Were they clustered together or spread around the patch?
About spacing as it relates to dryland growing, I think we can get some hints by looking at natural vegetation growth. If a climate is wet enough, it supports densely growing forest; lots of leaves per square foot. As the climate gets dryer, the trees pull further apart, still with an understory of grass, to create a savannah. Dryer still, and you get a prairie. Not only is there less above-ground biomass compared to a forest, but perennial grasses get around insufficient water by going dormant; once the soil water is used up, the plants brown off for the season. In my area, the grasses are brown much of the summer, and most of the winter as well, so they are effectively using a year’s supply of water in just a few months. In still drier desert climates, the individual plants are spaced further and further apart, so that each plant can access more water. In some climates, the spacing is so regular that it almost seems like human planting.
My take-away from this is that, if we are trying to avoid any watering at all and live in a fairly dry climate, wide spacing is a good idea, though I appreciate the point @AbrahamPalma made about how we can still have plants in clusters to gain some microclimate effect.
On the other hand, if one has water and the time/infrastructure to apply it, spacing plants densely in a dry climate will probably yield the most return for least applied water, due to a moister microclimate.
It all depends on exactly what the climate is, and what one is trying to do with it.
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I had them in three different spots. Three different lima phenotypes survived! Two only produced four beans each, all of which I needed to save to replant, but two (same phenotype, in two different spots) produced about twenty-five each, which is by far the most productivity I’ve ever had from a bean plant. That’s the one I sent you seeds from! 
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I’ve paid attention to my native climate — which is definitely a savannah — and I’ve noticed that it’s lush and dense with winter annual grasses and perennials in winter, and dry and sparse with almost nothing growing except various drought tolerant groundcovers (bindweed, purslane, filaree, goathead, etc.) and sparsely spaced trees. I decided to take the hint and start focusing heavily on winter crops like peas and garlic. I’m also trying out winter wheat this year — it seems likely to be a good fit. 
What’s interesting about our native summer groundcovers is that if they’re mowed, and/or get thinned out, they die. If they’re left pretty much alone, they do fine all summer. So they clearly want their roots and lower leaves to stay shaded in dense vegetation. Alfalfa and everlasting peas seem to grow back immediately even if everything’s mowed, but our other tall-ish drought tolerant plants (like dock or hollyhocks) don’t. They stay dormant after being cut down until after our August rain.
So . . . yeah. I remove bindweed whenever I see it, because it’s incredibly invasive and makes a mess out of everything I want to harvest by binding it all together into a tangled clump that can barely photosynthesize because the bindweed wants all the sunlight, and I’ll also remove anything with thorns (such as our wild prickly lettuce) but otherwise, I tend to just leave things be, and they usually do all right.
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I am intrigued by skirret, I bought seed to plant out next year and will see how it goes! The more variety the better. As you said, it is good to have something that will grow continuously without care.
Slow and steady is a nice way to improve each year without becoming too overwhelmed! The cost of seed does add up quite fast and it is wonderful to be able to swap varieties with locals and transition over time. I too started out my gardening knowledge with permaculture/food forest concepts then it naturally branched out with adaptive gardening when I was learning about seed saving, which is only natural to do if you want to be self reliant and have plant performance improve over the years! I actually stumbled upon this whole concept through a seedsaving sub reddit when people were recommending Joseph Lofthouse and adaptive gardening after I had posted about so much confusion and discouragement because of mainstream seedsaving techniques involving strictly heirloom seed saving techniques, gotta have x amount of plants, zero cross pollination etc… seemed so nonsensical and boy was I relieved to know how true that is!
I could not have worded it better stating that adaptation gardening is one of your best arrows on your permaculture bow, well put! I am also on clay so I am really excited to see how each subsequent year progresses. I will check out @marcela_v . Sounds like an amazing harvest. Thanks for the recommendation 
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Ahaha I love that you accepted to go with the flow and put in foot pathes where you naturally migrated. I have been doing the same thing stepping through lil spots between beds or hopping through the rows so perhaps I will let those areas compress just so I can shortcut a bit through my “organized” maze.
I live off of well water so I am hoping my fruit tree roots will stretch deep and find water down below as I don’t want to be out watering every morning for 4+hrs to help establish them for another summer. (I do not have a fancy drip system, just a good ol fashioned hose i move between trees every 15-30min 
) I also really packed em in close so I am curious how that will turn out next year. If it works in the forest, it works in my yard as long as I got a balance thriving ecosystem in place! Appreciate the tips for keeping the side branches intact. I was planning on mixing up a simple lime whitewash as well to help with any scalding. Absolutely no chemicals, just hydrated lime and water.
