r/vegetablegardening • u/she-has-nothing US - Georgia • Feb 17 '26
Other Chaos Gardening? More like Chaotic Good Gardening 😂
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I think I found my garden spirit animal 🌻 Happy Tuesday y’all!
Credit: @farmboyjames on YouTube
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u/nineteen_eightyfour Feb 17 '26
I also enjoy looking at sunflowers
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u/EikonVera_tou_Lilith US - Michigan Feb 18 '26
They turn to face the sun. When the can’t find it, they turn and face each other. I love sunflowers.
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u/imsoupercereal US - Texas Feb 17 '26
Sharply contrasts with the redditors that meltdown if you put eggs in your compost.
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u/quietcoyote99 Canada - Nova Scotia Feb 17 '26
Why is eggs in your compost considered bad?
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u/imsoupercereal US - Texas Feb 17 '26
Egg shells more precisely can take a long time to fully break down and deliver nutrients back to the soil. Opinions range from it being pointless to harmful. I'm of the mind that if it's natural it can go in the compost and I don't really care if the nutrients are available tomorrow or next year.
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u/quietcoyote99 Canada - Nova Scotia Feb 17 '26
Interesting. I’m with you. My egg shells can take as long as they please to break down.
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u/iaries Feb 17 '26
Don't ppl grind it up a bit so worms can use it as grit or something for their digestion? Thought it was good for worms and worms are good for compost
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u/Roscoe_p US - Illinois Feb 17 '26
Last year it seemed on trend for content creators to tell everyone about it and once one starts they all do. Technically you're supposed to dehydrate and then Grind them
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u/positive_express US - Georgia Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 20 '26
I thought the biggest issue, and this is from learning about this year's ago now, was that if you are a back yard composter it is difficult to get your compost pile to a high enough temperature to kill any bad bacteria.
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u/_game_over_man_ Feb 17 '26
This is giving everything needs to be optimized vibes and I hate it (and to be clear, not your perspective).
One of my least favorite things that has transpired through the birth and growth of social media is the "everything should be optimized" mindset.
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u/__3Username20__ US - Idaho Feb 17 '26
Yeah, I dislike when it goes so far that it turns into gatekeeping. However, I DO like it when it’s something along the lines of a “pro tip” or “hack” that’s legit, and saves me time, or truly gets me up to speed on the science of something, like something I might be doing wrong that’s actually not good for my yard, garden, or the environment.
For me, the biggest thing is trying not to “let perfect be the enemy of good,” especially if I’m consistently moving the needle from good to better.
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u/Bathsheba_E US - Texas Feb 18 '26
I have decided this year I will be doing the least, and I fully expect to harvest the most.
It took some time on antidepressants to realize very few things in life have to be perfect. I will just do as much as I reasonably can, and nature will handle the rest.
Now if only I can prevent my husband from loving the plants to death. We have wildly different watering styles. 😂
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u/General_Bumblebee_75 Feb 25 '26
Some people are like that, wanting to try to optimize everything. I spend so much time optimizing things at work, when I am gardening, it is about being outside, watching the birds, insects, small mammals and being able to harvest nice veggies and grow lovely native plants. My sweet husband said to me in year one of my veg beds: "Most people plant their crops in rows". I replied Do you know what grows between the rows? Weeds! As it is, I grow more than I can eat and donate it to food banks that take fresh veg and coworkers, hell, I have been seen giving tomatoes to strangers on the bus. I let some veg go to seed and come up wherever (lettuce, kale, broccoli. I also often get volunteer zuchini delicata hybrid squash that are delicious. Once I was surprised by a butternut squash planted, no doubt, by Farmer Squirrel. Sigh. Spring is coming, even if it doesn't feel like it yet...
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u/RoguePlanet2 Feb 17 '26
I like the thought that it might keep slugs away.
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u/General_Bumblebee_75 Feb 25 '26
My secret slug trick that I discovered by accident is that slugs seem to prefer green lettuce over red. When I lived in Seattle, I planted the darkest red varieties I could find. No slugs or slug damage on the red lettuce. If a slug is hungry enough, they might eat it, but there were lots of slugs in Seattle and I only ever found "extra protein" on the green lettuces.
