I am a lazy gardener.
Sowing seeds in pots, remembering to care for them, and then transplanting them into beds almost always leads me to have subpar plants. There was one kale plant that I planted in my garden in 2021 that I just forgot about for 2 years. It grew enormous and made many seeds. I let my garden get away from me in 2023 after having my second child and that kale plant fell over with all of its seeds scattering all over the ground. My fall garden tending that year was not much better. The bed was overrun with baby kale plants. 90% or so died to bugs or drought. But I still had plenty of survivors due to the mass sowing. I don’t water them in my PNW summers where it doesn’t seem to rain anymore from June to September and they do fine. Some get eaten by bugs in our wet spring but they seem to shake them off once it starts getting hot.
Now I let my favorites go to seed and throw their mature trimmings over my garden beds and wait for that one late summer rain event for them to germinate. Keeping the stems over they beds gives those seedlings a tiny bit more shade and keeps the cats out. This seems to work for mustard and other Asian brasiccas too. Oddly the kale germinated better over the wood chipped pathway than in the beds. There was probably more stored moisture there where nothing else was growing previously.
I am trying out radishes as well but their seed shells are thicker and might not open on their own without being crushed first.
