365 Days
Gardens can provide so much: space to refresh ourselves, grow food and herbs, be a refuge against the busy world, and a way for us to support the natural world in which we live. 365 Days is a series of short posts to inspire contemplation of our gardens. While many of the date-stamps of posts will reflect Northern hemisphere seasons and some of the gardening typical in USDA zone 8, for Southern hemisphere gardeners, advancing the time-frame six months will provide greater synchronicity. But this is not a blog about how to garden, there are YouTube channels for that kind of thing. Rather it is about how stewardship of the soil can feed both ourselves and the space in which we live.
If it touches a chord in you, please let us know in the comments below each post. We enjoy hearing your thoughts.
365 days is not yet complete. It is, however, being steadily added to. Eventually, like planting a hedge, all 365 days will be represented.
The first of the year comes about a fortnight after midwinter. The time from the Winter Solstice till New Year is a good time for reflection and planning, and discussing the garden with your closest partners.
Ask yourself, what worked in the previous year? What are you eating in your kitchen and what can you do with more of? What seed do I have saved? Which plants should be skipped for a year to starve the pests that eat them?
The practice of thinking ahead about what we will sow is equally valid in our day-to-day lives. Habits can take a season to change. Paying off debt is like developing soil tilth: it must be practiced steadily, consistently, until one day the earthworms are happy and plentiful, and the debt burden is gone. Choosing to save seed from the most productive plants in your garden will, over time, yield well-adapted plants with good harvests.
So, it's a new year, day one. Don't rush, but plan for a productive garden.
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- Written by: Norman Smit
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For many, the start of the year is not an easy transition. Switching from free time to being away at work each day can be difficult. Commuting, working, and commuting can feel like a straitjacket within which our personal goals and needs struggle.
Looking out at the garden in the period before Spring often feels similar. There are those projects we never got to the previous year, the plants that are still in pots, the compost bays still unturned. The year stretches out ahead of us - and yet there doesn't seem to be enough time.
Gardens can thrive tended and untended, as long as there is intention. The patch of unpruned growth can serve as a space for wildlife until the hedges are grown. All a garden needs is for the gardener to show up. And then begin. Rushing will not serve the garden, and it will not feed the soul. Show up and tend the soil, and the soil will tend the gardener.
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Soil, some seeds, light, water, and, life. It can be that easy. But what works with pumpkin seeds may fail miserably with nasturtiums. It’s easy to say that experience is a great teacher, but experience includes the failures from which we learn how. The observation and notes to help us remember what we did in previous seasons.
The goal is not control. Gardening is about experiencing the life we see. Data can make us so focused on our map that we crash into the car in front of us. Reading the instructions from the seed grower will get us started on the journey. But we must each find our own route to growing those seeds. Experience is gained by doing, even if it results in failure.
Learning from failure means asking questions that go beyond process: what can we learn from why we over watered our plants? Do we do other things in excess? Similarly, learning from the things that sprout and thrive can teach us, too. How obsessive are we about the things we grow? Is what we do obsessive or are we creating space for our seedlings to thrive?
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The hard months at the start of the year can blunt our hopes. Our new year's resolutions are challenged by the icy ground, the darkness in the morning, and the fading light early in the afternoon. The days seem too short to sustain the hopes we had over the holidays.
Resilience is having the capacity to survive periods of difficulty. Survival requires hope. To sustain hope, we need a purpose to carry us forward. This is the time of year to pull out our saved seed and our plan of the beds and visualise our garden in full bloom. As we go through our packets of seeds and inventory them, we can remember what grew well and flourished. We can look at the layout of our beds and think about our garden in the year ahead in full colour. We can consider interplanting to attract beneficial predators, and how to feed pollinator birds and butterflies and bees.
As we look at our saved seeds, we live in light and fruit and life.
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Working with nature, gardeners rotate their beds every year, either moving crops to a different bed or skipping a crop for a year. This starves the pests that fed on the plants you grew last season. It gives soil predators time to clear the bed.
Bed rotation - along with growing nitrogen-fixing plants - provides a fallow season for that bed to feed its soil.
Our personal lives need this too. As we trace the same routine day to day and week to week, we are repeat planting in the same beds. Difficulties begin to seem intractable, permanent. Rewards and pleasures become stale. We are ripe for the pests we are feeding, that chew on our willpower, our confidence, our joy at life.
Our lives, like the raised beds in our gardens, need fallow time to replenish our souls.
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Starting seeds under grow lights in the dark of winter for the spring teaches lessons on balance.
