Dream big, plan small
Do it well but don’t try to do it all
It is important to balance the time spent gardening with its benefits.
I recommend that beginner gardeners focus on a small garden and a small number of things so that you have a few great successes, not several low achievements.
Our summer weather is too precious to be wracked with guilt about things not done the mowing is bad enough. The garden can be such a heartbreak if it pleads for some attention every time you walk out the door.
If you just have a deck (or can borrow a neighbour’s), then why not try a few tomato plants (give them, at the very least, two gallons each of soil in their pot). Place them where you’ll remember to water them.
Patio planters can produce greens, herbs, along with a few flowers.
In the garden, carrots, beets, beans, and Swiss chard are pretty dependable. Lettuce and greens are always winners, doing better in the cooler weather. Tomatoes can sometimes be fussy, but always worth my while. Corn or tall staked-up plants along the north edge make a nice privacy barrier.
When I plan, I include the things I love to have in the summer, and a few things that can last into the winter.
Our late spring brings the welcome early summer lettuce and spinach. If you want really early arrivals, you can consider getting an asparagus patch over time, and ‘the rhubarb patch’ is an old-time favourite.
For mid-summer, beans, carrots and beets are pretty dependable. String beans can ripen and have to be picked right when you’re busy enjoying summer, so it helps to plant just a quarter of your seeds every two weeks so that they won’t be ready all at once. This is good for greens and peas as well.
Broccoli, Swiss chard and bok choi grow very late into the fall. I love turnip and parsnip for the colder months (parsnips are sweeter if left in the ground until spring).
I don’t have a lot of luck with squash, zucchini and cucumbers but I am just going to keep working and feeding the soil until I get it right (English cucumbers are one of my new favourites).
Winter storage: I usually blanch and freeze some string beans when they come. Tomatoes are another easy crop to store, frozen whole or cooked up and bottled or frozen. Dill pickles and salsa are two of my favourite ways to preserve. Squash and potatoes are always good stand-bys.
I also love to have a couple of on-the-spot grazing foods in the garden, or by the door when I do an evening garden tour. My two favourites take up little space, but require staking up (or a fence to climb on). Even though tying them up is a nuisance, they are so tasty that they are worth the hassle. ‘Sweet million’ cherry tomatoes produce a lot, once they get going. My other favourite is ‘Sugar Snap’ peas. They are picked when the pods are fat.
“When I plan, I include the things I love to have in the summer, and a few things that can last into the winter.”
When you break off the stem and peel away the string that runs the length of the pod, they’re eaten pod-and-all. Yummmm.
Maybe I do it all for just those little moments in the garden, taking a days-end stroll in the cool evening and stopping to snack on a treat. I sometimes think that those moments bring me back thousands of years to my hunter/gatherer ancestors - I’m sure that they’d appreciate that moment just as much as me.