Saturday, March 8, 2014

Garden Ambivalence

We're starting to see signs of spring here in the Mile High city.


This morning I was awakened around sun-up by the thumping sound of six inches of spring snow melting and falling off of my big tree onto the roof. It's nearly melted now, and some of the weather reports are predicting a high of 70 degrees tomorrow! Yes!!!


All over the yard spring is starting to show her face.

Green grass is poking up between the snow:



So is the iris:



The chives are starting to come up:



As are the tulips:



And the green onions:



But here's the thing. Normally this time of year I'd be rearin' to go with the garden. But for some reason, this year I'm feeling decidedly "meh" about the whole idea.



The past 2-3 years have been such a bust in terms of gardening. First there was the hail,



then the record heat,



then the floods...



and don't even get me started about the invasion of the aphids...



the leaf miners..



 and pill bugs...



I dunno, it's just starting to feel like it's not as rewarding as it used to be.


It seems like pretty much everything I've planted recently has either been decimated by insects, wilted by heat, plagued with disease or pummeled by hail. What crops I've gotten have tended to be bug infested, and not terribly appetizing.


But it's a new year, right? Maybe I'll have better luck. It's not like gardening has ever really been a "goal oriented" pursuit for me in the first place. It's mostly an excuse to enjoy spending time outside.

But maybe that's part of it. Since cycling has become such a big part of my life I seem to get my outdoor "fix" by biking myself into the ground. So when I take a day off from riding I'm feeling much more like relaxing than spending the day shoveling manure.


Well, I guess I'll have to just wait and see how I feel about it all as time moves forward. I did gather some seed heads from last year's marigolds and sprinkled them around on Sputty's grave and other spots in the yard that could use some color.

To tell the truth I actually feel more motivated to plant flowers this year than veggies. Maybe I should just go with that feeling and try to expand the front yard xeriscape a bit.



So tell me, do you ever get discouraged about gardening? How do you decide how much effort is or isn't worth it in that department?


36 comments :

  1. Why not grow flowers you can eat? Nasturtiums - flowers in a salad, can eat leaves too. Zucchini flowers - male flowers will never amount to anything so what not remove while young and fresh, stuff and cook. Many others that are both attractive and edible so just go for it.

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    1. Now that's an idea I hadn't considered. I actually haven't managed to kill a zucchini plant yet. How do you tell the male from female flowers? I think with the other stuff I'd have to do a bunch of research before I'd feel comfortable eating anything exotic... just to make I wasn't gonna have an anaphylactic reaction (which I'm prone to if I eat the wrong thing.) I did actually try to grow some nasturtium last year, but alas, they all died on me. I think they might require more water than I have energy to provide...

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  2. My friend Jim is a talented gardener (I link to his blog from mine). I always thought of him as someone who could grow anything -- and he's given up veggies too. He says "I'm a gardener, not a farmer." Well said, don't you think?

    We'll be having a lot of marigolds this year too -- I got tons of seeds from this past year and I'm going to use them!

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    1. Ha! Gardening vs. farming... actually that's a great way to look at it. Like maybe it's not a choice between a huge garden and nothing... perhaps I could just do a few tomato & zucchini plants and call it a garden!

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  3. I can relate totally to this feeling. I have tried so many vegetable crops and methods over the years with mediocre results at best. I have read many books and talked to experts without gaining much insight. It's all very frustrating. I too would rather plant flowers although I usually end up with a tomato plant or two and herbs each year. The idea of growing your food is very romantic, but the reality is not.

    Whatever you want to do is okay. It's taken me a while to come to that conclusion because I grew up in an area where everyone grew much of their food. I felt lazy not doing it. But I have learned that I have to what's best for me.

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    1. Yeah... I'm thinking I might lean towards "garden light" this season. And maybe instead of feeling like I have to start everything from seed, it would be OK to buy a few plants at the nursery. That's actually a very appealing idea.

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  4. I have only ever successfully grown salad leaves and a few tomatoes...oh, and some of the 'thrive on neglect' herbs like thyme and rosemary! This is mostly because my method has been plant...water...ignore...maybe water again.
    This year I have been feeling much more inspired (perhaps I have stolen your gardening mojo?!) and have already planted peas. This enthusiasm was aided by a sudden burst of sunshine and warmth, which is supposed to stick around for at least another week. I too am considering more flowers this year in the borders, and am planning to turf over a section of garden which is not very productive so that I have some lawn to sit on that is not ruined by chickens!
    I think I have taken some of the pressure off myself to make the garden productive, as I have put my name down for an allotment- this is much more likely to be successful in terms of food production, especially as my dad will help me- his allotment kept us in veg for a lot of last year!

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    1. Hmmm... "thrive on neglect" sounds about like it! I will certainly have oregano, because I planted some about 15 years ago and it's taken over an entire plot of the garden! I guess our climate is suited to it because I've actually found it coming up in the cracks in the driveway!

      What's an "allotment"? Is that like signing up for a CSA farm?