With only 24 hours in a day, what we do with our time requires us to choose between this activity and that; between work and rest; between screentime or sleep; between making a scratch-cooked meal or fast food. Because making decisions is stressful, we revert to habits.
“We’ve always done it this way.” We read the instructions. We fill the flat with our usual growing mix. We sprinkle the seeds into the tray. We water copiously.
It is always exciting to see the first greening appear as the seeds germinate. If we water too much, the seedlings drown or are overtaken with mould. If we water too little, the tiny roots are unable to find the sustenance they need and the seedlings die. If we find the right balance, we are rewarded with a tray of greenery – a promise for the coming season.
When it all works, it seems so simple.
Balance.
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Our lives, like the raised beds in our gardens, need fallow time. Without it, we feed the pests that chew on our life, like repeat planting in the same bed, season after season. Fallow time feeds our souls.
Like setting aside a garden bed for a fallow season, we must plan for time in the routines of our lives to be fallow. Fallow time is time away from daily tasks that make up our lives. During fallow time, turn off your phone.
Fallow time need not mean going on holiday. Fallow time can be walking a labyrinth. Sitting in green space and soaking up the colour. Watching the birds and listening to the sound of the wind in the leaves. Stretching and breathing in a quiet space. While you’re lying on the floor and feeling the muscles in your back unknot, listen to the beat of your emotional heart. Don’t let the seeming urgency of everything you must do, intrude. Be mindful at least once, every day.
Fallow time will let you bloom.
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In the deep of winter, when the ground is brown and the trees are brown and what's left of the perennials on the ground are brown, and even the evergreens provide no relief is when gardens provide little comfort for the eyes. Those extended periods of bleakness is when we should visit the space and plan winter colour.
During the spring and summer when the bees and pollinators are active, there is colour and life enough to feed the eyes and our souls when we rest outside. We don't think enough of the bleak months. There are so many plants that look bland in the summer but will call to us in winter. The contrast they provide when the garden is dormant and the cold drags on is the beauty we need to tide us over till a new season. The reds and yellows and blues remind us of beauty in the drabness.
Where are the colours in our lives we planted for the deep of winter?
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We are stewards of our gardens. The things we plant, the practices we use, where we dig, will affect our garden, and our garden will affect the world around it. The tide of history and the forces of climate change may seem inexorable, but even in the desert, oases exist. Gardens with trees are cooler. Rain gardens and water retention features can soak up flooding and slow runoff during flooding. Biochar from deadfall dug into beds can support soil health and retain moisture. Pollinator plants and plants that feed beneficial predators can support biodiversity. Plants that support insects, support birds. Mulch and hugelbeds can even out the swings between too much rain and when it's hot and dry. When we choose to make compost from our own garden, we import no unknown contaminants.
And remember a chair, where you can sit and rest.
We can be stewards only of our own gardens. When the tides are dark, an oasis is both a refuge and a place of rest to the gardener and in itself a practice of self-care.
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As spring approaches with the promise of new growth, I consider my resources. How full are my compost bays? Consolidating what's in the bays allows me to take stock of the organic matter I have. Some will be black gold that will feed my beds. Some will need a little time, yet. If there are any white grubs lurking in the piles, I gather them for the birds. Consolidating the bays makes space for the dead plants left over winter to feed the creatures in the garden. It makes space for the green weeds that will grow when nothing else will. The empty bays create space for the first mowing, as the lawn breaks through the overwinter thatch and dead leaves and awakes from dormancy. These weeds and waste will with time and turning also become black gold.
So much in our lives depends on what's come before. To grow, we must compost those experiences, use them to feed our lives.
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Gardening teaches patience. But it also asks us to act today. Do you want hot peppers? It'll take 72 days, if you start the seeds today. To start the seeds, you'll need compost you sifted. The sifted compost will need baking, killing weed seeds. Then mixing with river sand to improve drainage for tiny roots. Gardening calls for step after step taken days or weeks before we start seeds today, for a harvest that is months away.
If this sounds like drudgery, it can be if we don't look for the magic in the journey. Sifting compost will expose lurking grubs, white against the dark soil, to feed the birds. As we pile a spadeful of compost onto the grate, it whispers to us what our beds will be like when we've amended them.
The many little steps we take today supports the life we are nurturing. In nurturing our garden, we nurture ourselves. Our daily care becomes tomorrow's hot peppers.
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For too many people, the economy, their skills, and financial pressures require them to work too many hours. It can be a little like starting a hedge around your property. There are too many yards to plant and it's too expensive to buy thousands of bushes for the perimeter, so it seems insurmountable.
