Onions sprouting from seed that was broadcast onto the mulch. The seeds germinated when the rains came.



During summer of 2016, our beets, carrots, onions, lettuces, arugula, flax, basil, parsley, etc. produced thousands of seeds!!! That is way too many seeds to plant individually. 

We experimented this summer by broadcasting thousands of our own seeds onto the mulch layer to see if they would come up. Why shouldn’t they? Weed seeds easily sprout up through mulch. We tossed out the seeds right onto the mulch surface and left them there for a couple of months. When the rain came in autumn, they sprouted.

One of the most important aspects of a forest is the covering of organic material on the forest floor. Our soil is covered about 1/2″ – 1″ deep in a variety of organic mulch. 

Some people think that you have to part the mulch to plant the seeds in the soil underneath. This may be true for certain larger seeds like corn or pumpkin, but this was not the case for our tiny seeds.

Up come some carrot seedlings!

Carrots thriving on the forest floor after we scattered the seeds and let them grow where they landed!

Flax growing from flax seeds that were strewn onto the surface of the mulch.



One day, just as the seedlings were starting to appear, many crows landed on the forest floor and started digging up the seeds. After chasing them away, we placed this dragon kite in a tree near the seedlings. 

Crows think this Dragon Kite is a DEAD BIRD and won’t come near it!

The dragon kite is simply perched in a tree

This dragon kite scared the crows so much that they haven’t come back into the garden since we hung it in this tree!

Apparently crows are afraid if you hang a DEAD BIRD on a tree or a pole for them to see. Now the crows fly by, and when they see this scary dragon kite which looks like a dead bird, they cry out with a fearful CAW and they won’t land anywhere near it! Even our pet turkeys are afraid of this kite and moan fearfully when they see it!

Compared to our first scarecrow, which didn’t seem to do anything at all – this has been amazing!

This scarecrow didn’t scare the crows at all! He did, however, startle us at times!

Here are more seedling pictures.

By planting the roots of green onions from the store after we ate the green tops, the roots grew into large green onion plants, which developed seeds that we distributed around the garden. Now we now have a field of green onions growing, and you can see there are seeds getting ready to create exponentially more onion plants! This is a great picture of nature’s abundance!

See how the seeds of the onion seeds drop all around and new onions begin to grow.

Aloha Farms food forest – Nasturtium seedlings under Lemon Tree. These are from the third or fourth generation of nasturtium seeds. Each new generation includes many new colors and varieties of nasturtiums!

Last year’s nasturtium flowers growing from seed sprinkled around on the mulch

Here are the yellow flowers of the romaine lettuce plants. Each of the flowers will produce about 20 more seeds for new romaine lettuce plants!

An abundance of calendula flowers growing from seed scattered around the forest floor

We hope you are happy to learn about how easy it can be to plant seeds when you have a food forest! 

We wish you Peace, Abundance, and – let’s say it together – Aloha!