Hello fellow gardeners,

I'm curious to hear your "Unpopular Opinions" about gardening! You know, those thoughts or practices about gardening that might go against the grain or challenge conventional wisdom.

For example--My unpopular opinion is that Swiss Chard, albeit beautiful, is actually pretty lousy to eat. Therefore, if I grow it, it's almost exclusively for looks and not for eating!
Another one--Hot composting, and determining all the optimal ratios to get your pile hot enough, requires too many inputs and gets too complicated for me. Therefore, I'll just stick to my passive practices, even if they are slower!

With that said, I want to know your controversial plant choices, your unique preferences and practices, and what you do differently than others!

So, what is your Unpopular Opinion about gardening?!

I don't feel that a garden without vegetables isn't a "proper garden". A garden is a space used for growing plants. Ornamental or edible doesn't enter into the definition.
Non-organically grown vegetables and fruit are equally flavorful and nutritious as organically grown ones.
Backyard fruit trees should be pruned to make picking easier.

DO NOT grow the GMO Purple Galaxy Frankentomato or your garden won't be proper.

Lol, I was just going to mention the GMO thing, but only to say that there have been a couple of threads on that topic recently, notably this
https://garden.org/thread/go/1...
if you're interested in reading various opinions about it. Personally, I would like to see that discussion confined to that thread and explore different "unpopular" topics here, whatever they might be.

I'm basically a lazy gardener and adhere to the "whatever works" philosophy — compost however you want, prune however you want, just don't insist that it's the only right way. However, I can't tell from reading this site whether my strong opinion about avoiding herbicides and insecticides is popular or un. Seems like so many gardeners use those products freely that my objection is in the minority.

I completely agree about the Swiss chard—same for kale, regardless of its nutritious qualities. Beautiful plant, nothing I care to eat!

Swiss Chard, like its Beet relative, tastes like rich dirt. Great for gardening in, not so great for food.
Cole crops of any kind make the area around me uninhabitable. Same with garlic and onions. My digestive system takes things in Cole crops and does terrible things to them. Garlic and onions stay on my breath and fill my sweat glands. Sorry everybody.
Bring on the GMOs!

CalPolygardener said:
Bring on the GMOs!

💔💔💔💔💔

I'm also a fan of keep-it-simple composting. I find the natural garden cycle gives you the composting ingredients you need when you need them. People with $400 compost tumblers have too much money.

I'm OK with kale and quite like chard, but arugula can go extinct for all I care.

I feel like I'm wasting my time and money if I grow something that I can get cheaply at the market.

But my biggest apostasy is I refuse to baby my crops. If something isn't easy to grow, I'm not spending a lot of time on it. Darwinian gardening.

"Rich dirt" flavor! Yes, give me more!

CalPolygardener said:
Non-organically grown vegetables and fruit are equally flavorful and nutritious as organically grown ones.

Flavorful yes, equally as nutritious, probably not. I don't grow organic because buying organic soils and fertilize can be costly plus not easy to find around here. However I do buy a inexpensive granule fertilize that's organic and I at least source non-gmo seed. I use rain water when available because it doesn't have the sodium, lead and chlorine like hose water but rain water isn't always there especially during droughts.
Just sayin' it's ok to use what's available when you can't find better options but just don't overdo it.

Henderman said:
I feel like I'm wasting my time and money if I grow something that I can get cheaply at the market.

But my biggest apostasy is I refuse to baby my crops. If something isn't easy to grow, I'm not spending a lot of time on it. Darwinian gardening.

That's quite true with bulk crops like corn, peas and beans. But truth be told I enjoy grocery shopping for tomatoes, peppers and greens in my backyard. Plus, when its your own produce you don't have to worry about salmonella poisoning from a dirty factory.

I don't baby my crops either unless they're very young and I don't want them flattened by a storm or expected frost, freeze or snow. But other than that (and bad insect infestations), they're on their own.

