What to Grow

            Now that we’ve identified your reason for gardening and what kind of garden you will set up, it’s time to discuss what you will grow in your garden. There are many articles on the internet that talk about things like what plants do best together in terms of nutrients taken from and returned to the soil. Maybe I’ll write a similar article at some point but this article is going to focus on the other factors at play in deciding what to grow. Aside from what plants do well together from a nutrients point of view, your primary deciding factors are – what you enjoy eating, how much fresh produce you plan to eat, the space in your garden, and plant height.

            First and foremost, be honest with yourself about what you enjoy eating. There is nothing worse in gardening then going to the effort of going through all the work to build a garden and grow crops – only for them to start rotting in the produce drawer of your refrigerator. Don’t use this as an experiment or forcing function to get yourself to eat things you don’t like. If you want to turn over a new leaf with produce you don’t like, buy some frozen vegetables or fruit from the store. You can cook them at your leisure without worrying about your hard work being wasted by spoilage. The produce you get to eat is the reward for all the hard work you put into it. Awards you don’t enjoy aren’t much of an award. Additionally, from my experience, I believe your body’s systems function best when it’s relaxed. Controlled stress is important to break your body down so it can rebuild stronger. Relaxation is important for building/rebuilding after that controlled stress is over. Eating is part of this phase. You want your hard-earned produce to have maximum effect in rebuilding your body. If your inducing stress by forcing yourself to eat things you don’t like because you grew it – I don’t believe you’ll receive the maximum benefit.

            Second, you need to be honest about how much fresh produce you will eat. Again, it is a bad gardening experience to put in the work only to have produce spoil in your refrigerator or on the plant. If you are going to eat the fresh produce three to four times a week, you really only need to plant two plants of each type of produce you want to grow. Actually, you only need one plant in most cases but I recommend two just in case one of them doesn’t come up. Any more than this and you also need to plan to can, dry, or flash freeze what you don’t eat fresh. All of these require a fairly considerable addition to cost, time, and space required. It’s worth it because you can eat from your garden all year but you need to be aware of all that goes into it ahead of time. Storing food from your garden may not be worth it to you.

            Third, depending on what type of garden you chose to build – space is a limiting factor. You can get an idea of how many plants you have space for by taking the length and width of your garden and breaking it down into square plots of 12 inches. Most produce requires 12 inches between that plant and any other plants around it. This will just give you an idea – some plants may require as much as 24 inches and some as little as 6 inches. I recommend making a list of produce you want to grow in rank order. When you start planting, go down the list in order following the directions for each type and when you run out of room, save any you weren’t able to plant for the next year.  On this note, do not experiment with distance between plants. I’ve wasted a lot of time and gotten sub optimal results by placing plants closer together than what the instructions stated. Just follow the instructions for spacing. Better to have fewer healthy plants producing at maximum capability then more unhealthy plants producing sub optimally.

            Last but not least, make sure you research how tall the produce you plant is likely to get and do not plant taller growing produce in front of shorter growing produce. This isn’t as much of an issue if your garden plot is in a location where all sides get sun at different times of the day. However, if your garden plot is located where the produce only gets sunlight from certain directions, this will make or break your garden. It’s very simple, if taller plants are in front of shorter plants, the taller plants will get the majority of the sunlight. The shorter plants will either die or be sickly. They also might lower the health of the taller plants because the shorter plants will grow in the direction of the sun – often into the area where your taller plants are growing. This crowds the taller plants which can lead to low air circulation which further leads to a host of other issues. Unless your garden plot gets sufficient sun light from all directions, make sure you plant your taller plants at the very back.

            Follow this advice and planting and growing will go quite well. Like most things in life being honest with yourself, prioritizing what is important to you, and making sure everything in your circle receives proper nurturing yields the greatest results. It’s truly fascinating how many parallels there are to gardening well and living well. Enjoy!

–  The Old Man