More than any other preparation, I believe what you have between your ears will be most important.
For many of us, there is a feeling that things will not be so comfortable soon, to put it mildly. I feel like I am being drawn into gaining as much knowledge about certain things, almost like I don't have much choice in the matter.
So, while most of us can afford the luxery of failed crops in the garden, let's begin to taking learning seriously. We have that luxury now, and the knowledge will not only help ourselves but as we pass it down it will benefit all future generations.
Here are the "laws of the garden":
Save Seed- Above all else, every gardener should save at least several varieties of seed from year to year. If you need to start with something easy like peas, and that's all you do, that is perfectly fine. But plan on learning more until you are saving the majority of your seed.
This allows varieties to adapt to your location, over the generations, until your variety is the best it can be for your garden. They will outperform seed of the same variety grown in a different climate.
This will also preserve genetic diversity in our food (especially when saving rare varieties). With 96-98% of all commercial vegetable varieties having gone extinct in the last 100 years, will help ensure the survival of not just ourselves, but humans in general.
Plant many types of each variety- You will not truly know what variety of squash, for instance, works best for your location unless you grow out a number of different types at the same time. I am constantly amazed that some rare variety outperforms the standard variety that everyone else uses.
Plant the same variety in many locations- I want to learn the most from my plants, so I need to provide a way to do that. If I grow my peas in one area, that only tells me how they grew in that particular soil/micro-climate/watering schedule/etc. But if I grow my peas in a little section in the greenhouse, another in the outside garden, another in some containers, some crowded in a deep bed and some more where they'll get neglected....now that will tell me something about those peas. I will definately know a lot more about how to grow them.
Watch what you weed- Don't go crazy weeding until you know what your weeding. If I don't recognize a weed, I let at least one grow to maturity so that I can identify it. A lot of the weeds in my garden are edible. By deciding that I want to learn more about what naturally grows in my climate/location (i.e. the weeds), I'm also learning about foraging.
An example of this is Lamb's Quarter, a weed that I started pulling until I found out that it was edible. After a little research I discovered that Lambs Quarter was part of the pre-historic Eastern Agricultural Complex. It was domesticated as a pseudo cereal similar to quinoa (it's in the same family as amaranth), for its broccoli like flowering shoots and as a leafy vegetable similar to spinach and chard. Not bad for a weed I was about to toss without a second thought. Now it is allowed to take over certain nooks and cranny's of the garden. The same is true for a lot of "weeds" that I may be happy to have around as a hardy food supply.
Eliminate herbicides/pesticides-to truly learn from the garden, it needs to be done with organic methods. Having pests in a garden can be seen as a bad thing and some people may dump chemicals to make a dead zone. But, I don't think we learn enough from that. I want to know which varieties have a resistance to the pests (that's why we grow multiple types at once). Those chemicals also kill beneficial life. You want your garden full of life and diversity which will make it healthier in the long run. Who knows, we may not have these pesticides forever. If we baby our plants now, what happens when their protection is gone? Or when pests develop a resistance to the pesticides? I want to know that I'm breeding for the strongest plants I can, with the most natural resistance.
Document everything- I have a little black notebook that enters the garden with me all the time. Dates of plantings, transplants, blooms, harvests, etc. are essential. I map the garden as a back-up to the name tags in the garden. Soil conditions, weather, any info on breeding projects Im working on, info on bugs or weeds, etc. Basically you need to document as much as possible. I also take a camera to document what everything looks like on certain dates.
Pay Attention- This should go without saying, but it is so easy to go through the motions without actually noticing what is going on in your garden. I take a loupe (magnifier) in my pocket whenever I go into the garden. I can see the stamen and pistol better in the flower when pollinating, I can see what pests are really doing (are they sucking or munching or just hanging out), I can see how disease effects vegitation, etc.
I'm sure there is a lot more that I could mention and a lot of this is probably a no brainer for some of you. Above all, it comes down to deciding that you really want to learn. Once you do that, the doors are flung wide open....the knowledge is there for you to take.
