“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments.”
– Janet Kilburn-Phillips
My mom’s mom had a garden. A massive garden from which she grew enough food to feed 10 children, and countless relatives and friends. As a kid, I’d eat peas off the vine and slip into her greenhouse to inhale its warm, earthy scent. Now, my kids call her Pumpkin Grandma, because the pumpkin fairy visits her garden to mark her pumpkins with their names. Her garden is magic.
My dad’s mom had a garden. As kids, we raided it for raspberries to eat with cream and sugar. We inspected them for bugs before placing them in our bowls, even though my grandpa swore the bugs were good protein. We searched for juicy gems hidden in the strawberry patch, while grandma crouched between her perfect rows, keeping them spotless of weeds. Her garden was pristine.
My mom had a garden. She taught us how to plan our own small plots, to plant, water and weed. We started each season with gusto, and when our enthusiasm petered and the weeds took control, she sent us out to pull and hoe. We entered horticulture competitions, occasionally beating the local pros with our marigolds and dahlias. We picked carrots and ate them, crisp and fresh, with the slight graininess of dirt. We learned to work and to reap the rewards. Her garden was a classroom and a playground.
So you’d think that gardening would be in my blood, yet it has taken me ten years of gardening, on and off, to finally achieve a reasonable amount of success. This is what I’ve learned.
Plan your layout.
This year I decided to forgo a traditional row garden to try something I’d read about online — square foot gardening. Essentially, it allows you to maximise your production by planting more plants in a smaller area. I divided the main portion of my garden into four rows of 3′ by 3′ plots, leaving enough space in between to run my mini-tiller. I mapped out my garden on paper, noting the quantity and type of plants in each plot.
Now I’ve mapped out garden plans before, but I’ve typically tossed the plan as soon as the seeds were in the ground. By the time the next planting season rolled around, I’d forgotten what I’d done the year before and what I wished I’d done differently. This year I kept my plan posted to the fridge and made notes of the things I want to change going forward — like leaving more space between my bean and pea plots, and changing the location of my corn so that it doesn’t block the underground sprinkler.
Pay attention to your plant varieties.
This spring, I made the rookie mistake of basing my choice of starter plants and seeds solely on how awesome the vegetables looked on the packaging. It never occurred to me to turn the seed packet or plant card over to make sure I knew what I was buying. Sure, my tomato plants were jam-packed with perfectly round, red fruit just like in the picture, but they were all the size of marbles because I had only selected cherry tomatoes. What do you do with literally hundreds of cherry tomatoes? Similarly, I ended up with dozens of crispy cucumbers that were perfect for eating fresh, but terrible for pickling.
Be prepared for pests.
I was super pumped when my corn crop started pushing its way out of the soil, until I noticed that some stealthy creature was stealing the tender sprouts. Apparently, the local rabbits were equally pumped about this corn crop.
So I scrambled to build a fence to keep them away, but my makeshift solution just made it impossible to weed. After some quick Googling, I sent my husband out to find some predator pee and he came home with something even better — a motion-sensor sprinkler that worked like a charm! It even scared the crap out of me a few times when I forgot to turn it off before going out to weed. Unfortunately, by the time we got this system set up, the rabbits had already munched down half of my corn crop and some of my beans.
I also got into a major battle with an army flea beetles that went to town on my radishes and kohlrabi, and annihilated my broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. I felt like Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh, angrily, frantically puffing flea beetle powder onto my plants, swearing under my breathe, but my efforts were too little, too late. Next year, I’ll make sure I have a some better strategies in place before those tiny buggers show up — something more along the lines of a preemptive strike.
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Timing is everything.
I missed the boat on starting my seeds indoors, but I still got them in the ground at the right time in the spring. However, I failed to consider when most of my vegetables would be ready to harvest.
I planted a ton of lettuce off the bat, but the trouble with lettuce is that you can’t really do anything with it except eat it fresh. And by July, my lettuce had started to rot. Next spring, I’ll plant half as many heads of lettuce, radishes and other early producers, and then replant them later in the season so that we can enjoy them over a longer stretch.
I also planned too much vacation time away from home right when much of my garden, like the peas and beans, were at their prime. Although I managed to pick and freeze a few bags of each, most of these crops went to waste. Summer is always going to be a busy time and I don’t want my garden to dictate our summer plans, but I also don’t want to waste my time on vegetables we won’t be able to eat. Next year, I’ll do a better job of timing harvest when we’re around.
Don’t stress.
I’m fortunate in that I don’t need to garden to feed my family. I do it because I enjoy it; I like being outside, I like growing my own food and I like having the opportunity to teach my kids some of the things my mom taught me.
But I still had to remind myself of this a few times this year, like when I was pulling out my flea-ridden cabbage crop or when I returned from a two-week vacation to find that my perfectly plotted garden had become an overgrown mess.
The thing is, even though they made it look easy, I’m sure that my grandmas weren’t born with green thumbs. Green thumbs are built on trial and error. You win some, you lose some. You learn as you go.