But starting hundreds of cuttings each year can accomplish the same end. An established plant needing pruning can provide the source material. Change requires of us a new start, building on what came before. As the hundreds of pots transform from sprigs to bushes, and then in season two, to larger plants in larger pots, a hedge becomes possible. Put your finger into the soil of change in your life and find a way to let good change grow.
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Flowers are a big part of Valentine's Day. Whatever you think of the day, every year, millions of spouses head to the shops and buy flowers. A few days later, those flowers droop and shed their petals.
The shelf life of flowers is so short; so often the shelf life of a romance is, too. But for those who have lost a loved one, it is love that endures, while our bodies do not. We look at the changing blossoms with poignancy. In their change, we see the lines in faces, cancer in wards, trembling fingers, injuries. Fresh flowers teach us to remember our loved ones at their best, not in their faded state.
When Valentine's Day comes, be not reminded of the bloom of love but of how little time we have to enjoy it. Let it inspire us to live each moment together to the full. Cherish the day and the time with your loved one. Look at their beauty and enjoy it. Hold their hand. Tomorrow the blossoms will wilt. Our bodies will pass, but love endures.
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In the spring, when we are planning our growing season, try growing one new thing.
If all you grow are vegetables, try growing a herb. Or if all you grow are things you can eat, set aside some space for flowers - there are some with edible leaves. At worst, you may fail. They may not do well. That in itself will teach you something if you examine why. But you may discover a new friend. Something to liven your garden in winter, or a companion plant that attracts beneficial predators.
Trying something new stretches us. It can take us out of our comfort zone. We can learn new skills, techniques, and coping mechanisms. It can make us re-think why we grow the things we do, where we plant the plants we do, and why those spaces. It may lead to taking up bonsai, or planting a perennial that becomes a structural element in our gardens.
Learning to stretch ourselves in the safety of the garden can help us face our fears in other parts of our lives.
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Gardens are a resource. They can provide food and herbs, contributing to our daily fare. But there are times in our lives when things fall apart. We lose our jobs, a loved one becomes ill. At times like these, the scale of those troubles will dwarf the outputs of a little garden. A garden is not a panacea.
But it still remains a resource.
Use your garden as a safe space. Find time to enjoy the beauty it provides. Work in it. Trim a few wayward branches or stems. Deadhead. Moving our body can help anxiety and gardening can be a quiet, whole-body workout. Weed a bed mindfully. As the bed is cleared and your bucket of weeds fills, the process of change you can see can make a difference. When other parts of your life induce anxiety, wrap yourself in the restorative feelings your garden can offer.
Your garden will not solve the difficulties you are facing in your life, but it can make them easier to bear. Let it be the place of care it can be.
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Life is uncertain. So we plan. We plan which plants will go in which beds. Which plants will feed our table and provide colour in the drab of winter to feed our eyes and soul.
Yet, plans exist in the future where people become ill, or we lose our jobs, or violence occurs. They provide little comfort when we wake with fear of what the day may bring.
The only moment over which we have control is now.
Kneeling in the garden to plant small sprouts is an act of faith. When we do it, in that moment, life is certain. It is beautiful. Pressing the soil around the roots is an act of courage, a moment of defiance. When set in the soil that fragile life, we plant a prayer for a tomorrow in which they are thriving. We plant the hope we will be present in a future when they are thriving, and we are, too.
Gardening offers a series of moments that support life. What it takes, is to garden in the now.
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Even during the dormant winter months, plants are alive. By February, the garden can begin looking tatty. Wild onions stick up, green against the dead grass. Weeds thrive while everything else seems to sleep. The pine trees have continued to drop their needles. This is the garden's chance to sit on the couch in its worst tee shirt with its feet up in socks, eating a snack and drinking a beer after a long week of work. Fallow time is important. It gives the soil a chance to regenerate and earthworms time to do their magic.
We all need time for regeneration.
Making the time to be still allows us to be productive when we need to be. It means taking time to sit in the garden and not just work in it. To look across the space and simply enjoy it. To make time to meditate and clear the mind of all those busy thoughts. Rest gives us the foundation we need for when the year begins to warm and the garden calls us to new growth.
Today, let fallow beds lie.
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Water is life to a garden. With wells and city water, many gardeners don't think twice about where it will come from in the dry months. Turning on the tap solves the drought. Until the costs of turning on the tap become too steep.
Gardening calls for more care than that. Our garden is not only ours. We share it with insects and birds, microbes and the soil itself. Gardening calls for harvesting rain in the wet months the same way we harvest cuttings and weeds and compost waste.