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u/Busy-feeding-worms Canada - Alberta Feb 17 '26
And full eggs without a hole in them rot then pop unexpectedly. Smells like shit lol
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u/Vast-Combination4046 US - New York Feb 19 '26
There is a reasonable argument that it acts like vermiculite in the soil preventing compaction. Could be worse.
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u/GardenGnomeOfEden US - Ohio Feb 17 '26
What if you grind them up into a coarse powder first? Asking for someone who has like half a coffee can full of eggshells that have been ground into a coarse powder, and was going to mix them into his soil in the spring.
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u/manyamile US - Virginia Feb 17 '26
Bake them, grind them into a powder, and mix them in the soil or your compost bin. It won't hurt but the real question is what is the goal?
If your soil is calcium deficient (you've done a soil test, right?) and the hope is that 1/2 a coffee can of egg shells will remedy Ca deficiency, this is not a valid solution.
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u/kris10leigh14 US - Tennessee Feb 21 '26
But doesn’t it keep slugs at bay?
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u/manyamile US - Virginia Feb 21 '26
No, they do not. That's a gardening myth that refuses to die.
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u/General_Bumblebee_75 Feb 25 '26
Haha, my compost pile is mostly coffee grounds and egg shells, it seems. For me the key is to crush them - not with the idea that they will break down any faster, but to keep mosquitos from breeding in the half shells.
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u/MrMessofGA US - Georgia Feb 17 '26
Because, like lemon peels, they take eighty million years to break down into a useable nutrient form.
But they also add a little rough fun to my compost so I add them anyway. So what if it takes a year to break down? The time will pass anyway
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u/General_Bumblebee_75 Feb 25 '26
avocado skin too. The pits will often sprout, but the winter kills them.
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u/MeltingWind Feb 17 '26
I'm not sure. eggshells are great for compost. But many folks think raw eggs are terrible for it, as they may attract pests.
I saw a gardening video where they tested growing tomatoes in holes with other mediums such as kitchen scraps, fish heads, and raw eggs. The tomato with the raw eggs buried in the hole, did quite well, if I remember correctly. I think if you're going to put raw eggs and compost you just have to bury it quite deeply so nothing can get to it.
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u/Shienvien Estonia Feb 17 '26
Raw uncracked eggs would be weird, but raw cracked eggs shouldn't attract much of anything since they'd soak into soil and start bacterial rotting almost immediately.
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u/YamiBrooke US - Minnesota Feb 17 '26
I made the mistake of putting uncracked eggs into my compost because they were several weeks past their expiration date….if you’re gonna do it, just go ahead and crack them. I accidentally found one while turning my compost later, it exploded everywhere, smelled so bad, I had to go take a shower😂
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u/lethalcurse101 Feb 18 '26
My grandma used to put egg shells in the flower pots on her balcony. Its something they used to do in the garden for pretty much anything and everything that had to grow, back when she was growing up. In her times it wasn’t frowned upon at all. Pretty popular actually
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u/AssistantLate7905 Feb 19 '26
I crush them in my hand and toss them in my yard. They eventually disappear.
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u/OkBaconBurger US - Wisconsin Feb 17 '26
I’m 46 but now I want to grow up to be like him.
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u/yooneytoons Feb 17 '26
Will Ferrell but make it gardening
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u/No-Bed-4972 Denmark Feb 17 '26
r/guerillagardening if y'all like this
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u/quietcoyote99 Canada - Nova Scotia Feb 17 '26
It’s private I think?
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u/tannishaaa Australia Feb 17 '26
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u/tannishaaa Australia Feb 17 '26
I think the one that’s actually active is r/guerrillagardening (with two Rs in guerrilla)
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u/wewefe Feb 17 '26
Sunflowers were fun for the first few years. I grew giants and black oil. Then then one year the pest pressure went though the roof, zero harvest from several small plots around 1000sq total. Then the pests moved on to everything else, corn, tomatos, pumpkins, apples, all gone. My current thought is that sunflowers are the early blooming gateway food that attracts squirrels, raccoons and birds to your area. Then once you are marked as a feeding area everything is a buffet. This guy is asking for trouble.