I'm the worlds laziest gardener. I fertilize with whatever is cheapest maybe once a year, some years I completely skip. I used to keep everything relatively weed free but I got older (or wiser). I don't use pesticides (except dormant sprays) or herbicides although I did use a lot of Roundup back in my weed free days.

I compost but whatever is available is what's in the stack. Around here, you try hard not to have a hot compost pile because they literally catch fire, usually when a lot of green grass is added. I'm safe, no lawn.

I love chard but can't stand kale or arugula. I plant rainbow chard, parsley and herbs wherever there's a bare spot. The kids planted the orchard with carrots and asparagus. A few years ago, I moved the entire vegetable garden to the orchard. So much easier. The squirrels added Gladiolus for color.

Chard makes excellent compost.

Bark mulch culture marketing - industry has sold people on out for decades. The simple act of laying down landscaping fabric harms the soil. Add to that the chemical treatments on commercial bagged products and the lifelong reliance on the addition of more bagged product... What a waste.
Finally, most of our most hated seeds specialize in colonizing bare soil. Guess what a mark mulch need approximate for weeds... Bare soil. So even if everything else worked without problems, laying down fabric to smother, Bark mulch to smother, what the surface is left with is available for colonization by weeds.

Mulching is good... Just not what gets sold to us by the landscaping industry.

To be further honest, I don't really enjoy large patches of bare growing space anyway. Here bare areas get filled with plants fairly quickly.

Henderman said:
I feel like I'm wasting my time and money if I grow something that I can get cheaply at the market.

I used to think that about potatoes, which are usually quite inexpensive here as we have a number of local commercial potato farmers. Until a friend who lives near one of those farms pointed out to me that a lot of chemicals are used to knock the plants down before harvesting... . I don't garden strictly organically, but so many of the commercial fruits and veggies have been treated with potent chemicals for one reason or another and I feel a lot better when I can avoid that as much as possible.

Chard- yum.
Anything Cole crop- yum
Lazy compost- yes
Chemical free- yes

It's unpopular to some that I think there's a lot of BS in some currently popular gardening philosophies. And some old farmers tales things too (moon garden cycles, companion crops)

What I like best is when the only fossil fuel used to get this food to my door is what it took to ship a few ounces of seed.

I plant when I have a spare moment and were I see a bare patch of dirt. If I had to add in moon phases, companion planting, square foot gardening or any other limiting factor, my garden would never get planted.

coffeeandchlorophyll said:
For example--My unpopular opinion is that Swiss Chard, albeit beautiful, is actually pretty lousy to eat. Therefore, if I grow it, it's almost exclusively for looks and not for eating!

Another one--Hot composting, and determining all the optimal ratios to get your pile hot enough, requires too many inputs and gets too complicated for me. Therefore, I'll just stick to my passive practices, even if they are slower!

Chard, never ate it, and am a bit curious, but the other half buys some the past few years, so , I stick it where it is not in the way, but can be seen as it is rather attractive .

Composting: -- I both gardens a cold wire cage in which I put , beside leaves off of the roses, debris, garden or kitchen (and in the past cat litter) and let it sit for years till the bottom part starts falling out of the wire bin, at which point , it now, is mostly used for mulch over the potatoes.
I do dig a fairly large holes in spring or fall and bury garden debris, including stuff sitting on top of the compost heap that looks like it will be there for a long time to come.

My tender care of the garden, strictly, depends on my attitude of the moment for X number of days, or weeks.
Some times, reading instructions or looking on-line for eXpert opinions, and then at other times , I have some thing, or need some thing and toss in garden, use, buy what ever is the least laborious.
I do miss the days from ten years back when I had MANY jugs/bags of product for exact uses in the garden.
That came to an end mostly for monetary reasons, but, been there , done that, also had a large effect on my garden practices.

I do miss the days when I tried to keep the gardens looking like the prim, proper and neat gardens -- (including lawns which I have let become pathetically sad) -- Ma, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa used to have , but when one is , with few exceptions, the only one who is looking at and being annoyed or pleased with what it is, apathy and laziness creep into ones methods.

Urban, can't access the video.

Try it now