Re-Seeding!!! Woohoo!!!

 I love it when gardening is made simple, easier & cheaper! Re-seeding can do just that!

Some plants are goo re-seeders and others are not. Sunflowers (pictured to the right) can be if the birds do not get to all the seeds. We like to grow sunflowers because they are pretty; we are fascinated by how tall they grow; and we want to provide a source of food for the birds in the winter.

 Another hearty re-seeder is lettuce and greens. I can tell which are the lettuce plants in here, but this is also the location where I had planted greens later in the season last year. Spinach was also planted nearby as well, as were radishes.

Below are some radishes (and a lettuce plant) that re-seeded themselves. I have found that radishes are very easy to re-seed.

For some, re-seeding will not happen because they like to pull the plants as soon as they are finished (or eat them all) and not give them time to go to flower and re-seed. The benefit of pulling the lettuce & radishes is that you can get new ones in the ground right away, as neither have a long growing season and if you replant as soon as one crop is finished you can get 2-3 crops in your growing season.

But you could just allow your last crop to go to seed. I tend to get busy with other gardens we have that I let the first crop go to seed and then only have time for one more crop once I get back to tending to these.

Of course, it is so NOT normal to have these poking through at the end of March in MN. I was just thinking that I needed to get out there and work up the raised bed that I generally plant lettuce, radishes, peas spinach & greens in. Now, I need to thin out the area that re-seeded and fill in other areas with spinach & peas (which this is the perfect time to get those in the ground in MN.)

And since so much is already up, I will have to pay attention to the nighttime forecasts and cover as needed. I did check another garden that we put some pumpkins on to compost back into the ground in hopes that would re-seed itself. Our inspiration for that came from the book Pumpkin Jack in which their pumpkin re-seeds itself. The seeds are there surrounded my mulching leaves and pumpkin parts, so it still might happen, but it hasn't yet.