Lessons from Gardens Past

When I was 16, I decided I wanted  a garden. My mother had just purchased her first home and she was kind enough to allow me to dig in her new yard. With the blind enthusiasm of an adolescent, I dug an ambitious first plot (about 10 by 10 feet) and planted corn, peppers, and tomatoes. The older couple who were our neighbors came over to check out my work, and the husband told me assuredly, "Ain't nothing gonna grow in there." My heart didn't exactly sink, because I was quite confident that I would prove him wrong. But he was right. In retrospect, my plan was doomed from the start. The plot I dug was situated between a tall blue spruce and the neighbor's hedges, so it was shaded for most of the day. And it was so far from the house that I had to water by filling watering cans. It was overwhelmed with weeds and nothing grew except one tiny green pepper. Somehow, I didn't lose my zeal for gardening, but I have made plenty of mistakes along the way. Here's some of what I have learned, and am still learning.

Lesson 1: Site the garden carefully 

We all have heard that location is everything in real estate. The same holds for gardens. Site your garden where the plants get as much sun as possible (6-8 hours per day). But that's not enough. Keep your garden close to the house and to an easy water source. The more you see the garden, the more likely you will be to attend to it, and to enjoy the daily happenings you might otherwise miss. And water location is critical. If you site your garden where you can't easily water and have to drag a 100 foot hose- or worse, buckets of water-  it's more likely the garden will be neglected. Finally, if you have a choice, surround the garden with some kind of enclosure to protect your plants and provide a microclimate. Below, my second garden was sited next to the garage and surrounded on the other two sides by a fence and a hedge. This kept wind damage down and really warmed up the soil near the garage.

 Lesson 2: Mulch

This one I learned from my first garden as well. I didn't mulch my plants, so it meant lots more watering and weeding. Since then, I have dutifully kept a thick layer of mulch over my plants, even those in containers. For a while, I paid for mulch by purchasing bags of cocoa hulls each year. But we have a dog now, and apparently cocoa hulls can be toxic to dogs. I recently figured out that I don't have to pay for mulch. We use composed rabbit manure (see my Compost page on this blog) as a mulch and it does a fabulous job of keeping weeds down, holding in moisture, and adding nutrients and organic matter to our soil. I also use pine straw from needles collected in the fall to mulch our strawberries and blueberries. That's a great, free mulch for acid loving plants. And several times over the summer, I toss a few large trash bags of fall leaves onto my lawn before I mow. I rake them to a thin layer and shred the leaves while mowing;  the leaf/grass mixture is collected by the bag on my mower. I use that fluffy mixture as mulch. We also use layered newspaper covered with a more attractive mulch (usually rabbit compost) around many of our beds. The newspaper is good for keeping weeds controlled and eventually breaks down and adds organic material to the soil.  I do buy a bale or two of straw each year, mostly because it works so well for garlic, but the rest is free.

Lesson 3: Build raised beds

Another lesson from the first garden was that having the garden flush with the ground created much more work. Weeds creep in more easily as the lawn tries to re-establish itself. And raised beds define paths clearly so it is easier to move around without disturbing the beds. After my first garden, it was another 20 years until I had a property and time to garden seriously. In the meantime, I moved around a lot and gardened out of containers. When I finally got to plan my second garden, I made raised beds a priority and will never do anything else. Although I prefer to enclose my beds with 6 inch tall wood frames, several of my beds are simply raised by piling the soil 6 or more inches. That's less tidy looking but gives me more flexibility in case I want to move the bed. When making raised beds, be sure your paths are not too narrow. One mistake I made in my second garden was using only 1 foot wide paths. This made getting around with the wheelbarrow difficult, so our new garden has mostly 2 foot wide paths, although we made the area in front of the compost bins 3 feet since the wheelbarrow spends a lot of time there.  Below, 7 raised  framed beds are down the center of the garden.

Lesson 4: Feed your soil

In the above picture, the bed in the foreground was topped with a few inches of composted rabbit manure in preparation for planting. This will break down over the season and provide lots of nutrition for the soil, which will feed our plants. We use mainly compost to fortify our soil, but also use small doses of organic fertilizer and rock phosphate. Good soil makes a profound difference in the health of the plants, allowing them to be grown intensively and to defend themselves better against pests and diseases.

Lesson 5: Be patient

This is the latest lesson and a good reminder that there is still a lot to learn. This year, I grew onions from seeds for the first time. I have planted onion sets with success around St. Patrick's Day for many years, so thought I would be safe planting my seedlings out March 29. But I ignored the weather forecast, and we had two nights in the 20's the week after I planted them. Most withered away and died. The plants were hardened off, but another week of patience on my part would likely have saved them. On the other hand, the parsley and lettuce that were planted at the same time seemed to die but bounced back and are now fine. Next year, I'll pay more attention to temperatures and not just the planting dates in the gardening books. In addition, I try to get as much information as I can from local growers, who have a better sense than the garden books of the conditions and timing for planting.