How to plan
I threw away the old calendar. Good riddance! Time to plan the best garden year ever in the history of ever, so I should set aside a moment to cogitate. You and I probably plan differently, and that’s a good thing because gardens are different… yours might look like House Beautiful and mine is often a mess regardless of my planning. Nevertheless, here are different planning experiences.
Brenda Songbird Moonrise grows mainly tomatoes and peppers… and basil and marigolds and cosmos… and echinacea and hyssop for the butterflies… and basil… and beans and cucumbers and lots of lettuce. She gardens 50 miles north of San Francisco where nasturtiums grow all year because the climate is usually mild. She gardens in a clearing in a forest, and her soil is naturally friable and fertile (good for her!), and she never digs deep, just adds to her beds a colorful assemblage of nearby leaves of many kinds. For long-term soil health, she sprinkles on dolomite and greensand twice a year.
Her garden plan involves planting only small patches of bush beans in open corners once a month as long as the weather will allow, plus a few radishes or lettuces here and there occasionally. On her north-south trellis, she coordinates early and mid-summer plantings of beans and cucumbers. Regarding what and where to plant, she mostly follows ideas and clues she gets while gardening. Gardens know best, so pay attention.
Russell Dusty Caldwell has a backyard garden on the western edge of El Dorado, Arkansas. Last summer was hot and humid, and he grew 53 okra plants. “That should get me through the winter,” he said. He also tended to 40 indeterminate tomato plants – half Beefsteak and half Brandywine. “That should get me through the winter,” he remarked. Caldwell sneaked in a few marigolds and bush beans, but that’s all.
Caldwell’s plan is simple: during winter haul in chicken litter and horsey from his uncle’s farm, layer it with oak and sweet gum leaves from his neighbors’ yards on his garden beds and then watch Razorback basketball games. He saves seeds every year and keeps them on a closet shelf in the back room.
His primary challenge is deciding where to plant things so nothing grows where it grew last year. He sketches his plans on a notepad which he keeps from year to year, so it takes only a couple minutes to browse through the stack, pick one, turn it sideways and voila! This year’s plan! Then it’s pickled okra and basketball.
Professor Mary Truewell teaches English at a small midwestern university. She is a life-long gardener who has always lived in apartments. She has a southwest-facing deck which is resplendent with vegetables growing sideways and vertically during the growing season which, in her hometown, is limited to a handful of hot, humid months. Her deck was mostly empty during the drastic cold though she rigged up a makeshift heated greenhouse for a few leafy plants.
Though limited in space, Truewell is not limited in imagination. She is a careful reader of plant books, seed catalogs and websites. She keeps notes in workbooks. She has calendar software for planning planting and anticipated harvesting days for everything on her deck. She is her own best resource, and she never stops learning. Best planned garden in Des Moines.
Bob from Brooklyn gardens on his rooftop. Plenty sunshine up there, but windy sometimes. Bob stations short-depth boxes around the roof space to spread the load. He plans for varieties which handle a shallow but fertile depth. Shallow soil requires regular replenishing, and luckily for Bob there is a garden supply store nearby that even serves coffee. Too bad his building doesn’t have an elevator, but gardeners get the job done. Rooftop gardeners share rooftop-grown seeds with other rooftop gardeners.
Everybody’s different, and every gardener has something to offer.