stage.  the
other spring-vegetable beds got planted with massed annuals, like blue
annual salvia, but by the time we got to the lettuce bed there wasn't
much available in the nurseries.  i took the last of some purple and
cream annual salvias, only eight of them, and they stood there, each
in magnificent isolation.  (my goodness, there are a lot of species
and varieties of salvias!  a great genus.  the gamble garden in palo
alto has a whole section devoted to it.)

well, four days later the surface of this bed was covered completely
with tens of thousands of little red-and-green seedlings.  *purslane*,
*purslane*, everywhere.  like its cultivated cousin, the portulaca,
purslane throws out vast numbers of incredibly tiny seeds.  apparently
these were left over from last year, when the garden was in the care
of the Tenant From Hell, but all those tightly growing lettuce plants
had kept the seeds from germinating, except for a few around the edges.
there was a monster of vegetable fecundity lurking under the salad
greens.  (someone recently posted to suggest that people let purslane
grow, because it's an edible salad green.  it is indeed.  but in my
experience, some purslane will manage to grow somewhere in your garden,
and that will provide quite enough for salads.  if you give the stuff
its head, you'll soon be ankle-deep in its fleshy leaves.)

(the neighbor on one side of us tells the following story about the
TfH and the neighbor on the other side of us: the TfH was mowing the
lawn, in his haphazard fashion, when the woman to the west of us
appeared alongside of him and motioned for him to shut off the
machine.  she then pointed accusingly at a magnificent stand of
blooming thistles and shouted, "you know, arnold wouldn't like this!"
this got no rise from him, so she hmpffed at him at began rooting out
the plants with her own weeder and angrily throwing them on our
compost heap.  well, she *was* at a particularly nasty stage in a
divorce, and she probably was aching to chew out some goddam *man*.  i
hope she got some satisfaction from it all; she did a nice job of
cleaning out the thistles, and jacques and i did get to thank her
for it.)

clearing away the purslane has been a tedious task.  i work the soil
with a trowel every few days and pick out the horrid seedlings.
if you leave them on the ground, they're inclined to take root again.
when they get a bit bigger, they're easier to pull out, but you
have to get the whole root, or else they'll just come back from
the root, and you have to catch them before they bloom and cast
out their spawn.  things are pretty well in hand now, i'm pleased
to say.

arnold (recommending against the intensive growing of purslane)