Friday Look-Back: Tend the Garden with Me
Follow Along with What I Did in the Garden This Week
I share my philosophy of becoming a gardener by building the right habits in my little book The Uncomplicated Gardener. I recommend 5 minutes a day of tending rather than 1 hour once a week. In practice, it usually shakes out to my spending 5-10 minutes tending my garden 4-5 days a week.
But practically what does that time-spent look like?
Here’s what I did in those little spurts the week of August 11, 2024.
Pruned off old growth on indeterminate tomatoes so the suckers would keep growing into new fruiting stems, and secured the vines to the trellis. Harvested ripe tomatoes.
Harvested ripe shishito and cayenne peppers. Hung some up to dry for my spice drawer.
Staked recently emerged cucumber vines to the trellis; they sprouted last week after I direct sowed them. [source Heavenly Seed - LOCAL]
Pruned flowering basil (and destroyed some caterpillars who had taken up residence) so they’ll keep making more basil.
Pruned back the oregano and thyme, which were starting to look a little ragged.
Thinned out some arugula sprouts and moved them around for better spacing. Planted more arugula seeds. [source Heavenly Seed - LOCAL]
Planted carrots seeds. [source Baker Creek]
Planted radish seeds. [source Baker Creek]
Deadheaded marigolds so they’ll keep flowering.
Harvested zinnias so they’ll keep flowering.
Harvested lemongrass and made it into wreaths to dry for tea.
Harvested some flopping hydrangeas that were just showing some pink color to dry for fall flower arrangements.
Pruned back all the fried mint that I forgot to water last week. Who knows? Maybe it will survive.
Is this helpful?
My sense is that aspiring gardeners both overestimate and underestimate what it takes to keep a garden thriving:
Assuming it’s a huge, time-consuming chore and then allowing a feeling of dread to build so that they get behind and it actually does become a huge, time-consuming chore.
It’s not unlike when your kids neglect to put the Legos away before moving on to the Hot Wheels, and then on to the Magna-Tiles. By the end it just feels too big and they just stop playing in the playroom. (Is that just my kids?)
Just spending a little time every other day or so works well for me. I’ve built up the intuition to know what to do when I walk out there after dropping my kids off from school.
You will, too, if you stick with it for a while.
In the meantime, let me know if just following along with what I’m doing is helpful! I’m toying with the idea of starting a $5/mo paid subscription and sharing a post like this (what I did/why I did it/links to more help) every Friday for the people who are really eager to build their gardening muscles.
I’d love your feedback!