THE EVOLUTIONARY VEGIE GARDEN A garden can be a living thing in itself if you let it. Spread seeds everywhere, let the plants decide where they prefer to live and thrive. Allow varied microclimates to develop. Some places can be wetter/drier. Some places can be sunnier/shadier. Some places can have deeper/shallower mulch. Some places can have manure added. etc. Some places can have lime or dolomite added to raise the PH, etc etc. Don't tax the vegies too heavily. Let them go to seed and reproduce naturally. You can help them enormously simply by spreading handfuls of their seeds all over the garden. If you help them with their life cycle, they are happy to provide food for you. A plant species can be considered as an entity in itself. You keep them as pets in your garden. They live out their full life cycle year after year. After a while you get to know a species. You see its like and dislikes. You see how and when it reproduces. You see when it chooses to poke its heads above ground to begin the next cycle. You see them living their simple lives thru the generations. Vegies make wonderful pets. Especially so, in that you get to play God and help them survive and reproduce and evolve naturally. They can be like a family, that you see growing up, reproducing, dying and starting again, generation after generation. You see the species as the pet rather than individual plants. You provide some sustenance, help them spread their seed, and they give you sustenance in return.  The more variety there is in your garden the more opportunities you give your pets to find somewhere to thrive. Plants have been around much longer than we have. They have lived without us for millions of years. They have wonderful survival skills that we haven't managed to breed out completely. Domesticated plant species have evolved to suit their new environment. They are more productive than wild plants. They can be more productive because they don't have to consider their survival as much as in the wild. We are a beneficial part of their environment that helps their survival as a species. We help them to live their simple lives and to continue thru the generations. All we need to do is give them a bit of a helping hand. They can do the rest for themselves. They won't be as productive as in a garden that is force sprouted, force fed, then raped, pillaged and killed. It can though, become a living ecosystem that has its pests and its predators. It can become a variety of living things all living together, feeding and helping each other. Put in a pond for frogs and insects to breed in. Nature tries all possibilities. Do things naturally. Try all the possibilities, Plant all the varieties of a species, and see which ones most want to come to live with you in your garden. Spread seed everywhere. You may like to save some seed for spreading next year, let some remain to fall naturally, spread some seed as they dry. Try all the possibilities. Even seed boxes can find some use, especially in the first year when you only have small quantities of bought seed. Dead plants can provide natural trellises for plants that like to climb. Dead plants and pulled out plants can provide shady spaces for the a new generation to spring up. Pull some plants out when they die, leave others. Pull some plants out when they don't do well or look sick. Try all possibilities. Let the plants decide where and how they want to live. If you put them everywhere in a diverse garden, they will show you where and how they like to live. Don't be afraid of so called pests. Don’t be selfish. You make yourself a part of the ecosystem. You just share in the richness of the life and food in your garden. A diverse enough ecosystem will always eventually put down any population explosions of pests. However don't be afraid to manually squash or shift a few pests or to feed them to predators. When pests build up there will be more food for their predators. There will be a delay while the predator numbers build up to encompass the increased food supply. Provide places for predators to breed, hide and hunt. In this way you become a positive part of the ecosystem. Never do one thing over the entire garden. Only mulch, fertilize, etc a fraction of an ecosystem at a time. Otherwise you limit diversity. How do you know if the plants like what you did if you don't have unaffected plants to compare with? A garden can be allowed to change and evolve. Soil types change with your mulching etc, root mats spread out, sun/shade patterns change as things grow. Your desires and ideas change. Plants may get sick of living in one spot if conditions in the soil etc change. The plants themselves evolve thru the generations to types that most like your particular conditions and that most suit your tastes. It doesn't matter if different varieties interbreed, only that you let the best plants be the ones that have greatest opportunity to reproduce. ie tax the not so good ones heavily and the desirable plants hardly at all. Always let many of the best plants go to seed. If you only let a couple of plants of a species go to seed you limit its genetic diversity. Genetic diversity within a species is important to be able to adapt to any changes and to optimise its use of the existing conditions. Genetic diversity is nature's way of driving evolution. In a small garden continue to plant bought seed as well as letting plants go to seed. This improves the genetic diversity. Every year your garden will be different as it evolves. Your own understanding of your pets will evolve. The pets themselves will evolve. Nature is all about change. Don't do the same thing all the time or in all the places. Try a diversity of things in different parts of your garden, and you will always find pleasant surprises.