Raise Your Garden

Musings on the Seedier Side

in Garden Tips

17 things I wish I knew about produce & gardening sooner….

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I grew up working on a produce farm. At 14-years-old, I picked corn, tomatoes, broccoli, peppers blueberries and strawberries all summer long starting at 7 a.m. I practiced irrigation techniques. I planted crops and drove a tractor. It was fun. But we used a lot of pesticides. Personally, I had a high exposure to pesticides and chemicals. Not good. Then I went to college. Got married. Bought a house. Had a few kids. Now I choose to grow organic produce with zero chemicals in my three humongous raised beds. I’ve learned a ton over the years and bet you have too. The longer you do anything, the more insights you get. This is what I’ve learned over the 20 years I’ve been at it.

1.) Feed what feeds you

Would you stir a little Miracle-Gro or Roundup in your morning tea and drink it up? Of course not. You’d be essentially ingesting poison. Then why would you spray your plants that you eat from with it? Those chemicals enter the plants, the soil and ultimately in the food you eat. Chemicals make their way to your body causing you harm.

Instead of spraying harmful chemicals try feeding your plants and soil with worm casings. Truly, they work like magic. You should see how big my plants, both flowers and veggies are this year. Give other organic amendments a whirl. Yes, even fish heads. Make your own compost. But please don’t use chemicals because you are eating those chemicals  Feed what feeds you with natural and organic amendments.

2.) Start small

Don’t jump on some grandiose gardening bandwagon and say that you’re going to grow every single thing you eat from now to forever. How about just a few pots the first year? A tomato in a container with a few herbs. See how it goes. Strive for a little more each year as your confidence grows alongside your plants. Go too big and you’ll be overwhelmed and quit…just like that New Year’s Day diet!

3.) Weed the garden

Weeding is a chore. Annoying. But weeds are competing with your plants for nutrients. Give your plants every opportunity to thrive. Yank those weeds so the nutrients in the soil can feed those hungry crops. You can also smother those weeds with cardboard to save you time and energy.

4.) Don’t try to be a grocery store – grow what you love to eat! 

Don’t grow everything you see in the grocery store just because it seems fun. Grow what you love. Grow what you actually eat. I don’t like green peppers. Never have. The kids don’t eat them either. So why bother growing them? When you grow what you won’t eat, you are wasting space. (Not to mention time and energy).  Plant crops that you know will be enjoyed. Now peas and cherry tomatoes, can’t get enough of those! 

5.) Know where your food comes from

When I was teaching high school I took a little informal poll. The results shocked me. Most of my students could not tell me from what animal a ham came from. I’m not kidding. And this wasn’t some bad school in the bad part of town. These kids are almost all college bound. Yikes.

We’d do well to know where our food comes from and be educated. You need to know whether your food has been sprayed with pesticides and what country of origin it came from. Did it grow locally or travel from halfway around the world? It makes a difference.

6.) Grow when you can

I live in the Northeast. I can’t grow year-round. So during the off-season I must buy my produce from the grocery store. But during the summer and fall, I can and will grow my own. My goal is to grow 30% of the food I eat this year. What’s yours?

You don’t have to be perfect. Just try your best at getting your hands on the best food possible. Case in point. Taste a grocery store cherry tomato and compare it to a fresh cherry tomato from your garden. The first tastes like bland water with a hint of tomato. The second…..candy from nectar. Aside from taste, just imagine the difference in nutritional value!

7.) Ask if it’s organic. Ask where it was grown.

Don’t assume if you buy from the local roadside stand or farmer’s market that the produce has been grown organically. The homeowner may have used chemicals. The farmer pesticides. Most Amish use pesticides freely. Don’t hesitate to ask! You have the right to know.

When I worked on a small, local farm I remember spraying the plants with chemicals as part of the morning routine. The farmer told me that just one drop of the stuff would wipe out a whole village! Great. And one day while buying produce at a local stand in the country, I asked where the tomatoes came from. Answer: California. Not what I thought I was buying.

8.) Dry your excess herbs

You know how pricey those store-bought herbs are. Not to mention lackluster in taste. The time is now to trim back your basil, oregano, thyme and rosemary to dry for the winter months. Better taste. Better for you. So dry in small batches and save for that rainy day.

9.) Freeze and can any surplus

To help you utilize and make the most of your crops, freeze and can your surplus. I confess, at times canning can be a pain but the longevity pays off. But freezing? It’s easy. As a crop, celery is sprayed with tons of pesticides. One of the worst offenders.