Tangled up peas sounds like my style! I will make sure to mix in some favas and pole beans in there, as I want to avoid too many random trellises in my space. I am also planning on using sunchokes for my beans as well!
You clearly have far more experience than I do and I am a sponge right now soaking up the generous info you are sharing… so i gotta ask.. did you plant the squash and beans at the same time? I am sure obviously you have tried different timing/methods but I was going to plant corn first, wait til it is a foot or so, plant beans and wait for em to gain some height, then plant the squash to avoid the leaves shading out the beans. I am really good at taking in excellent information and discarding it only to discover the same result that was initially mentioned to begin with so… I still wanna try it heheh 
My melons/zucchini/cucumbers are going in between my fruit trees in my sunny front yard!
LOVE the enthusiasm, excitement and satisfaction on your face with that awesome oyster harvest!! I am gonna have to try that out next then. I had all sorts of unidentified fungi (maybe inkcap?) growin out of my woodchip piles which was making me twitchy since I wasn’t sure if they were edible.. so much potential! I had to take advantage of the opportunity with winecaps! I’d also like to inoculate the area with bolete, as I see em growing in the neighbourhood plenty. Wonderful way to get a win-win with the pine tree eh? I am also thrilled for the gal who has volunteer morels!! I have yet to replenish my blueberry bushes after my neighbours dogs peed on em all and killed them 
but I have plenty of other berries so that will be a next spring thing for me to cram in the front yard nook n crannys hahaha
I will have to do some research on phototoxic sap because I havent stubbled upon anything about that! Another reason for me to avoid parsnip then. I do love hollyhocks after all! Such a beautiful versatile plants, the pretty flowers are an added bonus for sure.
I am really thrilled to try out skirret next year and I hope i can get em to grow a bit better than carrots, though I suppose if carrots dont grow well in my compact soil perhaps skirret will behave similarly? I hope not because I want perennial carrot like roots! Either way, I am saving carrot seed and look forward to behold the adaptation progress begin hehemwahaha… Thank you for mentioning that skirret does well in boggy shady areas, as I just looked out the window this morning to discover the whole bottom flat area of my backyard completely submerged with excess rain water… I was expecting ducks to fly in and make themselves at home! I was extending my rows this year and I am relieved that I didnt plant anything too precious down there and I may plant skirret nearby so it just dips a toe along the border without rootrot drowning.
As for the salsify? I am very intrigued by the flavour profile and look forward to a good balance of perennial vs annual crops. What grows as a weed where is always so fascinating to me, seems so exotic to think about that compared to the “weeds” that thrive in my area!
I am rooting to your eventual bean success! I am so glad they grow abundantly in my zone because I am not a very hands on gardener… I like plants that grow themselves, which is a win-win for seed adaptation I suppose! 
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Oh, your posts were excellent to read and I found your situation very helpful to apply to my brainstorming. Considering the fact that you have poor soil, you still had great success in my opinion. I am still puzzled as to why nothing seemed to grow in certain areas of my garden last year that were otherwise not a problem in the previous year, though I suspect it was the lack of tilling that did it for me. I really wanted to see if I could grow radish, beets and carrots in particularly compacted soil and that did NOT work out well. .. your carrots were huge!
Weather is so unpredictable that it truly is best to challenge the plants in a variety of ways, eh? Your list is helpful to sum it all up as I will be growing very similar crops as you, minus the tomatillos.
As you said, stacking too many issues at once will definitely contribute some strong variables, on top of minimized watering. I can be a lazy gardener myself, especially with my little one keeping me busy, so i did my best to help boost soil health this year, and next year I will trial with watering less! Time after time I have broken sprinklers and I refuse to spend big bucks on fancy systems, so adapting my plants to drought tolerance makes the most sense to me for a place to start!
I appreciate your breakdown of the plant density in forest vs desert. That just gave me a huge “aha” moment! Excellent take-away and comparison.
Given the fact that I have super rainy weather three seasons outta the year and a dry humid summer, along with observing the lush mossy fern thick cedar forests, I will conclude that I do indeed want to follow through with dense planting under lots of mulch.
Thank you!!
Wild prickly lettuce can be rendered down to make an excellent pain relieving ointment or tea! Ive been letting it take over my garden slowly but I have yet to process it. Ive looked into it a few times over the years and would totally recommend trying it out if you wanted to make use of it!
good write-up from one of my go to sites:
Sorry, I was overthinking it. I’ll try that out with lettuce next year as I do have a few varieties to attempt growing. How deep do you plant your lettuce seeds? Seems like the easiest thing to grow but I didn’t have any pop up this year, which was bizarre and embarrassing.
