The following is a guest post with some fun seed planting suggestions from regular reader TB. -DTG

Planting seeds does not have to be “clean”. Some gardeners believe that if they are to plant seeds, they must be clean – washed, dried, and foreign materials removed like you will get in seeds sold by a seeds store. This is not the case, obviously.

Melons

You can take the innards of a melon – wet seeds plus those “strings” and plant them, right out of the melon.

Ditto for butternut and other winter squashes.

Tomatoes

Tomatoes – only heirloom tomatoes are true to form; modern hybrids may produce tiny cherry tomatoes – similar to those in tomatoes that grow out of sewage sludge or the over-romanticized Everglades tomato (which almost surely is a seedling from sewage sludge). Anyway, mash up the tomato or slice it in small pieces – plant the mash or slices, cover with soil and wait.

This should work with eggplants but I rarely eat them and never grow them so have not tried. Peppers are often sold at an immature stage so the seeds might not sprout (green peppers).

Blueberries and Other Fruit

Blueberries – plant the whole fruit, or slice in half and plant that. Goji berries – plant the whole fruit. Fruits with large seeds in the center (mango. stone fruits in temperate climates) – bury the whole fruit (good way to use damaged or spoiled fruit).

Let Your Plants Go to Seed

Let your veggies go to seed and you may have many volunteer seedlings at a later date.

Seed planting does not have to be “orderly” or “sanitary” – after all, you will cover them with dirt at planting time!

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Rachel and I have planted with some of these messy, hands-off methods and had good luck with some of them. It worked great with pumpkins and melons but didn’t work well with peppers which TB also noted.

Get out there and try some crazy planting. Nature throws seeds around – why let her have all the fun?