Jan 15, 2021 | Articles
Spring planting will soon be at hand…no, really it will!! You want to grow so many
things…lettuce, and tomatoes, and cucumbers, and beans, and peas, and broccoli, and peppers,
and onions, and kale, and parsley. Oh yeah, PEAS! Must have peas! How will you fit that in your
8’x3’ BCG bed? Will your tomatoes take over and shadow out everything else? Will your lettuce
be calling for help from under the zucchini? Could be.
Enter Square Foot Gardening! This system was developed for maximizing your productivity in a
small raised garden. At its very basic level it is a system that divides your bed into 1’x1’ squares
(for a total of 24 in your 8’x3’ bed) and assigns a number of plants per square foot to each
different crop plant you want to plant. It helps to know just how much you can put in a small
garden so as not to overcrowd it so here are the guidelines for each plant:
Keep these guidelines in mind when you are planning what you want to grow so that you get
the most out of your garden this year. There are good resources on the internet for learning
more about square foot gardening, such as https://gardenerspath.com/how-to/design/guide-to-square-foot-gardening/.
Looking forward to a productive garden year!
Mar 5, 2020 | Articles
Leaving your garden clean-up for spring?
So lately, I’ve been thinking about why my garden habits, and therefore my garden, have drastically changed over the past three decades. As with anything one sets out to do, a learning curve reveals itself; you can choose to resist or follow this curve. I chose to follow every time because, as it turns out, nature knows what she’s doing.
One of the biggest shifts happened at the beginning of a winter where I found myself not able to clean out the garden prior to the first heavy snow. “Well, there’s one less chore I need to do this week. Too late, missed my window.” My mind ranted at my inefficiency as it also struggled to let go of the guilt and shame of not accomplishing a seemingly important garden task, a task I was convinced mattered. Silly mind…
As the season progressed I noticed a wider variety, a larger number, of birds hanging around my yard. They would flutter in from bushes and rest in the higher branches of trees surrounding my chaotic snowbound garden space, casing the scene before diving down onto a dead seed head, tiny taloned claws grasping the stem as their small, sharp beaks quickly picked apart the plant material in search of the sustenance needed to survive these long, cold New England winters. It was then, in those moments of observation I realized how much I had gotten wrong about cleaning and organizing my garden in the autumn.
Daily I would trudge across my yard to see what other serendipitous things were happening amongst all the leaf litter and lifeless weeds, the way frosty ice crystals danced along every exposed edge, seemingly frozen chrysalis clinging to broken branches or hidden under dense blankets of oak leaves waiting for the first hint of warmth to awaken their metamorphosis, other larvae tucked in dark corners also waiting patiently for the spark of sun to trigger their feeding frenzy. A fanciful, sometimes magical, kingdom was thriving all because I didn’t rip and tear into the beds, shaking them down, tidying them up, making them look organized, neat, perfect…perfectly sterile.
Later that winter I decided to research why we even clean out our garden beds before winter. I learned those who have gardened for decades will leave the clean-up for spring because it shelters the eggs, cocoons, larvae of many beneficial insects (a good jump start at pest control), feeds the birds during times of scarcity, reduces soil erosion, adds nutrients to the soil (feeding all those helpful microbes) and – for me – the best part was the beauty held in the mess, the discovery of a whole, healthy, symbiotic microcosm preparing for the onslaught of Spring.
Wendy Johnson,
Gardener, Herbalist, Massage Therapist