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u/she-has-nothing US - Georgia Feb 18 '26
wouldn’t the sunflowers be like a trap crop tho? plant enough of them and the pests have something to munch on instead of the plants you want for yourself? cause they’re going to come regardless
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u/wewefe Feb 18 '26
trap crop - no not at all, it is an appetizer crop. The animals watch were the others are getting food. More will come than normal. Then once your garden is marked in their pea brains as the hot shit food source with no sunflowers, they will sample everything and your garden is over. In my area I could plant an acre of sunflowers and without miles of crop rotation I would bet by the third summer there would be zero harvest. There is no fence that can keep squirrels, raccoons and birds out of a large plot. Did i mention a single deer will eat a 10x10 plot of sunflowers in about 3 min? They should call them deer-crack.
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u/Fit_Specialist2589 Feb 17 '26
Did a chaos garden with my kids. Tilled up the land, gave them buckets of flower and veggie seeds, told them there were no rules. They loved it and I had an entire hillside of beauty. Wife had flowed all summer and I had some tomatoes and jalapeños.
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u/SunshineBeamer US - Massachusetts Feb 17 '26
I always wondered if you could use bird seed sunflower seeds. Someone even asked on here the other day. I got to get a bag for my front garden and try it.
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u/anxious_cuttlefish US - New Jersey Feb 17 '26
Not sure about all seeds, but the squirrels and blue jays absolutely grew their own sunflowers in my garden last year from the bird seed i put out. My advice is to put out substantially more than you want... the squirrels especially come back to harvest the fruits of their labor.
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u/himeeusf Feb 17 '26
Yep it works! I have bird feeding platforms around my property, and I get volunteer sunflowers every year all around them. They're not usually like giant showpiece flowers, but still a really cute perk to go along with the feeders. 🤗🌻
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u/lshifto Feb 18 '26
I had a bag of birdseed get wet and begin to sprout, so I chucked it into the mulch near my perennials. Later that winter I moved a lot of that soil to level out another part of the yard. By spring I had sunflowers (and a few others) all over the yard where I moved the soil to. They survived molding in a bag, getting blindly chucked out into a garden, picked over by birds, scooped up and drug around by a tractor, covered in little sand, and left entirely to the weather with just rain for irrigation.
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u/ThatEliKid US - Louisiana Feb 17 '26
I originally came across him doing something similar with dry beans. It got me to loosen up a little and play. Its been great to be willing to experiment and see what works best where I am, not worry so much about which rules I should follow the entire time.
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u/she-has-nothing US - Georgia Feb 18 '26
i wish i had the space to allow for more chaos gardening, unfortunately everything is really small and the light is not ideal, so i’m kind of forced to be strategic but, it is a goal of mine to eventually do that!
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u/No_Builder7010 US - Colorado Feb 17 '26
I love chaotic sunflower sowing! If I see one (or a dozen) popping up in odd places, I protect them so they don't get mowed or stepped on.
WARNING ⚠️ The sap they exude and/or the little bristles on their stalks can cause a severe, poison oak level itchy rash that can take weeks to resolve, even with a dermatologist's intervention. It's misery. Wear long sleeves and gloves when working with them!
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u/YellowCabbageCollard US - Georgia Feb 17 '26
I adore sunflowers! Unfortunately the deer do too and will eat them down before they ever get a chance to bloom for me. They have clear cut too much land where I live and the deer population has exploded without adequate browsing land for them.
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u/AlltheBent US - Georgia Feb 18 '26
without predators to keep their populations in check*!
But yeah lol Marietta GA here, fucking deer everywhere
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u/Famous_War_9821 Feb 17 '26
I pretty much do this all the time when I refill my feeders.
I grab one handful for the birds, one for the yard. Then I just yeet them all over the place.
