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3 Ways I’m Setting My Garden Up For Success

This moment in the garden with my son made me realize what true success looks like.

I remember last August I was in the garden with my son I had a moment. I looked down at him in his diaper and bare feet. He was holding out a cherry tomato with a huge grin on his face. I had the overwhelming validation of this is why I’m doing this. My garden was not the pillar of success. Most of the tomato plants got blight, countess peppers suffered from blossom rot, onions grew only to the size of golf ball, and ground squirrels helped themselves to ALL of my lettuce. But I was still able to stand there with my two-year-old son and experience his joy picking the very fruit he ‘helped’ me plant just a few months earlier.

As I prepare for this summer’s garden I’m remembering that is what success looks like for me. So I’m starting my seeds, ordering my compost, and planning where I’ll put my nightshades. But more importantly, I’m getting my heart right, learning from last year’s mistakes, and keeping it simple. These are the things that will make my gardening season a true success regardless of the harvest.

Episode links

Toups and Co has all my favorite natural skincare and make-up. Use code MOTHERINGJOY10 at checkout for 10% off 🙂

The Mother Earth New Garden Planner is tool I use to plan my garden.

THIS is a great article on winter sowing seeds.

HERE is a very helpful video about no dig gardening method

Getting my heart right in the garden

I might be far from living like the homesteading mamas that inspired me when I first became a homemaker. But that’s okay. I’m also a long way from that suburban girl who grew up with almost no connection to where her food came from. I followed my husband to the rolling hills of Wisconsin six years ago. I had a whole new world open up to me. Suddenly, I was envisioning a future filled with big gardens, pantries of saved fruits and vegetables, and children that were nourished with fresh, local and organic food all year long.

There was a problem with this vision though. As I started to close the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be I started connecting my successes and failures in growing and preserving food directly to my successes and failures as a mother and homemaker. This made it all feel so overwhelming and burdensome.

I’m reframing my time spent gardening

This year, I’m reframing my time spent gardening, fermenting, canning and freeze-drying. This is time spent for me and my personal growth not of part of my obligations to be a ‘good’ mom and homemaker. I want to be someone who does these things with ease. I’m growing into a mom who is an example for my kids on how to hold their food as sacred.

It’s a journey. More often than not I get it wrong. But when I get it right my soul swells with pride. I know that mastery of these things is fundamental to the person I want to be. But I need to hold them loosely and remember that it’s all for joy. I want to bring my kids along with me, through the failures, as we build something really special.

Learning from last year’s failures in the garden.

As I sit down to plan my garden this year I realize how much I’ve learned from my past failures. I’m reminded that there’s really no such thing as failure as long as you find the purpose in it. Gardening is a really tangible example of how how failure moves you in another direction. If one way of doing things isn’t working then you adjust until you find the methods for success. There is as much to be gained from failing as there is succeeding. I’m slowing gaining a more robust understanding of the conditions I need to create for my plants to thrive.

Winter sowing seeds.

One of the new things I’m trying is winter sowing my seeds. In the past I’ve started the plants that need longer growing periods inside. Starting seeds indoors has many factors that you need to get right like correct light and watering. It takes a lot of work and I have failed at it multiple times.

This year I’m trying a method of starting seeds that seems much simpler. It’s called winter sowing seeds. This is where you take cool season crops and you actually start them outside in milk jugs. The milk jugs create a mini green house that has all the conditions the plant needs to grow. Plants that work well for this are crops that do well in cooler weather. Examples are chives, cabbage, carrots, leek, lettuce, onions. This will work for almost all the plants in my garden. The only warm weather crops I want to grow are tomatoes and peppers. For those, I will buy plants that have already been started from my favorite farmers.

Abandoning Square Foot Gardening method.

I’ve been doing the Square Foot Gardening method in my garden for the past five years. For most plants this seems to work. I like the idea of planting more in a smaller amount of space. But there are some plants that really grow too large for the square foot method. Tomatoes are one such plant.

The 12″ cages were too flimsy to hold up my tomato plants so they fell over. The plants grew so large that they grew into each other. I didn’t have the space I needed to prune them and keep them healthy. This is why all my tomatoes plants got blight and didn’t do very well. Blight is a very common plant disease that typically comes when fungus from the soil is passed to the plants.

Watering from the ground

I’m setting up a watering system that will be much more efficient and effective than overhead watering. I’m just poking holes into a garden hose and putting it on a timer. There’s really nothing fancy about this and it’s relatively low cost and low labor. One of factors why my tomatoes got blight could have been from watering the plants from the top. This can cause the soil to splash onto the plants which can pass disease from soil to plant. By putting the water on a timer I can further help my plants by ensuring they get consistent watering. Hopefully this year I can avoid blossom rot on my peppers which can come from inconsistent watering.

Keeping it simple in the garden

One big way I’m simplifying the work I’m doing in the garden is asking for help from my husband. This will, no doubt, be super annoying because he naturally has a green thumb that I was not blessed with. But the reality is, with two little kids and a full summer, I need help. So I’m tucking away my pride and accepting that he will just know things that six years of learning the hard way hasn’t taught me. And that’s okay. With him as a partner in the garden we will go much further. It’s so much more enjoyable to have someone to share the wins and loses with. Along with asking for help there are a few other ways I’m simplifying.

Only planting vegetables I know we’ll eat

This year I’ve been super intentional about planning the meals we’re eating. I’ve gone so far as to put the same meals on a small rotation. This has really streamlined meal planning and prep for me. It also lets me know exactly the foods we are eating. This is super helpful information when it comes to choosing what foods I want to grow myself. No longer will I waste garden space and energy growing things like beans and cucumbers. These are super popular plants to grow but I found that my family just wasn’t eating them. So instead, I’m sticking with the humble foods I found we actually eat a lot of. Foods like carrots, potatoes, and onions. (add part about potager garden and salsa garden to podcast)

“No Dig” gardening method

Another new method I’m trying this year is the “No Dig” method. In this method you mulch with cardboard and compost over weeds and then planting directly into compost. It seems pretty straightforward. You just lay cardboard on your grass/weeds, put compost on top of that, and plant into it. In theory the cardboard prevents weeds from growing because they can’t get any light. I’m really excited to try this method!

I’m finding joy in the lessons of the garden

As the sun lights the sky a little earlier each morning and lingers a little longer each evening I feel the stiring inside of me. I feel the anticipation of warm days spent outside in soil planting, pruning, and harvesting. I look forward to trips to the farmer’s market and returning with fresh veggies and beautiful flowers for my table. I can almost taste the fresh salads picked from the lettuce on my deck toped with homemade blueberry vinaigrette.

Although the season is short preserving our harvest lets us bring its joy with us into the colder seasons. I can look forward to warming saved pears and oatmeal over the stove, opening a jar of canned jalapeños, and simmering soup made with vegetables I pulled out of my garden (and the farmer’s market) this summer.

These simple and beautiful ways of celebrating our food and nourishing our bodies require a lot of work. Some days the effort feels great and the reward feels small but it’s an important piece in the life I want for myself and my family. I am putting my hands to something that is so rewarding. I feel it when I pull vibrant peppers, plump tomatoes, and fistfuls of large, crunchy onions out of the ground. And although a large, bountiful harvest is what any gardener strives for it’s equally rewarding to simply share the process with my kids. I might yield a tiny harvest but sharing it with tiny hands finds the joy in the work and the lessons.

I am by no means an expert gardening, I really feel like a beginner even though this is my sixth year having a garden. Please let me know if you like gardening/food preserving episodes.