2021: Baby Steps In The Garden

Whew, it’s already Labor Day! As I continue to toil away on our suburban homestead, I thought I’d share some of our gardening progress from this year.

As I mentioned in my post The Fig Tree: One of History’s Greatest Plants, my foray into gardening began in 2014. I built a raised bed garden for my wife, out of cedar from our local mill, and got the bug myself soon thereafter.

In the years since, I’ve grown tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, carrots, various lettuces and spinaches, peppers, corn, squash, broccoli… OK let’s just say a lot of delicious foods. Since we moved into our new house in late 2020, to say I’ve been busy would be an understatement. Nonetheless, I’ve taken some baby steps in establishing what I hope will be a spectacular future of gardening on our new little plot.

Permaculture Baby Steps

To start, I built a new split rail fence to fully enclose our backyard and establish some additional growing areas. Once that was done, I decided to invest in some permaculture plants—for now that means two dwarf pear trees, four raspberry plants, and four blueberry plants (in addition, of course, to the two fig tree saplings I am currently babying). 

Permaculture, for those unacquainted, is just a fancy portmanteau of “permanent” and “agriculture.” This style of agricultural design is super appealing to me because it helps to maximize yield while minimizing effort. 

These few trees and plants I ordered from a nursery in Missouri (Stark Bros), which has an excellent website where you can punch in your zip code and it tells you which plants fit your hardiness zone. Very useful.

Here in the DC area, we’re mostly zone 7a, which means we need plants that thrive in temperatures that do not drop below 0-5 F annually, on average. I researched the requirements for growing the trees and plants I was interested in and found a few good candidates that were suited for 7a. They arrived on our doorstep on the dates the nursery decided best for them to be planted.

I had a local nursery deliver about six yards of topsoil which I carted around the yard to build up areas for the plants to improve drainage. Once that was done, I planted the little buggers and mulched. Hopefully they will all start yielding for us within the next few years. A few photos below:

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A Few Vegetable Plants for Good Measure

Since I couldn’t bring myself to waste a growing season, even in the midst of lots of other home improvement priorities, I planted some of our favorite veggies. Without a lot of planning, I stuck some trellises into the ground in a few spots of existing garden beds and tossed some purple pole bean seeds around them. They’ve been yielding beautifully all summer—maybe eight or ten dinners for us plus additional frozen batches for storage in our chest freezer.

I also planted some tomato, cucumber, and marigold seeds for good measure. Only one of four-ish tomato plants survived critters, a few cucumbers popped up, and the marigolds went bonkers. Hopefully with proper planning for next year, we will get a much larger yield. And speaking of next year…

Scoping Out Future Vegetable Garden Digs

The Grand Gardening Strategy, 2021 Edition

As a nod to ever-changing plans and priorities, I’ve labeled this the 2021 Edition of The Grand Gardening Strategy. I’ve written before about how I want every plant on our property to have a purpose. I called this the Three Ps: Privacy, Pollination, or Provisions. So how am I going to achieve that?

Privacy-wise, the previous owners have done a pretty good job of cultivating some decent privacy trees along the property lines. As I clear space for our Grand Strategy, I will be leaving in place those trees and bushes that provide good privacy. Think of it as selective harvesting, I guess?

From a food standpoint, my overarching strategy for our property is to grow lots of perennial foods that require little continuous maintenance. When coupled with our large vegetable garden, we should have a ton of yummy food to eat year round. In order to get there, I have a few small ornamental trees to remove and a few other areas to build up to create better drainage. 

I will also be (hopefully drastically) shrinking the amount of grass I will need to maintain, which is very important to me from the perspective of eliminating a recurring time requirement. In this same vein, I intend to remove impediments in the grass areas so I won’t have to weed whack as much on a constant basis. Lots of built-up planters and stone garden borders look nice when you hire out your lawn care, but they’re not super fun when you do it yourself.

Other than veggies and permaculture, part of the grass areas will also be ceded to some perennial shade-loving flowers. I’m thinking along the lines of Yellow Bleeding Heart, Fern-Leaf Bleeding Heart, Hardy Begonia, or Toadlily. I could also be happy giving up some good sunny areas for something like Milkweed or Honeysuckle. Things like this are super important to pollinators, who can use all the help we can give them.

And speaking of pollinators, we also want to eventually get bees! This will hopefully help a little bit to prop up the declining bee population while also giving us delicious honey and an opportunity to learn new things. Bees have had a rough run of it over the last several decades for a myriad of reasons. I’d like to do my part to help stave off their continued troubles.

That’s where we’re at as of late summer 2021. More to follow in the future, so stay tuned!