Trial and Error

Gardening is a lot like cooking. It's really trial and error.

Just as I learned to be patient and let meat brown before turning it, searing in juices and developing flavour; just as I learned to salt boiling water, to season food, scramble eggs low and slow, and roast at high heat (nothing less than 400), I will learn, through practice, how to garden.

As gardening season accounts for less than half the year in Ontario, and as it takes weeks (months!) for plants to fully grow, bloom, fruit and go to seed, I imagine it will take years before I am wise in the ways of the garden. Here are some things I have learned in just two seasons:

It is very important to dead head - that is, it is very important to cut back perennials that have reached the end of their season (their flowers have died). Unless you're happy to watch your plants spread to unwanted places or to find, the following year, their dried out remains strangling the year's new plant I suggest you dead head. So many people told me this was an important element. I was too lazy last year to get around to it. The garden is no place for lazy. I'm paying for it this year.

Along the same lines, if you'd like to be able to use your herbs (and I'm assuming this applies to other plants) throughout the year, don't let them go to seed - that is, cut back the hardier stems which eventually grow flowers. The flowers are beautiful, and this seems to be a good time to harvest. You get a beautiful bouquet and herbs to use fresh or for drying.

If a book, wise friend, magazine or the little tag that comes with the seedling tells you to plant in full sun, partial shade, well draining soil, without too much fertilizer, anything - if that little tag tells you anything - do what it says. Apparently people who write books and articles or sell plants know what they are talking about. This really applies when it comes to spacing, or thinning out, your plants. I believe I have successfully avoided the tangled mess of tomatoes, basil, sage, oregano and thyme I got myself into last year.

You can move plants - it's not so traumatic after all. Move something if it isn't thriving where you've planted it. Just do so carefully. Make sure you remove the entire root system, including the soil it's settled in, and dig a hole deep enough to cover the roots but not the leaves. My herb garden is proof positive that even the most novice gardener can accomplish this daunting task.

Roland and I are learning so much so fast by doing. It's a good thing that we are both enjoying ourselves; we have a lot more learning to do.