A Tale of Two Gardens- Part 2

Welcome back! Have you visited our new site, Saving Naturally, where we help you live healthy and spend less?

By popular demand, I decided to run the second part of this post right away. The suggestions are so valuable, and having gardened myself for 3 years now, I can definitely attest to the wisdom in these tips. I know that I've been encouraged and reminded of areas where I could improve my own gardening and make it easier for myself, so thanks Amber!

*******

Guest Post by Amber

Continuing on from Part 1...

#1
– Start small.

Yes,
I know; do I have to spoil the fun? “Start small” is
really hard to remember when you're pouring over seed catalogs in
January! Those 400 feet of corn don't seem so long, and surely you'll
need at least 5 zucchini plants, right? Perhaps if you lived
away from all contact with civilization, or grew vegetables as a
business, you could handle that garden you're dreaming of, but most
of us have other things to do with our lives. We can't spend 4 hours
a day on garden maintenance.

So
be realistic. Of course, if you've never gardened before, it will be
hard to judge what's realistic. For example, unless you've heard from
gardening friends, you won't know any better than to plant those 5
zucchini plants to feed your family of 4. (You'll have zucchini
coming out your ears!) I suggest finding some gardening friends.
They'll warn you about those crops which are more difficult to grow,
and give you a good idea of how much you'll need to plant. It's
always better to get a pleasant experience this year, and increase
your gardening next year, than to be overwhelmed this year and never
garden again.

Container
gardens are also a good way to get a taste of gardening. Go for a pot
with a tomato plant in it (make sure it's deep enough!) or a
rubber-maid tub full of dirt and a crop of bush beans. Here's my tub
of butter crunch lettuce – it fed us April-June of this year: 

There's
nothing like going out and picking your salad five minutes before you
eat it!

#2
– Go Organic

Let
me contradict one very important myth; that organic gardening is the
hardest kind to try. Nothing could be further from the truth. Organic
gardening is a lot like eating healthy. It may require a little more
work in the beginning, but in the end it will save you hours and
hours of time in the doctor's office or on the sidelines when you
could be living a more vibrant life. Organic gardening takes a little
more “oomph” when you're starting out, but eventually it will
save you endless work and frustration.

The
trick to organic, labor-reduced gardening is letting God's nature do
more and more work for you.
You will waste hours and hours of work trying to go against what God
built into a plant naturally

“Feed
your soil, and your soil will feed the plants, and your plants will
feed you.”

You
thought I was going to say something about taking care of the plants,
didn't you? Really, God made the soil to naturally take care of the
plants. Good soil makes plants resistant to disease, bugs, and
drought. If you have good soil, basically all you'll have to take
care of is pruning, tying, and picking, with a little weeding and
watering here and there.

This
concept is probably the most important thing my Dad has taught me
about gardening. Pouring chemicals onto plants will give you sick
soil, and eventually make you more work, but using organic methods to
build up the soil will give you better and better plants each year.
When you can get your brain geared into thinking about soil care
instead of plant care, your work load will decrease like bathtub
water going down the drain. It's so simple it's almost funny!

Good
soil isn't common in my part of the country. We have red clay here!
But you'd never know it, looking at the “brownie mix” in our
beds. That soil was built up over a 20-year period. Surprisingly,
though, most of the change has happened in the last couple years, as
Dad has started focusing more and more on soil improvement instead of
plant care. You can improve your soil too, and you may start seeing
results in as little as one year. There's hope for any
soil!

Don't
just avoid harmful
sprays – learn to feed
your soil beneficial things. Get into the mindset of thinking
of your soil as living. It
should be living; it
should be packed with beneficial organisms that break down organic
matter and help plants absorb nutrients. That topic is much too vast
to get into in this post, but if you'll take the time to research how
to feed your soil, you'll have a garden that practically takes care
of most problems for you.

#3
– Use cover crops.

For
this tip, I'd love to use neon lights and make a big flashing sign
that says “TIMESAVER!” This is the secret to almost eliminating
the hours you spend weeding.

Cover
crops are plants you sow “underneath” your main crop, to add
nutrients to the soil, and to cover up bare soil. Bare soil is
against nature! Have you ever noticed how weeds love to grow in bare
spots? If you leave the space underneath and between your plants
empty, guess what's going to fill in those bare space? That's right;
weeds.

You
don't want that – weeds steal nutrients and look awful. But don't
try to maintain that bare soil; you'll be fighting against the whole
of nature, and will waste a lot of time. Instead, plant something
beneficial there. Crops such as clover, buckwheat, winter rye, and
alfalfa all add
nutrients to the soil, and prevent the weeds from taking over.