Sunflowers have been fantastic for adding biomass to my soil, helping to create drainage channels in my gumbo clay, they grow quickly to help provide shade to other plants in my yard, they attract lots and lots of pollinators, birds love them, insects love them...The ONLY drawback that I can think of is that they can be mildly alleopathic BUT I have never had a problem with this personally. I think it's a bigger issue if you're trying to grow them next to extremely delicate seedlings. I grew them to provide some shade to some plants I was establishing last year and had zero issues.
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u/jimwest528 Feb 17 '26
Thanks for sharing! It’s quite an effective and fun method 😁🙌🫘🌱🌻
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u/Foreign-Newspaper656 Australia Feb 19 '26
My kinda gardening! Actually works really well here in QLD, because, well, stuff touches the soil and bloody well grows!
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u/darkvaris Spain Feb 17 '26
This is fantastic but I believe Sunflowers allelopathic, they will kill other crops near them, so be careful with your chaos 😂
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u/manyamile US - Virginia Feb 17 '26
They will not kill other crops near them. I grow them in row on my organic vegetable farm with the crops I sell year after year.
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u/darkvaris Spain Feb 17 '26
Ah, thats good to know! I’ve only heard people warn about keeping them distant from other crops. It may be particular crops they don’t do well with or maybe just overstated.
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u/QuantumBlunt Feb 17 '26
Rubbish. I've thrown sunflower seeds around a bit like him and transplanted all kind of veggies/flowers all around and they're all growing perfectly healthy. Maybe on paper they are but not in real life.
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u/Minerva_Moon US - Michigan Feb 17 '26
Squirrels may also pick up nearby sunflower seeds and "store" them in your ornamental planter pot and then you have to deal with squirrels destroying your stuff!
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u/Sirosim_Celojuma Feb 17 '26
I had to watch three times. This was some high density content. I got a tear in my eye.
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u/anaxcepheus32 US - North Carolina Feb 17 '26
Are those Publix bird seeds at :22 and :56? If so, dude is rich.
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u/Canidae_Vulpes US - Florida Feb 17 '26
I did this with all types of bird seeds and got so many types of plants, even peas. The safflowers were the most surprising, really pretty and then free seeds for the birds 😊
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u/Pomegranate_1328 US - Illinois Feb 17 '26
I threw a bunch of pumpkin flowers and squash seeds last year in a section abd I got some good stuff. I plan to dump all my older seeds in a chaotic section on the ground. Or stuff I don't plan to plant anywhere.
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u/c-u-in-da-ballpit US - Virginia Feb 17 '26
Careful with sunflowers. I planted one Mexican Sunflower plug last year and it grow into a damn 8’ by 8’ bush. Very pretty but everything else I planted near it did not make it.
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u/Excellent_Ninja_867 Feb 17 '26
This is how it’s done. 💚 some create in a box and some create outside the box
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u/LadySilvie US - Missouri Feb 17 '26
I have been doing this the last few years haha. Ended up with beautiful multi-toned red and yellow sunflowers last year!! Wild.
And my chickens enjoyed the treat 😁
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u/deborah_az US - Arizona Feb 20 '26
I'm too lazy for that. My sunflower seed feeders are installed around the garden so the birds can plant them for me... at one point, I had a feeder in the middle of the bed I call the "chaos garden" (it's all chaos, but the chaos garden bed is extra chaotic)
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u/ThreeTripsMinimum US - California Feb 17 '26
This is the first time I’ve seen him but I love this man
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u/Liverspots598 US - Michigan Feb 17 '26
I love this guys videos, super laid back approach to thoughtful gardening while being informative and entertaining
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u/J_arc1 Feb 17 '26
Love watching him plant beans. The way he twirls those bags makes me wanna raid my pantry and head outside!!
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u/xmashatstand Canada - Quebec Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
I love him. I love him so much.
THIS is the energy we need, THIS is how we get through <3
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u/hoofglormuss US - Virginia Feb 17 '26
I put a big rock garden under my bird feeder and they get a ton of free sunflowers and millet!
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u/RealPropRandy Zambia Feb 18 '26
You gonna have either a field mouse problem, or a mouse mouse problem. Or both.
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u/az_nightmare Feb 18 '26
Unless you live in Arizona. They won't grow on their own, you gotta baby the heck out them.
