It turns out that planning really might be the answer to everything. A few months ago I sat down with Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades and penciled out a detailed plan for my vegetable garden. I’ve always been rather casual about gardening, deciding what to plant a day or so before I tilled the soil, based mostly on whatever whims struck me at the plant store.
At first Solomon’s advice struck me as extraordinarily finicky. But he owned Territorial Seed Company for years, where he dedicated himself to testing seeds, fertilization methods, and crop rotations for the maritime Northwest region. And me? I’ve had varied (read: not much) success with gardening over the years. So I decided to follow the expert’s advice.
Now I understand why some of my past gardens failed so miserably. While drafting my plan, I read about each vegetable I wanted to plant, when and how it should go in the soil, and what conditions would work best for it. It was a lot of work. But having a plan has made the entire process entirely less stressful. I can’t believe I ever planted a garden without one.
After reading Solomon’s book, I also decided to buy all of my seeds from Territorial this year. They’re located just twenty miles away from where I live, so not only am I supporting a local business, but I know that those seeds have been extensively tested to grow well in conditions exactly like those in my backyard.
So I’m hoping this year may be a huge breakthrough year for my vegetable garden, and I’m excited about it. Oddly several years ago, when my husband and I lived in Colorado we grew a wonderfully productive vegetable garden with no plans or research whatsoever in a climate and altitude that’s not quite as conducive to growing food as this one. I think that experience deceived me into thinking that growing vegetables is intuitive. Now I’m more inclined to think our success was first-timer’s luck.
I am already dealing with one challenge. We finally got the run built for our chickens. You can see my husband’s excellent handiwork here. (My mom pointed out that the gigantic advertisement for Coca Cola does not exactly go with the urban homesteading theme. She does have a point, doesn’t she?)
So I’m hoping that the chickens will not annihilate my precious broccoli this year. But there have been a couple of other creatures lurking in the garden, and they’re proving to be more difficult to deter.
How’s your garden growing this spring?
Loved your pictures! and im inpressed with the planning, I hope it works out. i have a small raised be in my back yard, a dustbin ( we live ina two bed terraced house) and i also have a 2 metre sqaure plot ata local garden project… so between all that im hoping for potatoes, carrots, lettuce (which is doing great) red onions and runner beans 🙂
Our garden is wholly haphazard at this exact moment! We had the best of intentions but we recently moved from California to Vermont and we have not a clue how to plant and grow here. Actually, we’ll probably be able to mostly start over this year because we were overly optimistic and the first round of starts we put in were mostly done in by a couple of days of snow that we had in early May. Snow in May? Yeah, the gardening learning curve is going to be extra steep this year!
How very fortunate you are to have a seed company testing seeds and growing plants in your neck of the woods and showing you exactly what works where you live. That’s exactly how the world should be, don’t you think? Informed by anything new under the sun, and tested in our own neighborhoods. I recently joined fouryearsgo.org, and I think Steve Solomon’s work is exemplary of the ways we can save the world from the climate tipping point in four years. I look forward to watching your garden grow and learning with you in the next few months.