One of the greatest books I was given as a young boy was The Guide To Self Sufficiency by John Seymour. John Seymour has often been viewed as the grandfather of the self-sufficiency movement, or the 'return to the land' movement in the 70's.  This book was like magic to me.  It told you how to live a self sufficient life by growing fruit and vegetables, and raising livestock ... even how to harvest food from the wild.

There was one sentence in this book that has always stayed with me, ' Nature abhors mono-culture.'  That is, nature does not like the production of only one thing, be it animal or vegetable.  Therefore, I believe, to grow only one vegetable or to raise only one type of animal is by definition, an unnatural occurrence.

Now think about this ...

My vegetable gardens in the past have always followed some sort of general order.  One space set aside for tomatoes, another for rows of corn, another was for my sweet peppers.  Although this is not true mono-culture, in that only one type of vegetable was grown in the area, it still felt somewhat unnatural to have the same type of plants grouped together like that.  When I look at nature on the farm, I can see a field of grass, yet when I look closely, there are actually dozens of species of grass growing together.

There is an order in what I used to think of as chaos, plants feeding and supporting neighboring plants, things that a mono-culture cannot do.

So what I thought to do this year in one of the raised beds is plant a little chaos and see what order comes from it.

I collected what seeds I had available and poured them all together and mixed them up.  I noted that their root systems had varying depths - for example, beetroots (deep) as opposed to basil (shallow), and felt that it would make efficient use of the space available in each bed.

In a few seconds, all the seed was cast, in and amongst my tomatoes, then I raked them in and watered.  I'm not sure what the results will be, but I am very excited to find out.

I will keep you posted :)