I also agree that Emily is clearly a pro!!
For seeding lettuce, I follow this:
Remove the mulch (it was creating good soil), rake the surface, removing any bermuda grass (or other invasives), throw the seeds as uniformly as you can, then use the hoe for pressing the seeds against the soil or step over them thoroughly, give them a good soaking or do this just before the most rainy week. If they make a good jungle, they don’t need any extra mulch.
If you haven’t had any luck, maybe you just need to try several varieties. There are seeds that need more heat, other ones less heat, other ones more water, or they can be just unfertile seeds due to bad quality, bad conservation or whatever.
In my experience, it is cheaper to buy 10 different varieties from organic shops, throw everything in the ground and get some yield, than buying just one, saving some seeds for a second attempt and getting nothing for your troubles. You are losing valuable time and garden bed space.
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I planted the squash and beans at the same time, because there is no advantage to me in planting squashes later. I mean, we have a long growing season, yes . . . but squashes will keeping fruiting until the end of the growing season, so the earlier I can plant them, the sooner I will get fruits and the more fruits I will get. And, on top of that, if I plant them in April, there’s enough residual water in the soil from the last of the spring rains to germinate them. If I wait, I’ll have to water them a huge amount in order to get them to even germinate. So I don’t wanna plant squashes late. Pshaw!
It’s possible planting squashes two months after the pole beans would work if you have trellises for the pole beans to climb up before the squashes really get going. That may be worth experimenting with to find out. It’s certainly possible you could intercrop peas on trellises with squashes, because the peas would be planted in January or February, and the squashes would be planted in April. I keep thinking I’ll get around to testing that out, and I keep not doing it.
Melons/watermelons/cucumbers have much smaller leaves than squashes, though. They don’t get tall enough to shade out beans growing in between them. So intercropping those cucurbit species with pole beans — or even bush beans! — seems to be very viable.
See if you can ID the fungi growing out of your wood chip piles. Maybe they’re glittercaps! That’s what I got with my wood chips, and apparently they’re very widespread and volunteer all over the place. Glittercaps are a species of edible inkcap, so if they melt into black slime like inkcaps and fruit in clumps, that’s a very likely possibility. Look up how to positively ID glittercaps, check to see if all the features of your mushrooms check out, and if so, maybe you already have a nice edible mushroom to feast on!
Phototoxic sap is really nasty, and it’s something that some plants in the carrot family have. (Sheesh, Apiaceae . . . not only do you have the two most poisonous plants in all of North America, you also have to give some of your edible members phototoxic sap. Sheesh!) Look up giant hogweed, which is the plant that is the most infamous for its phototoxic sap. Parsnip isn’t as bad, but foraging guides still have to include a very clear warning about it when harvesting parsnip, because . . . well, if you get of it on your skin and it gets exposed to any sunlight in the next 72 hours (and I mean any at all), the parts that the sap wound up on will get really nasty sunburned. Phototoxic sap is really nasty stuff.
I am certain there are people who grow parsnips and are careful enough at harvesting that they never get any of it on them and are perfectly fine. I suspect domesticated parsnips have probably been selected for less phototoxic sap, too. Still . . . I am clumsy! If it’s possible for something to fall on me, splash on me, or jab itself into my skin, I can be certain it’ll happen at some point. I have to be careful about what I allow into my little mini ecosystem, so I am.
Oooh, if you have a boggy area in your yard, that’s the perfect place to plant aquatic species! Skirret should do well around the edges. Here are some more ideas:
For the edges:
Common meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria)
Water hawthorn (Aponogeton distachyus)
River bulrush (Bolboschoenus fluviatilis)
American sweet flag (Acorus americanus)
For the middle:
Cattail (Typha sp)
Wapato / arrowhead / katniss (Sagittaria latifolia)
Kang kong / water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica)
Those are all edible and they’re on my list of tasty-sounding plants to grow, even though I do not have a boggy area. My idea is to take a big Rubbermaid bin, fill it with wood chips and native soil and water, and grow stuff in it. Apparently aquatic species are happy in a pot that has no drainage holes (muah ha haaaaaaaaa! 
), so that’s my future plan to grow them.
Kang kong is delicious and productive and it even seems to be drought tolerant, by the way, even though it’s an aquatic plant, so I totally recommend growing it. Raw, it has very little flavor but is nicely crisp. Cooked, it tastes like spinach without any dirt aftertaste. I really like the way it tastes cooked!
