Chaos gardening is a carefree approach to gardening anyone can try | Hacker News Reader

Chaos gardening is a carefree approach to gardening anyone can try

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36 pointsthunderbong10 comments

Masanobu Fukuoka is the pioneer here:(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanobu_Fukuoka)

https://www.amazon.com/One-Straw-Revolution-Introduction-Nat...

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2020/07/25/the-philosophy-o...

Less known for his equally interesting wartime work affirming the edibility of the vast majority of Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific's insect fauna. These days he would have had an alt-protein biotech startup.

I bow before his endless devotion to “Do-Nothing Farming”.

This sort of approach is only really viable in certain climates and with certain starting conditions, ideally away from extremes in temperature and drought where seedlings can compete with what's already established. I live in the (climate change pending) sun-baked former prairie of East Denver and a laissez faire approach to the vegetation in my yard is a virtual guarantee that invasives (kochia, bindweed, curly dock) will completely dominate.

I've found you don't have to be totally organized about it uprooting the worst of the noxious weeds, scattershot planting of desirables, and watering unpredictably around a busy life schedule, but this still takes a lot of time and energy. At that point, if you value your time and energy, you find yourself needing to make plans and genuinely care about the process.

Why not just try regular gardening?

In a world of permies, regenerative ag, raised beds, and whatever this is, just having a small home garden seems quite novel, and the implementation is...pretty easy.

Obviously they have a much bigger garden

The others are easy too, and even more novel.

Kidding (about the novel part).

Actually, they are old as sin, er, I mean, old as nature, because, you know, they all borrow from or imitate nature, to a large extent, although there may some improvements or systematisations here and there.

Check out Bill Mollison, Gabe Brown, Geoff Lawton, Jean-Martin Fortier, Richard Perkins, Aanandaa Farms, etc, in a bit of depth at least, first.

I guess I've been unwittingly practicing chaos gardening for a couple of years now. I do it because I don't have the time, the energy, or the know-how to do regular gardening, even if it seems easy to you. Instead, I just remove things I don't like when I notice them and wait for things I do like to spring up. Sometimes my wife buys seeds and we throw them around. I end up with things that roughly resemble flower beds that look nice to me. Why should I work harder?

https://archive.md/tBN9Q

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