For many of us, there is a feeling that things will not be so comfortable soon, to put it mildly. I feel like I am being drawn into gaining as much knowledge about certain things, almost like I don't have much choice in the matter.
So, while most of us can afford the luxery of failed crops in the garden, let's begin to taking learning seriously. We have that luxury now, and the knowledge will not only help ourselves but as we pass it down it will benefit all future generations.
Here are the "laws of the garden":
Save Seed- Above all else, every gardener should save at least several varieties of seed from year to year. If you need to start with something easy like peas, and that's all you do, that is perfectly fine. But plan on learning more until you are saving the majority of your seed.
This allows varieties to adapt to your location, over the generations, until your variety is the best it can be for your garden. They will outperform seed of the same variety grown in a different climate.
This will also preserve genetic diversity in our food (especially when saving rare varieties). With 96-98% of all commercial vegetable varieties having gone extinct in the last 100 years, will help ensure the survival of not just ourselves, but humans in general.
Plant many types of each variety- You will not truly know what variety of squash, for instance, works best for your location unless you grow out a number of different types at the same time. I am constantly amazed that some rare variety outperforms the standard variety that everyone else uses.
Plant the same variety in many locations- I want to learn the most from my plants, so I need to provide a way to do that. If I grow my peas in one area, that only tells me how they grew in that particular soil/micro-climate/watering schedule/etc. But if I grow my peas in a little section in the greenhouse, another in the outside garden, another in some containers, some crowded in a deep bed and some more where they'll get neglected....now that will tell me something about those peas. I will definately know a lot more about how to grow them.
Watch what you weed- Don't go crazy weeding until you know what your weeding. If I don't recognize a weed, I let at least one grow to maturity so that I can identify it. A lot of the weeds in my garden are edible. By deciding that I want to learn more about what naturally grows in my climate/location (i.e. the weeds), I'm also learning about foraging.
An example of this is Lamb's Quarter, a weed that I started pulling until I found out that it was edible. After a little research I discovered that Lambs Quarter was part of the pre-historic Eastern Agricultural Complex. It was domesticated as a pseudo cereal similar to quinoa (it's in the same family as amaranth), for its broccoli like flowering shoots and as a leafy vegetable similar to spinach and chard. Not bad for a weed I was about to toss without a second thought. Now it is allowed to take over certain nooks and cranny's of the garden. The same is true for a lot of "weeds" that I may be happy to have around as a hardy food supply.
Eliminate herbicides/pesticides-to truly learn from the garden, it needs to be done with organic methods. Having pests in a garden can be seen as a bad thing and some people may dump chemicals to make a dead zone. But, I don't think we learn enough from that. I want to know which varieties have a resistance to the pests (that's why we grow multiple types at once). Those chemicals also kill beneficial life. You want your garden full of life and diversity which will make it healthier in the long run. Who knows, we may not have these pesticides forever. If we baby our plants now, what happens when their protection is gone? Or when pests develop a resistance to the pesticides? I want to know that I'm breeding for the strongest plants I can, with the most natural resistance.
Document everything- I have a little black notebook that enters the garden with me all the time. Dates of plantings, transplants, blooms, harvests, etc. are essential. I map the garden as a back-up to the name tags in the garden. Soil conditions, weather, any info on breeding projects Im working on, info on bugs or weeds, etc. Basically you need to document as much as possible. I also take a camera to document what everything looks like on certain dates.
Pay Attention- This should go without saying, but it is so easy to go through the motions without actually noticing what is going on in your garden. I take a loupe (magnifier) in my pocket whenever I go into the garden. I can see the stamen and pistol better in the flower when pollinating, I can see what pests are really doing (are they sucking or munching or just hanging out), I can see how disease effects vegitation, etc.
I'm sure there is a lot more that I could mention and a lot of this is probably a no brainer for some of you. Above all, it comes down to deciding that you really want to learn. Once you do that, the doors are flung wide open....the knowledge is there for you to take.