I'm finding some deeply humbling life lessons in the garden, like how to survive the worst weed calamity I've ever seen, and many more. Thankfully there's redeeming beauty as well. I'm happy to share with you 12 of the lessons I'm still learning this year as a lifelong gardener. There's no end to the education that happens in the garden. And I'll intersperse it all with some photos of beauty in the garden this week.
Above is a male eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly that happened to visit my profusion chives while I was in the herb garden. His delicate gossamer wings show some wear, possibly from predators, rough weather, or flight. But he's strong, resilient, and full of life.
And he's the perfect symbol to highlight my struggles as gardening season rolls out at a frenzied pace. I just hope I can transcend the difficult lessons I'm learning with as much grace as this ephemeral garden visitor.
After decades of gardening, I'm still learning new lessons every year. Some yield personal triumphs. Others arise from mistakes, weeds, exhaustion, or plants that decide not to follow the plan. Here are 12 lessons I've been learning in the garden this season.
Jump to:
- 1. Patience really is a virtue
- 2. Be kind to my body; it's the only one I have
- 3. I'll make mistakes, kick myself, and then make even more
- 4. Planning every possible detail doesn't mean I'm planning wisely
- 5. Shit happens despite the best of intentions; a lesson in grace
- 6. Working hard is not the same as working smart
- 7. I can't, and shouldn't even try to grow it all!
- 8. There's no such thing as "being done" with something in the garden
- 9. The garden can always surprise you, and it goes both ways
- 10. Is there even a point to showering? And dirty nails are here to stay
- 11. Gardening is a gift to the mind
- 12. Friends and family are everything
1. Patience really is a virtue
This is hard to learn when I have thousands of seeds and plants to get in the ground, dozens of posts I'm excited to show all of you, and real life has other plans. Cold nights, doctor's appointments, aching joints, rain, wind, and weeds have been interrupting my gardening plans. Planting season can be really humbling. I just hope the crops will flourish nonetheless, with my sanity intact.
2. Be kind to my body; it's the only one I have
I've been gardening for decades, and these days I can feel the faster wear in my body. Even though there's a light at the end of the tunnel, when the planting will soon be done, it's physically challenging to plant all day long, every day, for weeks on end. If I'm in so much pain afterward that I can't even move, and yet continue at this pace for weeks, I may have taken on too much. This is a really hard lesson for me to learn.
3. I'll make mistakes, kick myself, and then make even more
The hardest part is not knowing which mistakes they'll be. I have a horrible recurring nightmare that I've forgotten to map out which of my 54 mints are in which pots, or which of my 45 basils are which. I have my labeled tags in place, and I still haven't managed yet to take photos and document which is which just in case. If anyone were to pick out all of my tags, it would be devastating.
This is an oversight I know I'm making! And I'll get to it. But mistakes can and do happen all the time. They're really good at prompting creative new expressions in profanity, and in showing me how much I need to keep everything in perspective. Ugh.
Here are updates of the aforementioned basil and mint posts, so you can see how they've turned out:
- 38 Types of Basil to Grow in Your Herb Garden, Part 1
- 45 Types of Basil to Grow in Your Herb Garden, Part 2
- Best guide to 54 types of mint to grow with scent profiles
4. Planning every possible detail doesn't mean I'm planning wisely
Oh, how I love my spreadsheets. I can look back, and within seconds, tell you exactly which veggies, herbs, and flowers I grew in which years. And from which vendors, with every price and quantity. Each September, I spend months planning and choosing about 500 heirloom crop varieties to plant the following spring and fall. Planning next year's garden is the best remedy to get me through the cold and snowy months here in the US state of Michigan.
But all of the meticulous tabs, calculations, and careful garden bed measuring can so easily fall by the wayside when the real world comes into play. Despite trying to anticipate everything, there are always factors that upend my plans. I've needed to do so much last-minute scrambling and plan changing that sometimes I wonder if all of the prep is even worth it. And yet it's much easier to make nimble adjustments when I have a good handle on the big picture.
5. Shit happens despite the best of intentions; a lesson in grace
This week I had to rip out my radish plants in order to plant some bean seeds I'd missed (which is another whole issue). But since I hadn't taken the time to thin or harvest the radishes in time, they were old, pithy, and nasty.
This experience had me shaking my head in self-admonishment. If I won't take the time to see a crop through to harvest, maybe I shouldn't plant it in the first place. I need to think of ALL of the needs of a plant before I get to include it in my plans.
6. Working hard is not the same as working smart
I have more than enough blog post and newsletter plans for the summer than I have time to actually create them. And this is the same for every upcoming season.
So if it takes me 4 weeks to get my greedy profusion of plants in the ground, despite planting around the clock, this is basically a decision to not do some of my posts. Again, I'm truly chastened to learn from the garden that time and energy are finite.
7. I can't, and shouldn't even try to grow it all!
But dammit, there are so many gorgeous and delicious global heirloom crops. Opportunity cost is the bane of an enthusiastic gardener in December with snow piled up outside and a gardening catalog at hand. I don't know if I'll ever learn this one fully. Or at least remember it in winter after excoriating myself every August that I just can't fit it all!
Even when seeds are inexpensive, there are so many thrilling heirloom herbs, veggies, flowers, and fruit from all over the world that would be thrilling to grow! I think anyone passionate about a hobby can relate to this.
