Get Set - Garden
Johnny’s Selected Seeds, my source of choice, has jumped in size this year from a slender pamphlet to a big 200+ plus page tome. No wonder—it’s going to be a bumper year for home gardening. Nothing like a recession and high food costs to push neophytes into hoeing up the back yard.
As a long-time (if rather disorganized gardener), I offer a few tips for beginners:
- Choose the seeds or seedlings you want and then prune the list by half. Gardening is back-breaking work, kids and spouses rarely follow through on promises to help, and investing in plants or seeds you can’t tend can be expensive and frustrating.
- Remember that weather is the biggest factor and you can’t control it. Think about what grows well in New England’s climate. The reason for amusing anecdotes about spending three times as much growing a tomato as buying it is that New England is not Missouri or New Jersey – it doesn’t really have tomato weather. Some years you get lucky; other years, frost beats the harvest or rain washes out your crop. Grow them if you must, but also plan to frequent farmers’ markets where the experts have (usually) figured out how to work around Mother Nature.
- Invest in what you and your family like. Lettuces, radishes, green beans, carrots and summer squashes do grow well, and you can easily keep those crops going for a good part of the summer and into the fall. Many herbs – tarragon, thyme, sage, oregano – are perennials and will come back for years. Blueberries and raspberries are also a good, long-term investment if you have room for the bushes or canes.
- Ask questions at farmers’ markets or farm stands. Farmers are invaluable resources of knowledge, and most are happy to share what they know.
- Plan to be organic, persistent, and eat what you grow. Gardening can be very rewarding, and there’s no reason to grow your own unless they’re the very best you can do.