An inquisitive Instagrammer wanted to know what would happen if she planted the contents of a packet of dried bean soup mix. And even she was surprised. What started as an online prank became an educational odyssey…
Cindy… And her Chaos Garden: Beans front and centre…
Cindy Off Duty (@cindy.off.duty) was apparently getting on the latest natural gardening bandwagon: ‘chaos gardening’. That’s described by aficionado Angela K. Nickerson as, “a carefree, no-stress meth-od where you mix a variety of seeds – flowers, vegetables, and herbs – and scatter them randomly across prepared soil. Requiring minimal effort and no rigid layouts, it mimics wild landscapes by al-lowing the strongest plants to naturally emerge and thrive.”
Nickerson takes the fad/trend very seriously, having concocted a more formal name for the phenom-enon: @wildrevivalgardening.
Not a new concept
I remember, during the 1960s, when US First lady Ladybird Johnson became famous, and admired, for her program to beautify parks and other open spaces by planting ‘wildflowers’ all up and down them. It was a great idea
Clusters of blooming daffodils brighten Lady Bird Johnson Park in Washington, DC.
Many others have espoused the ‘back-to-nature theory of landscaping before and since. So it makes sense that the latest groundswell, grassroots (literally) craze should involve a new angle on the old principle.
Cindy’s angle…
… Blends serendipity with whimsy. But the outcome taught her – and can teach us, by social media contagion – that not all packaged food are UPFs.
If the beans in Cindy’s soup packet had been processed in any other way than naturally drying, they would never have germinated! Score one for the packaged food sector. I’ll bet we can extrapolate this effect’ to other packaged beans and whole-bean products. But that’s not for me to prove. I’ll gladly leave that to some other social media sort with insatiable curiosity and lots of time on their hands.
More to the point…
… Cindy’s little experiment also proves that just about anybody can grow a vegetable garden, just about anywhere the opportunity presents itself. Be it a single pot of cherry tomatoes on the terrace, a window box full of herbs, a border of lettuces and Nappa Cabbage… Or a full-scale, row-on-row pan-species endeavor!
My take
We all need to get more ‘into’ veggies. Not just because they’re healthy and are supposed to make up at least half of our daily dinner plate. But because we have the opportunity staring us in the face to save money on food, eat fresher, tastier food – and, in so doing, eat our way to a longer, healthier, happier life…
~ Maggie J.