Swales and rain gardens feed the earth, capturing water in our garden, giving it time to soak into the soil. Your roof can feed rain storage tanks when there is no rain. Planning for scarcity lets gardens survive the dry spells. Capturing runoff to soak into the soil feeds the earth, and in time, our tables. When gardens around you go quiet after months without rain, yours can be an oasis and refuge.
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We live in a busy age. Our phones, watches, TVs, computers send us chimes and notifications and popups and reminders. We doomscroll on our phones and while we're doing one thing, are told about another. And another, and another.
There is no screen time in the garden. Gardening stops all that, if you have the discipline to leave your devices behind. In the garden, it is possible to plant only one sprout at a time, squeezing the soil aside to make a small space for the roots in their ball of potting soil. It gives us time to smell the soil, feel the breeze, hear the wind in the trees and the conversations of the birds. To spot the tiny weed pushing through the mulch, to pull tomorrow. At this pace, calm returns.
A garden returns us to the speed at which we are meant to live, without distractions, one season at a time, slowly.
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The Spring Equinox is celebrated in almost every culture as a sign of emergence from winter. The ground may still be cold or even covered in snow and there may be still be periods of cold to come, but the days are set to get longer and emerging flowers remind us that renewal is always possible. In the garden, we see daffodils begin to flower, a bright flash of colour against an otherwise drab winter palette. Other perennials may be starting to emerge. In our lives, winter can take many forms - financial loss, death, breaking up with a loved one, addiction, illness, changing difficult habits.
The season of spring shows that no matter how difficult the winter of our lives may be, there is a time to flower again. Spring calls to us, and with the yellow daffodils standing bright, reminds us that when we emerge, our rebirth will be beautiful.
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On social media, people's lives are often perfectly curated. It appears as if everyone gets it right first time.
My garden has seen a lot of failure. These experiences have taught me that very little is as simple as it appears. Good outcomes often take more effort than is apparent, or multiple attempts, season after season. The stepping stones to success are often a series of failures.
And that’s OK. Life is where we live it, not what it appears to be. In the same way as plants root themselves, we must choose to root our lives in the present, in reality, in our yards – not on social media. To live a grounded life is to be open to the possibility of failure.
I’ve killed a lot of plants. But my garden is still beautiful, even when it's unkempt. It’s home to birds and earthworms, blossoms and produce. And each season I get to try again. Enjoy your garden, whatever happens, season after season.
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It is in difficult times that we are reminded most to be the gardeners of our hearts and lives.
We must keep planting for tomorrow. We must keep weeding our personal spaces, the places from which we get information, the clutter on our desks, or the weeds will overwhelm. We must compost our skills and experience, turning them over along with our network of friends and contacts, to feed the beds in which we will grow our next venture, or sustain the work we do today. We must nurture the life we have, the people we love, watering when times are dry. We should dig swales and plant rain gardens when there is some spare cash to set aside, lest the runoff when it rains is lost to the gutter.
We should spend time in the garden, and rest our eyes on the life and the beauty within it, not letting to-do lists intrude. Enjoy the beauty of the moment. The tasks will keep, but that moment of life and beauty will not. Let your garden refresh your soul.
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Spring is a season of hope after winter. But it also blows hot and cold.
We can plan to re-invent ourselves after a time of difficulty or because our lives require it, but no matter how careful our plan, the winds of life are fickle. While blossoms may be lost in a cold snap, the tree perseveres; similarly, the new foliage that emerges on roses in the spring may burn at the edges, but the rose bush goes on to flower.
Re-invention requires us to hope for a different future. It asks us to chart a new path. It can be difficult to find the courage to keep walking the new road. On sunny days, the vistas are endless; on days when winter returns, lashing us with a passing storm, it may seem as if our new life is too fragile to survive and it may be hard to sustain hope.
Remember that the force of life within you will keep seeking the sun and trust your strength. The storm or cold will pass and you will have time during the summer to re-establish yourself ahead of future winters.
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Gardening gives men a place to discover how to nurture.
It requires gentleness planting sprouts in the soil and holding back the tender leaves to spread mulch beneath their fragile stems. It teaches how to restrain strength, and that careless handling kills. It calls first for observation - seeing the little plant and the life it embodies, and treating it with respect and kindness. When gardeners practice this observation and active gentleness in the garden, they have a method to call upon for encounters in their lives.
There is little that is soft about toiling in the heat of an early summer planting, kneeling and bending, digging and moving, with rows of beds to be filled. When we are tired, gardeners must still excercise the same care as when we were fresh. We give care because care is needed, not because we expect a return. The little plants that die from rough handling speak to this truth.
