Things my gardening friends and I wish we knew when first starting out
Over the past 25 years or so, I have been a teacher and a learner in the garden.
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I have taught homeschoolers and grade schoolers how to install an Audubon- certified wildlife habitat. I’ve led many a seed exchange and mushroom-inoculation parties. Currently, I teach a small and enthusiastic beginning “Garden Party” class at a University in Virginia renowned for its own gardens.
Certainly in assembling my syllabus for my latest class, I asked myself ” What do I WISH I knew a quarter-century ago, when I was these young gardeners’ ages? The other day a student asked me which book I would recommend for beginners. Without hesitation, I shared that one of the best beginning gardening books I have ever read is called “Garden Crafts for Kids”, by Diane Rhodes. Not only are there great photos and several relevant projects with clear directions, but the book doesn’t assume (as many “How-to” books do) that the person reading already KNOWS how to do what they are reading a HOW-TO book for. Ones written for children are refreshing, because they strive to make things as simple as possible for the true beginners. So: 1. start with a good book. Or ten.
What do you want to grow? This seems like a simple question. But, trust me- when you live somewhere like Virginia (where I learned to garden) and can grow vegetables any time of year, you sometimes find yourself growing ridiculous amounts of Bok Choy and Daikon radishes, just because you can. And that isn’t a terrible thing, it just is inconvenient when you are trying to figure out what to do with all those leafy greens and forearm-sized radishes, because no one you know has ever heard of (much less eaten) Bok Choy and Daikon radishes! Maybe you find yourself always stuck in the front aisle at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s right where all the beautiful bouquets are located. Or needing cilantro at inconvenient hours to complete your delicious salsa recipes. Perhaps you just moved to a neighborhood full of kids, and want to be the nice lady giving away free pumpkins on the corner. Soooo many options!!! Just think about what you buy, or wish you could buy, and plan accordingly. 2. Grow what you like!!! (if you envy your friend’s peppers or Drunken Watermelon offerings at mid-August potlucks, those are clues).
This year, our area sustained a months-long drought and the local deer and groundhogs were reportedly eating peonies, zinnias, tomato plants and other things they “didn’t like”. Clearly, they read different books than I do, because they ate all of those items and more. Imagine my a-ha moment when my kind neighbor proudly brought me a jar of her delicious salsa and showed me her well-fenced garden with tons of non-bothered tomatoes ripening in it. Her approach was to have a raised bed, with a fence they had no incentive to scale because it was attached to a shed so there would be nowhere to land if they jumped it. And it was too tall for those tubby groundhogs who’d been feasting well just next door at my place. I really really wish I’d conferred with her about the area’s trouble with Bambi and woodchucks. I would have saved myself many hours and dollars lost to preventable problems. 3.Talk to your neighbors! Seems so obvious now, but they can tell you things no Youtube video or book can tell you about your site.
Conversely, there ARE things that the internet and books can tell you that also offer valuable clues as to what your site is already prepared for: I am talking about ‘soil indicators’, also known as ‘indicator plants’. Common weeds such as dock, chickweed, dandelion tell you that your site has plentiful iron (dock), is fertile (chickweed) has ample iron AND (AGAIN) is fertile (dandelion). By using a helpful plant identification app like Seek, or Picture This , or a freebie like Google Lens (good not just for plants but insects and all kinds of things), you can survey the plants in an area you’d like to site your garden. You can then decide if that spot is right for what you want to grow, or if it would be better elsewhere. Cross-referenced with a handy three-page chart of most of the soil indicator plants from Robert Kourik’s book “Designing and Maintaining your Edible Landscape Naturally“, you will be armed with even better info than you can glean with a soil test. But get one of those too, from your local extension office, or from the local hardware store Rapitest is great for pH tests, and common NPK test (Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potash) So…4.Assess the site (plants AND soil) BEFORE you plant.
We are lucky in Virginia that we can plant or harvest something every month of the year. Really the only limits are what YOU want to spend (money and time-wise). If you have lots of energy, but little money, great! Trade seeds and plants with gardener friends. If you have money, but not as much time or energy as you’d like, plant in containers (no weeding) and maybe pay for help so you can enjoy the aspects of gardening you enjoy more. LOVE to start seeds, or harvest pumpkins, but HATE weeding in July? It’s (as my daughter would say “quality of life”): pay someone to help you. You shouldn’t have to live without a beautiful garden view just because you have a low income, a busy work schedule, or back problems. 5.Determine how much time, energy and money you have to spend on your garden, and plan accordingly, before even breaking ground or planting one seed. A little planning now means the difference between a pleasant experience or possible heartbreak later (almost nothing sadder than a missed banner fruit harvest, because you were away on vacation mid-summer).
I hope these tips do not deter you but encourage you so that you can have a garden that you enjoy in many ways! Whether it be a bountiful patio full of plants, a fulfilling flower border or a pumpkin patch straight out of your childhood dreams, you can do it!!! And I hope these tips help you obtain those goals even quicker than you imagined, so you too, will be telling everyone: “Virginia is for Gardeners!”