Right
now we have a lovely thick carpet of clover about a foot high growing
under our tomato plants. It's soft and pretty, and I can count on one
hand the number of weeds I've had to pull from those beds this year.
When the growing season is over, we'll till the clover into the soil,
and let it compost there.

Mulch
made from grass clippings or leaves also works on the same principle
as cover crops. An added benefit of these is that they are feeding
the soil as they slowly decompose. It's a steady feeding that –
unlike powdered fertilizers – won't be washed away deep into the
soil where plants can't reach it.

#4
– Choose your plants wisely.

Some
plants are just easier to maintain than others. Lettuce is super easy
– just plant it and pick it. Bush beans require little or no
maintenance when they're growing, but they do take a lot of time to
pick. Cucumbers are easy to pick, but they produce best if they're up
on a trellis, and that takes a little time to put together. Tomatoes
are the most popular plant among American home gardeners, and are
known for being heavy yielders, but you'll have to spend some time
tying them to poles, or making cages for them. That can get
time-consuming, especially if you have 8+foot-plants like ours! But
to us it's worth it because of the tremendous yield (and the dropped
jaws of folks who see our plants).

Sit
down and figure out just how much effort you're willing to spend on
your garden, and be sure to match plants accordingly. Looking through
a few gardening books (look for “organic” and “intensive
planting” gardening books) should give you an idea of how much time
you'll have to spend on each kind of plant. Don't plant potatoes if
you don't have time to hill them up, or asparagus if you can't pick
it quickly enough to keep it from going to seed!

#5
– Schedule Time

Don't
just hope you'll get around to gardening when you have a free moment.
Free moments don't happen very often – certainly not often enough
to upkeep a garden! Having a garden is a little bit like buying a
dog; don't just “get” one, then stick it in the backyard kennel
all day. Schedule times to work in the garden, just like
walking the dog or making dinner. Habit makes everything go smoother.

If
you let your garden go for two weeks, and then
try to do all that work in one day, you will have more than you can
handle. You'll become frustrated and wonder why you ever planted a
single seed. If you set aside just thirty minutes – or even ten
minutes – every day, that's probably all the time you'll need to
spend out there, except for when you're planting seeds or picking
produce. Garden maintenance
shouldn't have to take up all your time.

I
like just about everything about gardening but, like most of you, I
don't have all day to spend in the garden – even though I'd enjoy
it. I find that I usually get out there to work every other day, for
20-40 minutes. That's all. It's enough time to turn the compost, pull
a handful of weeds, prune and tie the tomato plants, check to see
what needs to be picked, and do some watering. Some days I don't even
do all that.

Of
course, our garden is a fair size (not in mere physical size, but in
the amount of vegetation contained in it). Many of you could start on
a much smaller scale and only spend 10 minutes a day on upkeep.
Gardening in containers is even simpler. Having easy access to your
plants will encourage you to be consistent in taking care of them.
Keep that in mind if you're selecting a garden space.

#6
– Get the whole family involved.

I
feel like snickering as I write this. I could say this is the whole
secret to our beautiful garden – not cover crops, or raised beds,
or plant selection, but family involvement! If I was the only
one gardening, that place would not look the way it does now.
Many hands truly makes lighter work.

Dad
is definitely the garden manager, and we wouldn't get far without
him. But he has to go to work every morning and, even with all the
free time he spends in the garden, I know the help the rest of us
give is important too. I have a mother and five siblings, and we all
help in the garden in some sort of way. We all spend different
amounts of time out there, because some of us are more passionate
about gardening than others, but everybody does something.

Our
garden is a family thing. Our garden is a relaxed thing – we're not
stressed about everything being perfect. We want it to be
nice, but not at the expense of stressful relationships. Gardening
should be a beautiful thing. I find that being among plants makes me
feel extremely close to the Lord. His hand print is everywhere.

I
think everyone should have the opportunity to garden; it does
something for your soul. If you've taken the first steps, or have
been gardening a long time, I commend you. If you want to garden, but
are nervous about starting, let me encourage you. Get out there and
try it! The world isn't going to fall apart if you fail. And nothing
is really a failure – you're working with living things, and
everything that happens to them will teach you a lesson.

So
give it a try! But be warned...

...You
may fall in love with it.

Which tip most resounds with you? Do any experienced gardeners out there want to second any of Amber's suggestions?

~
Amber is the second oldest in a family with six children, and is
serving the Lord at home through various ministries and
entrepreneurial adventures. Besides gardening, she also enjoys
writing, sewing, cooking, baking, music, and reading, and blogs about
using skills for the Lord at www.fruit-of-her-hands.blogspot.com.

More from Keeper of the Home

• Q & A: The necessity of a low grocery budget
• Q&A- My Grocery Budget
• A Tale of Two Gardens
• Q&A- My Grocery Budget, Part 2