The garden that feeds itself started with one season of not cleaning up.
Let these six plants flower, drop seed, and finish. They come back on their own.
– Dill — one plant scatters thousands of seeds in a six-foot radius, seedlings appear everywhere the following spring.
– Cilantro — stop fighting the bolt, let it drop seed in June, a fall crop emerges in September from the same seeds.
– Arugula — self-seeds so readily that one flowering plant often means volunteer arugula in every bed for years.
– Lettuce — bolt produces hundreds of seeds that land in the same bed and fill the cool-weather gaps between planned plantings.
– Chamomile — one plant produces a carpet of seedlings the following spring, harvestable for tea, zero maintenance.
– Borage — blue flowers, cucumber flavor, drops seeds that germinate reliably in the same spot each year.
The grocery herbs you keep rebuying evolved to do this without help. You just kept cleaning up before they could finish.