Is it spring yet?

Every year in the fall I think to myself, there is nothing more beautiful than this. And then I take my words back as soon as the first seed catalog comes in the mail in late January. Even the mere idea of spring, so vital in getting through these gray months of late winter, is a thing of great beauty and a powerful medicine for my winter-weary soul. I love my cozy home and my winter evenings just as much as anyone, but really, I’m hibernating. You will not see me come alive again until spring comes.

Because spring means lots of green, later sunsets, chirping peepers, and GARDENS.

This will be our second season with our garden. Last April Anthony and I turned part of the brushy area behind the house into our first garden together, even before we were married, where we did harvest a good amount of produce and learned some important lessons. We battled with thistles, lost some vegetables to bugs, and grew way too many cucumbers and not nearly enough of other things.

But we gave ourselves grace, because it was our first season, and we were pretty preoccupied anyway with planning a wedding.

Our first step in planning the garden was to kill the brush that currently covered the ground. Anthony laid sheets of OSB board in March to suppress the weeds, and then when it warmed up we used a tiller to loosen the soil before planting.

I grew up tilling gardens, but this is not our long-term plan for this space, nor for our future garden on our own land someday. The benefits of no-till is a really interesting topic that you can learn more about here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rPPUmStKQ4 or there are tons and tons of articles online to tell you about it. Anthony has done more research than I, but the premise is built around preserving the microbiome of the soil. When it doesn’t get disturbed by constant tillage, the soil is healthier, and it follows that your plants will be healthier. Along with that, bare soil is never ideal, so in a no-till model you always want to keep your soil covered in wood chips or leaves or some kind of organic matter.

No-till also decreases your weed pressure, because the weed seeds are not repeatedly stirred up and brought to the surface, so that’s something I’m really looking forward to. However, the weeds we dealt with last year were primarily thistles, which are underground runners. As far as I know there is no way to get rid of those besides pulling them constantly or treating with chemicals, and we don’t want to eat chemicals.

In the fall we tilled one last time, then covered our garden with a thick layer of leaves, which has had all winter to break down into the soil. Our plan for battle against the thistles is to cover the edges of the garden with either a landscape fabric or more OSB board, so maybe the thistles will get choked out without sunlight.

Right now I have garlic wintering out there, and every now and then I’ll go out and brush away the leaves to finger the soil underneath. It is loose and beautiful. I’m so excited to see how things go this spring!

One cold afternoon this week, I took inventory of what seeds I have left over. I am going to try and use up some things I have from 2021 and even 2020, just to try and get the most out of them. Your germination rate generally goes down the older your seeds are, but in the interest of saving money and hassle I’m just going to go for it and see what happens.

I still have:

• buttercup squash
• butternut squash
• cabbage
• spinach
• golden beets
• cilantro
• celery
• cucumbers
• basil
• sage
• rosemary

Plus some mysterious pumpkin-looking seeds in a plastic bag that I can’t identify, but I will plant them anyway. Also something that looks like beets — same thing, it’s going in the ground and we’ll be surprised.

The main things I want to focus on this summer in the garden are root vegetables and squash, since I’ll still be on the GAPS protocol for a while and I want to have a good stash of these things.

Potatoes are too high in starch to be allowed on GAPS, but I do have some potato cuttings that I will plant. The stars of the show will be carrots, beets, onions, zucchini (which usually has no problem with stardom), yellow squash and a LOT of winter squash. Our winter squash last year did absolutely nothing, I think because it was so dry and it was in another plot so I never watered it often, so I will have to take extra care that doesn’t get neglected this year.

And let’s not forget flowers! Even with all the weeds we dealt with last summer, our garden was still beautiful because of the flowers. I have a huge bag of wildflower mix leftover and some other annuals to give it a lot of color. I am feeling warm and happy just thinking about it now.

If you’ve been around here for a little while, you know how much I love living seasonally. With a heritage in farming, I can’t very well look at the world any other way. Each season has its own tasks, some of which are expressly for preparing for the next season. Winter is for resting, planning, learning, and getting ready for spring and summer’s faster pace, longer days, and for many people, more arduous work.

Are you already planning your garden? What will you grow this year?