It’s a gray wintry day and as I gaze out the back window at the my dormant vegetable garden, I can’t help but dream about what I’m going to plant come springtime. The seed catalog on the kitchen table is opened to the tomato page. Every tomato in every photo looks juicy, globe-shaped, and a flawless shade of red, and I find myself wondering if I should maybe look more seriously into starting some heirloom varieties this year? The different varieties of peas look interesting too, maybe I should try a bush variety this year? The west quarter of the garden is getting less sunlight lately thanks to the neighbor’s maple tree, perhaps I should focus on planting lettuce, spinach or some other shade tolerant plants there? We’ve already run out of the green beans I froze from this summer, seems like I should maybe allocate more space for bush beans this year too…
And so it goes. It may be blasphemous for me to admit this, but I may actually enjoy the anticipation of the garden season more than growing season itself! Once the seeds are in the earth rains can flood the beds, droughts strike, insects descend upon the cucumbers, or fusarium wilt the tomatoes. In the garden of the mind, however, the plants grow tall and the harvests are always abundant; pretty much like the seed catalog pictures. I may grow no garden masterpiece this year, but the blank canvas has already achieved lofty heights.
Am I the only one who suffers from this affliction?
I vow not to let my veggie garden get overgrown with weeds this year. Even if it means cutting back on the size. Every year I start out strong but I lose momentum, something interrupts my gardening efforts some time in the summer and my interest in maintaining it wanes (or rather, I feel hopeless about maintaining the garden a certain point).
Oh yes, the plot in my mind is amazing. It’s frequently far more satisfying than the slug-filled pigeon-pecked reality.
I usually spend at least a few weeks rummaging through my ludicrous seed stash, searching through catalogues and websites of obscure seed suppliers, drawing out plans and writing lists. Then I actually get a few weeks into planting season, realise I forgot to allocate room to something, plonk it in somewhere else, completely mess up the whole system and spend the rest of the year just chucking anything in anywhere.
My daughter looooooves to flip through seed catalogues almost as much as I do. We put in our order with Jung’s two weeks ago, and have already received the seeds (along with two promotional packets–Bachelor’s Buttons and musk melon). The asparagus crowns and rhubarb plants will arrive in early March, they say. Unfortunately they are unable to ship trees, shrubs, and vines to Washington, so we didn’t buy gooseberries or currants. Phooey.
This whole garden is contingent on my husband repairing our rototiller so he can plow up a planting bed, of course. And, um, well. We’ll see if that happens.
We moved our gardening from the side yard to pots and planters on the deck 2 years ago. No weeding or trimming, targeted watering and all the tomatoes, peppers (several varieties of sweet and hot), lettuces, greens and herbs we can handle. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to “feral” gardening. In fact, this winter I’ll probably build some large, permanent raised bed planters on the deck.
Drip lines (watering - the key to plants - someone once asked why my plants looked so nice and then laughed when I said I watered them. This was office plants but same idea.)
Decide what you’re gonna do, dream big, make sketches, look and pictures, and then, and then… and then only plant tomatoes. And maybe strawberries. C’mon, what are you really going to eat? Well, that’s my family. They’ll eat all of those two things, and maybe I can get carrots this year (maybe). Somehow, nothing else matters. The broccoli is beautiful and goes to seed. The artichokes, same story. Lettuce, you’d think we’d eat it. We buy bags of the stuff. Nope. Tomatoes and strawberries. Concentrate on those two, and you’ll be happy.
I go with heirloom on the tomatoes. They taste better. We do a mix of cherry in different sizes and colors, and the same with the larger ones. I also try and get distribution on the growth season, to get the most tomatoes I can. Same with the strawberries (well, in terms of choosing varieties to get the longest growth season).
I exaggerated a tad. We do have some blueberries along one fence, and black berries along another, but they don’t really need much work. Just pruning.
There you go. My advice. Dream big, and just plant what you’ll really use.
I love gardening catalogs though. They’re so pretty. I fold down the pages, and I circle things. Sigh.