Care is first seeing the needs of the sprout, and then gently giving it what it needs to thrive. So too, our treatment of others.
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Severe weather is becoming more commonplace every year. Rain has become storms, storms have become supercells or tornadoes or hurricanes. Droughts have produced tinder for fires. Snows have become drifts, and cold snaps, deep freezes. Gardens have been devastated everywhere there are gardens.
Many people too, will have experienced devastation in their lives; loss upon loss upon loss.
Nature is the force behind the life we see in gardens, even if we as gardeners attempt to channel that life into veggies and herbs, trees and hedges, flowers and berries. It is the seed that roots in the tarmac, the flowers that burst forth in the desert after years of drought.
There is nothing easy about loss. It leaves lives permanently scarred, bearing a burden of grief. But if we find a way to tap into that force for life that is always present, we too can begin to re-emerge after the passing storm.
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The gardener who wishes to grow a hedge should expect it to take time. It is an exercise in patience. Rewards will be in five to ten years from initiation, if they start from cuttings. Little wonder that many homeowners put up walls.
The generation born since the 1980s grew up with the personal computer. They have seen Moore's Law in action, in which computer chips have grown faster and faster every year since their invention. Increased computing power has turned into increased capability with profound consequences for almost every aspect of our social fabric. One of the impacts has been an expectation of instant responsiveness, which is habit-forming. This ability to query anything and find an immediate answer in real time has positively changed our lives, but it also brings with it the risk of short termism. There are aspects to our lives that require long-term thinking, planning and implementation.
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This is the time of year when the heat and humidity of the day turn into afternoon thunderstorms. Summer is often painted as an easy time of year when plants and projects flourish. But although the days are long and sunny, care is needed. Your garden wilts in the heat of the sun during the day, and then faces the blasts and sudden, strong winds of afternoon storms. Hail can also devastate the springtime clearing, preparation and planting, the early expectations.
So while summertime can be a period when your garden exults in the long days and shows strong growth, it should not be taken for granted. While you won't want to go out in the heat of the day, it is a time for morning joy and afternoon and evening maintenance. It is a time when clippings can be stacked for compost for the coming year. It is a time to enjoy the vibrant colours of the flowers and the pollinators visiting from one to another.
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In the Northern hemisphere, the Summer solstice has come and gone. In North Carolina, where we are located, the heat of summer and the humidity is making it uncomfortable to go outside in the afternoons. This heat benefits the plants that like it hot, like the sweet potatoes and peppers and some herbs. But other plants are finding the going tough. Some tomatoes won't set fruit in this heat and any plants which have been compromised are dying or sickly.
This is the time to take stock in the garden. It is a good time to clear out the plants that are sick or failing. They are likely to attract pests that in turn will look next door and attack the plants adjacent. It is better to have a small gap in your row of tomatoes - because you've cut off one of the plants at the base - than a large gap, because the entire row has been attacked from those failing plants.
It is also a time to think ahead to the Fall. Early harvest beds will be ready for preparation and getting them ready for planting for the Fall. Don't leave this too late.
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The September Equinox is when day and night lengths are equal once again, but heading towards winter. It is a good time for harvesting and taking stock of what we have planted since the April, Spring Equinox. This is true for the garden as well as our daily lives. The Fall Equinox is a good time to pause for reflection.
Like the crops in the garden, the goals and intentions we planted earlier in the year are likely to be bearing fruit, as long as they were fed and watered during the hot, productive, long summer days in the months since planting.
Consider where you were in the Spring, the goals you had back then, and the fruit you're seeing now. How has your garden grown? What setbacks have occurred? In the same way as we water in nematodes to eat overwintering grubs in our beds, perhaps safeguards in our lives are needed, too: consider that certificate for better professional positioning, or paying down existing debt.
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Gardening provides natural points on the calendar like the September Equinox in which the plants and the soil are in equilibrium, balanced against the arc of the sun and the length of the day. Do have enough harvested for the coming lengthening shadows? While households no longer tie their survival through winter to the output from their garden, the existential point remains the same.
Without reflection, we cannot appreciate our health and all the blessings that bring us joy. And pausing is equally necessary when we are striving to stay ahead of bills and misfortune. Endurance alone will not keep summer plants from succumbing to winter.
What can we do each day to take back our power? How can we position ourselves for more freedom? Without pausing, we remain where we are while the Earth and sky move on, a recipe for hunger.
At the Equinox, take some time to breathe. On this day in which the calendar is balanced, claim it as neutral ground to use wisely.
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