It’s a highly invasive weed in rivers in the tropics, so a lot of people in the tropics do the sensible thing and make it a staple of their diets. Yes! That’s what you do with invasive edible weeds! (Kudzu is edible too, by the way.)
As for prickly lettuce, yeah, people keep on telling me it can be used as a pain reliever. But:
a) I’m not usually in pain,
b) when I am (like a headache or menstrual cramps or a crick in my neck), massage works better,
c) prickly lettuce tastes incredibly disgusting,
d) prickly lettuce is covered in nasty thorns,
e) I don’t want it to cross with my lettuces that are edible and taste good and have no thorns on them,
and
f) believe me, I can easily find it outside of my yard. It spreads everywhere.
Can you tell I have a bone to pick with that plant?
As for sowing domesticated lettuce, don’t forget that you can also buy a seed pack of mixed varieties! I like doing that — it’s cheaper than buying 10 separate packs that I’m planning to mix up anyway.
Interestingly, I’ve had the most success with phenotypes of domesticated lettuce that have some red in their leaves. My most successful phenotypes have either fully red leaves or some red speckling in their green leaves. They tend to volunteer in the fall and grow fairly large through the winter and then flower in spring and send seeds everywhere. So I can harvest tasty lettuce leaves all winter. They’ve become fully feral, so I don’t have to sow them at all anymore.
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It’s super interesting to me Emily! But when is your last expected frost? Asking that because I’ve been considering sowing much much much earlier than the common saying in my place : “not before the 13th of May” . Three dates in a row are called “les Saints de Glaces”, and so to say “Ice Saints”…. But now the last expected frost is from 15th of march to 1st of april, for a decade or so…. Probably 9 years out of ten. So yes to me I think there would be a huge leverage in selecting for cold emergence, when the soil is still wet and biologically active… as you seem to do!
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My average last frost date is April 15th. It’s unusual to see even a light frost after that point. The average last hard freeze is around March 15th, so I can sometimes get away with planting cucurbits sooner (but 95% of them die from the light frosts if I do, so I usually wait).
My average first frost date is October 15th. The average first hard freeze is around November 15th. Usually my squashes can keep on surviving until the first hard freeze, but they grow incredibly slowly because October nighttime temperatures are usually only around 35-40, so that month is only useful for squashes to make a fully unripe fruit just a little bit riper, enough to make a few seeds viable — which is useful, I’ll grant that!
I’ve found that most squashes I try seem totally fine with light frosts when they’re old, and most seem to die from light frosts when they’re babies. So if you find squashes that can survive light frosts when they’re babies, that’s particularly neat.
By the way, a lot of my squashes aren’t as drought tolerant as I want yet, so a lot don’t want to start setting fruits until after our week of rain in August (which is generally 99% of all the water we get from the sky in May through September). They do best if they’re planted while we still have rain, and they’ll grow slowly and produce only male flowers through the super dry, hot summers, and then they’ll decide it’s okay to maybe make one female flower themselves after our August rain. (Laugh.) I want both drought tolerance and productivity, but I’ll settle for only the first until I can manage to get both.
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A few ideas abd targets for your selecting.
Try to get a crop off before the heat of summer. Look for really short ‘days to maturity.’. Early emergence from cold soil helps for an early start. Seed lines from colder climates with short seasons might be a good starting point. Plants with small or mini size may mature earlier.
A research paper i read noted exposure of seedlings to stressors at the 3-5 leaf stage can pre-condition the adult plant for greater resilience.
Woodchips.
Wide paths.
A slightly different conceptual landrace approach: nurture your first generation to get lots of genetic diversity and heterozygous F1 seed. Then apply tough love season 2. Rationale- the original pure seed might not have any survivors, the mixed up seed may strike genetic combinations that confer resilience. But it costs you a year.
Gm
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Thank you for the detailed explanation! I have a few lettuce pack varieties including seeds saved from a couple heads that did grow this year so I will see how next year fares. As much as I like fresh leafy greens, I have lots of edible weeds and rather save garden space for more calorie dense crops anyway. If lettuce doesn’t do well for me I will accept my loss and focus on what does thrive effortlessly.