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    2. I'm not sure what a CSA farm is...an allotment is a piece of land rented (at a very low rent) from the local council...you can use it it grow whatever you want, but a lot of people use them to grow veg .

      Wikipedia says that 'allotment' equals 'community garden': http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening)

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    3. OK, I get it - totally different from a CSA.

      CSA stands for "community supported agriculture". CSA farms work by selling "shares" rather than selling produce per se. So basically you buy a share for xyz dollars for the season, then every week you get a box full of whatever produce is ripening at the moment. You generally make out WAY better than you would if you bought all the stuff individually, but of course, you do take some of the risk too if the crops fail.

      It works well for the farmers because they have a guaranteed amount of money coming in, and they get the money up-front to help cover their costs. Joining one is a REALLY good way to learn how to cook with whatever you have on hand - though it can be a bit of a baptism by fire! I used to belong to one, but gave it up when I started gardening, plus... because of my allergies I found that about half of what was in my box was on my no-no list, so it wasn't such a good deal for me personally.

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    4. Ahh I see, sounds like a good idea- also cuts out the effort of growing stuff yourself!

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    5. Yup. If it weren't for the allergies I'd be tempted to try going that route again.

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  5. I like the new spring background! :)

    I've only been gardening for about 6 years and I took a year off during that time. What I grew that year was all random volunteers that planted and took care of themselves (which came out to be a few flowers, a pumpkin vine that never flowered, and weeds. It was nice to take a summer off. :) I also like the "garden light" idea - buy a few plants and call it a day.

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    1. Glad you like the background! I was feeling the need to push the season a bit!

      Well... I do seem to have a knack for growing pumpkins. Even on years that I don't plant any I seem to get a bumper crop of volunteers. The thing is... 2-3 pie pumpkins per season is just about all I can eat before it starts to feel like choking them down. But I suppose I could always donate them to a food bank or grow big ones and give them to the neighborhood kids for jack-o-lanterns.

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  6. I definitely understand your ambivalence. We'll have a big garden as always, but that's really the hubster's domain, more than mine (at the moment).

    Maybe you need to take a year off, or a least make it a "garden-lite" year, and you'll feel more inspired next year. Or even just take a season off and plant a fall garden?

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    1. Hmmm... a fall garden. I've not had much luck with that in the past because fall is such a crazy season here. It's equally likely that it will be in the 90's or snowing!

      Actually, now that I think about it, our climate is certainly one of the factors that makes gardening a challenge - and a BIG committment. From June until the monsoons arrive (usually early August) you pretty much have to water daily just to keep the plants alive. But I have tended to plant pretty densely in the past. Maybe if I did fewer plants, spread them out a bit more and mulched heavily I could get away with less frequent watering. Hmm....

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    2. Matthew and I ended up both responding to your garden question over on my blog, by the way :)

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    3. Thanks for letting me know! :-)

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  7. The beauty of being married to a gardener is ... I don't have to be one! I plant flowers in pots/hangers in the spring, water them faithfully for a few weeks, get bored, and my husband ends up caring for them by August. That being said, if it was just me, I would do the "garden light" version of gardening. If you're motivated to have a huge garden so you can put up food for the winter, that's great, but there is merit to having a few choice foods around for fresh eating in the summer. Or maybe you could start to frequent a farm market, get to know some of the vendors, and learn who has the best deals--that way you're getting fresh produce for what is hopefully a good price and are relieved of the work of gardening. Melissa has a good idea with planting a fall garden, too.

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    1. Oh, how I wish there was a farmer's market closer to me. Apparently it's a "trendy" phenomenon, so they tend to put them out in the suburbs, and certainly not here in the barrio. Sigh. There is a little produce stand that I've been meaning to check out though. I'm pretty sure it's stuff that the owners bring up from a family farm in Mexico - not sure that exactly counts as "local" though! :-)

      I think you've helped me nail down another part of it that I sorta don't want to deal with this year and that's putting stuff up - or freezing it, which is what I generally do. It just usually ends up being chaos. Everything tends to get harvested in a panic just before the first hard freeze, and then it's like several weeks of really hard work to get it all dealt with before it goes bad. Oy! I have to admit it was kinda nice when the tomatoes bombed last year and I was freed from the task of spending hour after hour blanching, peeling and stewing.

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    2. Sorry, I forgot that I live in an agricultural area and not everyone does. I grew up in an area with tons of farm stands and that was always fun--buying sweet corn that's been picked a few hours previously is a taste delight.

      For me, the "putting up" is overwhelming. Everything comes ripe at once and you have to immediately drop everything and deal with it. It IS nice to know that you are putting up non-chemicaled food (I coined a new term!) but it's a ton.of.work.

      Enough gardening talk. Celtic Women is on PBS and I wanna watch it! :)

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    3. I totally agree - it's nice to know EXACTLY what's in and on your food, but it's not exactly a stress-free activity!