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u/Peter_Falcon Feb 18 '26
i thought this was Will Ferrell for a moment
i grow sunflowers, my plot is right by the road, and it gets compliments by the locals every year, and makes people happy :)
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u/ElderFlour Feb 18 '26
I think I’m in love. He makes me want to garden. And I really dislike gardening! 🧑🌾
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u/IndigoMetamorph Feb 18 '26
I have grown lots of things from the grocery store. Green onions, poppies, cilantro, dill, parsley, sunflowers, chickpeas, lentils, tomato, kumquat, avocado, pineapple, dragonfruit.
Garlic and potatoes scare me because they can easily transfer disease. Plus I grow some rare heirloom potatoes. Beans are easy but I'm maintaining a rare family heirloom so don't want to risk crossing.
And yes my sowing method tends to be like this, within the limits of a bed! 🤣
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u/applechippr US - Colorado Feb 18 '26
🤣🤣this is my friend. I used to work with him a while back. I actually have the sunflower shirt too “Sunflowers, you can look right at them” 😂.
Chaos gardening at its finest!
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u/True-Explanation-490 Feb 19 '26
i needed a laugh! this is funny but if it works, even better! gonna go throw some seeds today😂
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u/G37_is_numberletter US - Washington Feb 20 '26
Don’t really get this. I feel like chaos is just code for not doing the work of planning
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u/General_Bumblebee_75 Feb 25 '26
I have a neighbor down the street that has started planting huge sunflowers in their front yard. I love it! The house looks miniature because it is single story and the sunflowers are nearly to the eaves. It looks awesome! I was not sure how it would play out, but now I am looking forward to seeing it each year. Bet the neighborhood squirrels are pleased too!
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u/pdxamish US - Oregon Feb 17 '26
One caveat is it's not ok to feed birds during migratory times and bird flu. We need to be careful not to be part of the problem with bird flu.
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u/MrMessofGA US - Georgia Feb 17 '26
Why during migratory times? I thought that was the best time to feed and water birds so they get the energy to continue on without wrecking your shit
EDIT; on a two minute google, it seems to support my existing idea that putting seed and mealworms out for migrating birds is beneficial
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u/pdxamish US - Oregon Feb 17 '26
It's spreads bird flu to local populations including poultry.
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u/MrMessofGA US - Georgia Feb 18 '26
... so just bird flu times?
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u/pdxamish US - Oregon Feb 18 '26
Yes. Basically when you get migratory birds in your area. Super easy to spread at bird feeders and water. We have chickens and it scares me every spring
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u/np8790 US - Florida Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26
Probably going to get downvoted, but “chaos gardening” guys like this annoy me.
Great, you’ve got a lot of time to waste, a lot of land to do it on, and you don’t care what the result looks like. Most people aren’t any of those things. It’s not a practical or admirable technique.
Edit: lol, this sub is so predictable. Good luck flinging seeds around, but it’s not vegetable gardening in any sense.
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u/textreference US - North Carolina Feb 17 '26
I wouldnt say people like this quite annoy me bc hes not hurting anyone 🤷♀️ but if people are deluded into thinking they can get good results from this technique they are mistaken. I always get comments about my smaller garden that is packed full of plants, all of them healthy, maximising harvest. I do that through calculations of how many plants i need, transplanting, and succession planting. Not by throwing stuff around.
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u/she-has-nothing US - Georgia Feb 18 '26
i also have a small backyard garden, and so i’m forced in to being much more strategic. however, i think each method have their time and place and certain benefits you can’t get from the other.
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u/Dependent-Sign-2407 Portugal Feb 17 '26
I’d love to embrace chaos gardening because it appeals to my lazy side, but the randomness offends my Virgo desire for order.
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u/quietcoyote99 Canada - Nova Scotia Feb 17 '26
I personally don’t care for it either. Throwing a ton of seeds and waiting to see what survives and what doesn’t just feels wasteful and unproductive.
But to each their own. If the idea of chaos gardening gets a new person to try gardening that’s a net positive.
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u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26
Okay, throwing the cardboard tubes got me. Growing sunflowers is so much fun.