Things I have learned from my garden this year:
1. Procrastination will get you nothing – well, nothing but a garden full of weeds. I learned this lesson two weeks ago, when I finally got around to weeding my garden, and had approximately 800 square feet of waist-high weeds to pull before I could rototill and plant. Waiting gets you nothing but heartache (and callouses and backaches), my friends. Believe me.
2. Last year’s kitchen scraps make this year’s black gold. In other words, waste nothing – toss those kitchen scraps (no dairy or meat products, of course) in a pile in your backyard, add in some grass clippings and lawn rakings (and use some chicken wire and wooden stakes to make a 3′x3′ enclosure around it so it doesn’t get all over the place), ignore it, and in about a year you’ll have some delicious compost to mix into your garden. Well, delicious to your plants anyway. They have weird tastes.
3. There’s no such thing as “wasted space” to Mother Nature. Example: We have a wood stove. Wood stoves need to vent. We have ours vented (by necessity) over my perennial garden. Ergo, there’s an approximately 1′x1′ spot in my garden that gets creosote dripped on it every winter. I’ve killed a few plants attempting to keep a perennial alive in that spot; this year, I realized I can just scrape that spot out in the spring, plant some pretty annuals, and when the wood stove does its thing in the wintertime, I don’t have to worry.
4. There’s no fighting Mother Nature. I have a (several) bad habit(s) when it comes to gardening; Chief among them is thinking I can somehow get away with “bending” the laws of nature/planthood. For example, when the plant tag says that wormwood will get approximately 3′x3′ at maturity? BELIEVE THE TAG. Otherwise you, like me, will be doomed to a spring of digging up and moving that damn wormwood – as well as all those other plants that are now crowding each other out. (A corollary to this rule is, Mother Nature doesn’t lie. “Full shade” means “full shade” – or if you ignore it, “burned plants”.)
5. Take the time out to enjoy all your hard work. I have a friend who, for years, has been talking about planning a garden party in the quite-impressive gardens behind her suburban home. It’s been about 5 years now; still no party because she’s too busy planting, mulching, digging up, transplanting dividing, mulching again, etc. etc. You get the idea. Take the time to enjoy the fruits (literally!) of your labor, or else why even bother?
P.S. If you’d like to check out pictures of my weeded/rototilled/planted garden, they’re at Simple Meal Plan)
Are you planting a garden this year? Let us know how it’s going – we’d love to hear about it in the comments!
