Daily Joy: Home-growing

• Prepare

  • Keep a binder or gardening journal. You’ll be glad you did!

  • Research your growing zone. What vegetables grow best in your area. Find out everything there is to know about each plant. Make notes.

  • Map it out. I literally use my creativity, color pencils, ruler in hand, and draw out my vision. I do this every year.

  • Winter time is the best time to prep! December is the best time to purchase your seeds. Don’t try to prep the week before you plan to break ground on your garden.

• Expectations

  • Don’t expect your first garden to sustain your household. This is your practice garden. You will have some wins, but likely many losses. Don’t let the losses keep you back. Make notes of what went wrong, and look forward to correcting your mistakes next year.

• Start small

  • Starting small will save you SO MUCH money and time.

  • Do only one sowing the first year. If you try to do a second, third, or even fourth sowing, which is the winter garden, you will get overwhelmed very quickly. Add additional sowing seasons each year and scale back some years if you need to avoid burnout. My goal is one sowing and if I have the time and energy for more, and have fair conditions, I will sow a summer and sometimes a fall garden. But I’ve found my limit to be 2 sowings. I close my garden up in the fall like most.

  • Create a small space to practice. A 20 x 20 is perfect. Pick a few easy vegetables to start. Do buckets instead of pretty raised-bed planters and perfect trellises. Add those things on as you expand each year.

• Location matters

  • I don’t know how many fellow gardeners have told me they have had to move their entire food garden after realizing they chose the wrong location to plant. One friend told me she had to move hers because she had planted on their home’s septic system. Another planted hers near her house, which is preferred if possible, but she had to move it further away where the plants could get more sunlight.

  • Although, I prefer our garden to be closer to our property, we chose to plant further out because it was the area that got the most morning sun. Our garden is also strategically located at the edge of our property where water runs down and collects.

• Grow what you will eat

  • Don’t grow the purple beans if your family doesn’t eat the purple beans. The prettiness of the vegetables will not be worth it.

  • Plant about 3-4 of your family’s favorite vegetables your first year. For every 20 feet you expand, add 3-4 more. In our 80 foot garden, we plant an average of a dozen vegetables and a handful of herbs growing at once. Your first year, you will only grow a small amount of each. As you become more experienced with each plant, you can increase the amount of each vegetable.

• Grow for your climate

  • When we lived in Mississippi, I could grow almost year ‘round. It was warm, with almost daily afternoon showers. Plants like tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and okra grew like crazy. Here in eastern North Carolina, where the weather is much more fickle, and the climate a bit drier, I’ve had to adjust the way I garden entirely.

  • Learn all about your zone. When you figure out what grows best, grow more of that!

• Companion planting

  • I’ve just started my hand at companion planting just this year. Well, I should say, my garden seems to have a mind of its own this year. It seems like the plants are growing in locations I don’t recall planting them there. There is a lush watermelon vine growing smack in the middle of the walkway far from where I planted melons. Next to it, a tomato plant and several lettuces that escaped their confines. Sunflowers and random peppers I hadn’t planted this year are popping up amongst the corn. My neat little Type-A rows have rebelled. Not only am I letting them, I am taking their lead. I planted the second sowing mid-June. Sprinkling seeds all over the place like a mad woman. It will be quite amusing to see how it works out. Finding out what likes to grow where. Too fun!

• Walk with Him

  • Have faith, sister. Don’t get too stressed out. If you do, it won’t be any fun. And it really ought to be joyful don’t you think?

  • If it’s not joyful, maybe gardening isn’t your gift? (Just like sourdough ain’t my gift.) Or maybe you just need to scale back. (Yeast bread is much more my speed.)

  • It’s His garden. Give Him all the glory. Praise Him before you even sow your first seed. I play worship music. I sing and dance and throw my hands up in the air and sweat and toil and weep and pray aloud and commune with my Father. My husband, my children, and even my neighbors across the way are used to the crazy woman in the garden.

  • It’s His, sis. If you want joy in the garden. Lasting joy, you know where it can only be found…

~Casey

Coming Soon…