Tips to Build a Thriving Garden
Many struggle to build a thriving garden, or don’t yield much despite lots of effort. Here are a few concepts from my experience that may help you with your garden.
A Garden is an ecosystem.
A garden can’t exist in isolation. if you plant your favorite crop, you’re basically starting a free supermarket for the insects, animals, and other critters in your yard. You need to plant a variety of things, flowers, herbs, and vegetables - this encourages beneficial and predatory insects (as well as pollinators) to your garden and will naturally reduce pest pressure on your prized vegetables. Strongly scented herbs and flowers also “confuse” pests so they can’t easily target your crops using scent. The simple addition of wildflowers, Dill, and Borage have exponentially increased the amount of bumble bees in my gardens - which in turn has increased my yields (due to more pollination and more successful pollination) and the attraction of parasitic wasps (targeting tomato hornworms) and ladybugs and lacewings.
Gardens aren’t always pretty
Trying to make your garden Instagram worthy will fail. You’ll be sacrificing functionality and productivity for aesthetic. Your tomatoes are going to sprawl everywhere, and if they do, you’ll get more tomatoes. You’ll have crowded plants that turn your garden into a jungle - which can work in your favor - it keeps soil covered, retaining the moisture, keeping it cooler, and reducing weed growth. Now of course you’ll want to trim dead/diseased branches, remove rotting veg, and maintain, but think of maintaining the garden for functionality, not how it looks to others.
Building your soil is vital
Native soil is generally very nutrient rich (unless you live in a newer home where they scraped the top soil away to level the lot). But sometimes even native topsoil needs amendment for aeration. Tennessee soil is notorious for being clay like and dense - and depending on where you live - full of rocks. Starting a new garden I use the layering method - I start with one till (yes this does hurt the soil biome a but but its essential to break up clay and dense soil and also dislodge rocks so you can remove them). Then I completely cover the garden with grass clippings, dead leaves, and any compost I have - then I till that in once more to mix it in. After that, it’s just layering grass clippings, compost, and dead leaves in the fall. Over time it all decomposes into the most nutrient rich and loose, aerated soil - perfect for growing. If you cover your garden with dead leaves in the fall you’ll be weeding much less in the spring, and you’ll have a ton of new earthworms helping to enrich the soil.
Mulch is your best friend
Mulch is a game changer in a garden. Much can be anything that covers the soil - leaves, grass clippings, even piles of dead weeds you’ve pulled - basically any organic matter. Mulch helps retain soil moisture so you can water less, and maintains cooler soil temperatures to keep the plants from getting heat stressed. It also blocks weed growth (although not perfectly until you’ve built up a good base). It will break down over time and feed the soil. I’d stay away from dyed wood chips or plastic weed barriers because you don’t want the chemicals leeching into your soil (and therefore food).
Gardening requires daily involvement
A garden is a job. Bugs, critters, fungus- they all want to enjoy your garden too - so you have to be present in order to fend them off. Picking off squash bugs or tomato hornworms, trimming diseased leaves, general weeeding, and pruning - this all needs to become a daily habit - otherwise your garden will become overrun. If you don’t have a lot of time, start small. A couple of raised beds, or even containers. Anything is better than nothing. And when you get into a routine, you’ll realize you can handle a lot more than you thought.