And this might surprise you, but celery freezes well. I grow as much as I can, use some fresh and chop up the rest for later. Then I freeze it in Ziploc bags for the off-season to use in chicken noodle soup and chili. It comes out great! Same for my homemade tomato sauce. It’s superb. I also chop up tomatoes with basil, oregano and garlic and freeze bags of it for wintertime.

10.) Why not create an edible landscape?

An up-and-coming project for Tom and I is creating a more edible landscape. Sure, we frequent U-pick farms but those blueberries, strawberries and raspberries are sprayed with lots of chemicals. Yuck. So we are contemplating pulling out our somewhat ugly front boxwood bushes and replacing them with….roll drum please….blueberries bushes.

And why not? Blueberry bushes are gorgeous year-round. More appealing to the eye than a boxwood which smells like urine. Besides, you can’t eat a boxwood. Blueberries bushes will be novel but why not? The curb appeal is still there. And instead of planting ornamental grasses, why not plant millet or barley which look just as nice and you can harvest and eat?

11.) If it kills the bugs….it also kills you

I’m holding a spray bottle of the product Seven that I inherited when I bought my Grandmother’s house. It says right on the bottle that it kills over 100 insect pests. I believe them. I also believe that if it kills the bugs it harms you! Heck, I don’t like Japanese beetles either. But I could just leave buckets of water around for them to drown in instead of spraying chemicals.

Then I’ve read to dump this green-tinged water back on the plants to ward away future Japanese beetles. Apparently, the Japanese beetles don’t like the smell of their own kind dead on the plants and stay away. Go figure. You can also try my homemade eggshell bug repellent or just use beneficial insects to drive away the bad ones!

12.) Do a soil test

For many years, I planted numerous crops, crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The problem is that certain plants prefer acidic soil while others like alkaline. The only way to know which plants are most likely to thrive in your soil is to test that soil. If your garden is made up of plants unlikely to thrive, you’re more prone to just quitting. After all, failure doesn’t exactly encourage us to continue with any goal. So plant what suits your soil for success. 

13.) Gardening teaches patience & perseverance

No matter what your age, gardening instills wonderful character traits. Let’s say you want to make a homemade chunky tomato sauce. Well, you’ll need tomatoes obviously with fresh basil and oregano, some garlic and maybe even throw in a bit of zucchini. Then you want a side salad to go with it including cucumbers, peppers and carrots. Growing all this will take time. But there’s a season for all things, especially if you want to bear fruit. You’ll have to wait and that’s good.

14.) Compost to minimize waste

Did you know that 25% of landfills is filled with yard waste that could have been composted? Your garden would have loved those nutrients that just went in the trash. In fact, at this years block party, one neighbor was lamenting the fact that she just threw all her kitchen scraps in the garbage. Why not just create a compost pile in your yard instead? 

And guilty is charged. I just started getting serious about composting the last few years and have been reaping abundant benefits ever since. For one, it feeds our worms in our worm tubes. Secondly, when it breaks down in our composter it creates the most nutrient-dense compost material that is dumped right back into the soil. And yes, we used to purchase compost so this practice is saving us money. 

15.) Grow to save money

My aim is to grow 30% of my own food. And this doesn’t include the produce I can snag cheaply at the local roadside stand. Our grocery bills plummet this time of year. Good thing too because Tom’s a teacher and we have zero income in the summertime. I first got into veggie gardening seriously as a way to save money. It’s true, our raised beds were costly along with the soil. But now that’s all paid for, our garden is a money tree. We’re eating healthier and cheaper than ever. 

Ever buy organic salad? Right. Pretty much a mortgage payment. But salad is heavily sprayed and you want organic. Growing our own saves us $35 a week from June to September. Not a bad investment. And that’s just one crop!

16.) When all else fails…join a CSA or find a community garden

Maybe you live in a high-rise apartment building where you can only grow one tomato and a few herbs. But hey, you’re doing your best. That’s all you can do! Maybe you can join a CSA and get your produce that way. Boy choy? Radishes? Leeks? CSA’s are a great way to try new foods. Maybe you live in a city with community gardens you can join. How about your school? Any yard there to get something started? You won’t know unless you try. Besides, you’d be surprised what you can grow with a few pots indoors. 

17.) Food connects you to the Creator

I love growing my own food in part because it reminds me of the Creator who makes such a wonderful spectrum of nutritious and delicious food. He lovingly provides for His children. If He wanted us to drink pop and eat cheese ball puffs, he would have made a cheese ball puff tree. But this I do not see.

So when I’m working in my garden, I have time to contemplate, time to pray….not to mention time to think about my blog! So fill your soul while stuffing yourself full of cherry tomatoes.

What has your garden taught you?

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“And he who waters will be watered himself.”
• Proverbs 11:25 •