The Secret to Gardening Success

I am all for jumping right into gardening and making mistakes because you will learn from them. I’m also against perfectionism in gardening because while improving productivity is helpful, too much fine tuning, especially in the beginning, can quickly lead to burnout. It’s better to accomplish something doing a cruddy job but maintain momentum to keep going than to lose stamina and quit after just 1 year.

Perfectionism = Burnout

I saw it at the community garden. My first year there, the most beautifully impressive plot was a labor intensive set up of a heavily mulched “Back to Eden” style garden with metal pole trellises and self watering wicking buckets. What I did not expect is that this plot was actually less productive than other plots. The plants were not as lush as seen in some other plots, did not produce as much food, and had more bug problems. After 1 year, the gardeners gave up. However, the family who took over that plot the following year had phenomenal success. They didn’t even do anything special, no labor intensive prep this time around. That thick layer of mulch was tilled into the ground by the community garden administration, thus producing fertile soil since now that mulch had composted. The new family arrived and planted seeds directly in that dirt, then watered and weeded adequately. Boom = food!

Note: The previous family skipped the extremely important step of a layer of compost first, then add mulch. I saw that rookie mistake in another plot this year. Those were the most piddly tomato plants in the whole place despite the most gorgeous trellis set up and impressive mulch covering. I was honestly looking forward to seeing his beautiful set up overrun with bounteous produce, but after seeing the results I quickly surmised he forgot that crucial first step – compost.

I would say ALWAYS start with fresh compost when starting a new garden, and I do recommend that, but there are exceptions. Another plot was left to grow wild for a year. That plot was allowed to let nature take its course renewing the nutrients of the soil and restoring the healthy microbes and natural essential insects such as earthworms. Then it was tilled and the new gardeners were able to successfully grow well despite planting directly in the dirt because some of the former plant life was tilled into the soil which is essentially green compost. Their only crop that suffered was their corn, it never got tall and didn’t produce much, if anything edible. But everything was successful. Or successful enough. Our plants were larger and more productive, but we had added fresh compost to our plot 2 spring seasons in a row and had been burying our kitchen scraps for a year. And we did not till, we opted for no-dig gardening at that point. Compost makes all the difference.

The Secret to Success is…

Compost!

The secret to thriving plants is to build up healthy nutrient rich soil.