I'm still so mad at myself for inadvertently pulling the shungiku (edible chrysanthemum) seedlings from seeds I'd planted in early spring, thinking it was a weed. I finally talked myself down from ordering another seed pack this spring while it's still been planting time. For once, I've actually heeded my own advice.
There's just no way to grow every exciting crop every year. I don't have the room, and I'm supersaturated already with the varieties I'm already growing. I need to have targeted goals each year of exciting varieties that are in manageable quantities for my back, my budget, and my sanity.
8. There's no such thing as "being done" with something in the garden
Sure, I can thin out the shiso and carrots, hill up the potatoes, pinch the mint, trim the basil tops, etc., and feel a huge sense of accomplishment. But nothing in the garden is one-and-done. It's an iterative process.
The need to do these tasks is going to come around again, so I shouldn't even think about checking these off my to-do list. (Even though nothing beats the rush of satisfaction in checking things off a list!) I can only temporarily kid myself that the task is "done."
9. The garden can always surprise you, and it goes both ways
The good
I was shocked a few years ago when purple mitsuba showed up in my vegetable garden. It's an uncommon enough herb that it wouldn't have spontaneously just shown up naturally. I had planted these seeds the previous year in another garden bed far on the other side of the house. To my disdain, none of them had sprouted, even after cold stratifying and soaking.
But lo and behold, the wind and rain must have washed these seeds of betrayal through the lawn and downhill to the other bed. Because several unmistakable purple mitsuba plants suddenly showed up out of nowhere. I was so thrilled (and mad) to see this! I promptly avenged the situation by moving the plants right back to their originally-intended location in the herb garden.
For context, here's some background on the herb garden planning I've done for this year, as well as some of my early summer herb and veggie crops:
- How I Grow Nearly 300 Culinary Herbs in My Garden
- Early Summer Crops in My Garden: An Herb and Vegetable Tour
The bad
And on the other side of the coin, here's one of the worst shockers in my decades of gardening - the most horrific weed epidemic I've ever seen. It's truly a sight to behold. White clover sprouts, in untold numbers, absolutely filling my herb garden. I've never seen anything like this. And it happened after weeks of all-day-every-day, back-breaking planting sessions. Just when I had finally put in the last herbs.
To say I was disgruntled by this weed invasion, just when I had finished my planting marathon, was the understatement of the year. These tenacious white clover sprouts have almost completely infested my herb garden, which was planted with nearly 300 varieties of herbs. Some of the herb seedlings I'd just planted were miniscule, and were completely overrun with these stubborn garden intruders.
I have a sneaking suspicion how this happened. Some of the possible source contenders of these weed seeds are: the compost I've used to amend my garden beds, the potting soil in which I'd started my seeds (some of which I reused to save money, which I'm never doing again after this), the winter-kill cover crop seed blend I'd interplanted among the herbs in September, or the huge swaths of white clover growing in the untended lots across the street and next door to me.
Based on the patterns of weed coverage, which didn't discriminate between transplanted and directly-sown herb sections, I'm banking on the last situation. And I don't have a viable way to compel the owner of the clover patches to do anything about them.
This really makes me think twice about the side effects of having a clover lawn at some point. While it would be a dream to have a lawn that I'd never have to mow, and to encourage more biodiversity and pollinator activity, I'd hate to create this same sort of weed chaos in a neighbor's garden by unintended seed dispersal.
And now, just when I'd been so excited to finally be able to work on another fun blog post, I suddenly have a horrendous and demoralizing amount of garden remediation ahead of me to save my beloved herbs from strangulation.
But I'll get there! Knowing the lesson above that patience really is a virtue, I'm even more determined to get to those food and gardening blog posts I'd love to show you!
10. Is there even a point to showering? And dirty nails are here to stay
Okay, this one's tongue-in-cheek. But when I know I'm going right back out there to continue the weedfest again tomorrow, and I'm too sore to even lift a bar of soap, the struggle is real.
And sometimes, no amount of vigorous scrubbing or ridiculously-short nail trimming can get all of the dirt out of my nails. This is frustrating indeed when I need to make a grocery store run looking like a filthy, unkempt heathen.
11. Gardening is a gift to the mind
I'm not someone who does well with boredom. I could never sit in a waiting room without something to keep me occupied, even just for a few minutes. And I have a really tough time relaxing, because there's always work to be done.
But gardening somehow gives me an outlet for my mind to wander in meditative contentment, not even noticing the passage of time. Somehow, while I'm gardening, the evening always arrives at an incredible and unbidden speed.
Sometimes I'll listen to podcasts while gardening, but this feels intrusive, and I generally end up happily lost in my own quiet thoughts. Surely there's an inspiring lesson to be learned here.
12. Friends and family are everything
I always struggle to find time to write posts, all while viscerally knowing that the posts are the whole point of all of this bustle. In this same vein, I need to find more time to spend with friends and family.
Gardens don't tend themselves, and food doesn't cook on its own. (There's huge irony in eating popcorn and apples for dinner on days when I'm slammed with recipe development or food photo shoots. And in not having time to do a grocery run because I'm too busy tending my crops.)
I need to abide my own learned lessons, find ways to not sweat the small stuff, and to enjoy more time with my loved ones. And with you, my readers too! This is a must, and something I'm determined to do better. I'm so grateful that you're here for the journey.
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