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Oh snap, I feel silly for not considering that about the squash growing period. Earlier it is planted, sooner it grows, more fruit… DUH! facepalm
You are a lovely brain to pick! I’ll try to remember about intercropping with peas. I keep myself awake at night thinking about how to trellis without added structures, hence attempting the three sisters along with utilizing the sunchokes, sunflowers and fruit trees. I don’t like spending more money than I have to and enjoy a creative challenge! Oooh my precious unorganized jungle garden heheh
I will most certainly be planting some melons/cucumbers with beans in the front yard! On the topic of trellises… I have yet to successfully grow cucumbers (I got lovely lil seedlings in the ground then they just vanished.. or munched away I assume) Do you let cucumbers grow along the ground? Wasn’t sure how well that would turn out later on in the season when rotting and fungal issues tend to arise with the wet humid weather in my area. Was thinking of putting up juuuust one or two arched trellises so I can hopefully enjoy some crunchy fresh cukes next summer! I aim to back off with most plants and let em do their thing without assistance but the occasional intervention isn’t so bad in my opinion with some crops, namely my cucumbers and indeterminate tomatoes… Although I plan on experimenting with cutting those back to see if I can stunt their growth with each generation.
Oh my, your description of glittercaps lines up perfectly with what I had going on in my chips! When more pop up I will attempt to positively identify em, as that would be a wonderful bonus.
Welp, in regards to the phototoxic sap, Ima just avoid that altogether. I too am a colossal klutz and I don’t like them parsnips all that much either… so that’s an easy decision to make for me! Wow, that giant hogweed looks like a big ol water hemlock. Makes sense given the fact they are from the same infamous family!
I sincerely appreciate the list of aquatic species for a boggy area! It is only boggy parts of the year so I am not too sure how the plants would do in the heat of the summer, but I have bounced back and forth with ideas to make use of that untouched area quite a few times. I have tons of bulrush and cattail in the local wilderness and I forage a lot but the wapato and kang kong most certainly catch my eye! Especially if the kangkong is indeed drought tolerant as that would be brilliant for the fluctuating microclimate I have in that zone. You have me at doing the sensible thing with invasive edible weeds! That is what I am ALL about
And fair enough about the prickly lettuce… I think we all have that one(or more!) weed that we just can’t seem to love HAHA. Afterall, It is pretty bitter and easy to find elsewhere, I just liked having it in my backpocket just in case. I do know it cross pollinates with cultivated varieties and I am just now realizing I potentially saved seeds from lettuce that might’ve mingled with it… Only time will tell I suppose. Guess that is what happens when you are an airhead like me perhaps I too should be more aware of it, thanks for the nudge!
ahhh yes. Feral hardy lettuce greens throughout the seasons sounds lovely. Cheers to that!
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Ya know, I think that is probably the best course of action for me. I do not have an abundance of seeds but I did invest in quite a variety, so it makes sense for me to lightly nurture my first generation then proceed with stressors in the years to come when I have accumulated enough seeds to start experimenting with more drastically.
Like the majority of us, one of my top priorities is to successfully direct sow everything in my garden and am going to be doing just that as well as wintersowing this year, aside from a few unique tomato/corn/leek varieties that I don’t want to gamble my chances with. I did keep my eye on short days to maturity with tomatoes in particular and I will be selecting seeds from the earliest ripened fruit/veg.
Thanks for sharing the info about pre-conditioning young seedlings for greater resilience later one. That most certainly adds up!
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Not that there is anything wrong with doing what works but it’s kind of hard for me to understand that people have problems just planting their gardens. I could see the need in very short season locations, but you are a couple zones warmer than me. I’ve been direct planting pretty much everything for sixty years. My dad did, my grandad did, it’s just always been the norm. There are a few exceptions, mostly just tomatoes but that was because years ago I was caught up in the informal competition of who in the neighborhood could have the earliest ripe tomato. For no real good reason, I still do it with tomatoes, I guess it’s true that old habits die hard.
I do it sometimes with things like cabbage too, for a head start to try to beat the hot dry that comes faster and earlier than it used to. I saw someone on YouTube that started corn in cell packs and planted so all the leaves were oriented the same way. Their corn patch was cool looking with all the leaves in perfect arrangement, like a marching band. I thought about doing that, just for fun. I don’t remember why they said they did that, I thought it was funny. I also do start transplants sometimes to sell.
I do have a little heat mat and once in a while if I’m trailing something new or only have few seeds I’ll use it. I used it the first time I grew dahlias, before I figured out if you just throw dahlia seed on the ground and add water, they grow. I use unheated cold frames made of old storm doors for my tomatoes and things I’m going to sell.
What sorts of problems do you encounter when direct planting your garden?
I really strongly doubt that that is true.
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Yes, I imagine so and finding species or individual varieties within species is of one many ways to maximize use of available water. I just believe that it is a question of finding them when they exist, rather than breeding for them when they don’t, especially in a backyard garden.
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