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  8. We've dramatically reduced our vegetable plot over the past few years (as we approach totally empty nest time) and planted shrubs that need little attention. I still grow tomatoes and cucumbers, courgettes (yes, I'm English) and runner beans. Years of pigeons eating all the peas, an unknown creature attacking the sweetcorn (a rat?!!) and rabbits eating just about everything else, have helped me to decide that a few summer veg is the way to go. A garden is a place for chilling with a glass of wine as far as I am concerned :)

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    1. Oooo.... chilling with a glass of wine. Now that's something I can wrap my brain around!

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  9. If you're feeling, "What's the point?" how about trying to answer that question. What is the point of gardening for you? If it's just a reason to get outside, and cycling's doing that for you now, then there really is no point, so don't bother! If you fancy growing a few flowers, then grow a few flowers (for edible flowers, I recommend tulips, if they're not going to kill you. The petals are substantial as well as tasty).

    I've only been gardening seriously for three years: The first year I threw myself into it wholeheartedly; the second year was so wet and cold that I gave up completely; the third year I pushed myself to do a bit, just so that giving up didn't become the norm, and I think each decision was right for the year. This year I'm back wanting to garden wholeheartedly, but I'm glad I took a break when I did because disappointing veg are so demoralizing when you've put so much work into growing them.

    This is a longwinded way of saying, "Do whatever you feel like."

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    1. Ha! Now that is a fantastic idea... figure out what the actual point is! I'm thinking that I'm gonna focus on growing a few things that generally taste better home grown - like maybe I'll do cherry tomatoes to eat fresh instead of the plum variety that are designed for cooking with. It's also nice to be able to run out and grab some fresh herbs to cook with, so maybe I'll do some basil, and scallions.

      But I'm really thinking that it just doesn't make sense to kill myself trying to produce stuff that's cheap to buy at the local grocery store - especially when my home grown varieties taste so much worse than the commercial ones (like cucumbers, which always turn out bitter when I grow them.)

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  10. I like to buy one shrub each year and keep the previous year's one alive. When I moved in to my current house, I learned what the plants and shrubs were in the hopes of them surviving my lack of gardening skills. My goal over the next few years is to replace more of the lawn with garden beds, and plant them with shrubs and perennials. Otherwise my gardening is mostly weeding, trimming and lawn mowing, so I refer to it as "yard work."

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    1. Perennials! Now that's the way to go. I think that's why I'm leaning toward putting my energy into the xeriscape out front because it's largely perennials and it feels like when I work on it I actually make progress whereas with the vegetables it's like starting from scratch every year.

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  11. I live in an apartment, and every spring I have gardening and canning fantasies. It seems so healthy and frugal, and I need more of both. But then I remember the vegetable gardens I grew up with. The results were sometimes very satisfying (tomatoes! acorn squash!), but also were often very meager relative to the work involved. The squirrels got the strawberries every year - but we kept trying. Sometimes we got corn, sometimes we didn't. We always planted flowers with the veggies, because certain flowers discourage pests. Maybe plant marigolds and stick a few tomato plants in with them.

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    1. I should do some reading about companion planting. For some reason I've never had any luck getting the marigolds to sprout anywhere near my veggies - not sure what that's all about! Maybe I should start them inside or something. Of course, it could also be because I tend to plant things fairly close together so they might not get enough sun... but maybe this year I'll do it differently.

      Your acorn squash comment made me chuckle. CatMan LOVES acorn squash, so every year I dutifully try to grow it, and every year it tanks. A few years ago I had a ridiculous bumper crop of over 30 volunteer squashes (sqashi?). But the acorn squash that I tried REALLY hard to grow produced only one tiny squash about the size of my fist. I guess mother nature has her own ideas about what I should be growing!

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  12. I've been discouraged about gardening my entire life, so I just avoid it altogether. :) I figure it's good to try to stick to your goals, if gardening is something that's important to you. But if it's just for enjoyment and you're not feeling it, then what's the point? Life's a short thing -- do what you like. :)

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    1. So true! I think I've decided to stick with just planting a few things that are easy and enjoyable and let go of the idea of trying to produce a significant percentage of my own food.

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  13. I gave up my garden plot this year. Just not feasible. Sadness.

    But your gardening adventures sound more like biblical tales. I mean, wowza!

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    1. It's such a big commitment - and all I have to do is trundle outside my back door, I know I wouldn't have it in me if I actually had to get myself to the garden plot first!

      I did get excited about snap peas though and stuck some seeds in the ground - they're generally pretty easy because they're done by the time the hot dry weather hits, so it's not the daily watering chore. You know... big return, little investment. Hmm... perhaps that's the way to look at this issue - just stick with the easy stuff that I really enjoy eating!

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  14. Cat, I'm just the opposite. Every failure I have in the garden is another excuse for me to try to do better. I have always loved a good challenge. ;-) This year I am trying to take into account the possibility of a really rainy season ( predicted by the farmers almanac) and the need for proper beds for drought years. It's a challenge I plan to come out the winner on.

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    1. Well, I have no doubt that you will figure it out. I'm actually feeling a bit better about it now... I gave myself permission to only do as much as I feel like, and as soon as I took the pressure off, it started to feel a bit more fun again.

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