Have you ever scrolled through Pinterest or Instagram, only to leave feeling like your house or garden will never look like someone else’s? I find myself often struggling with house or garden envy with stops me from even starting or makes me wonder how on earth someone who only started a year ago suddenly has this unbelievably lush garden.
Growth takes time. Time takes patience. Every spring I struggle to foresee what the garden will look like in a few short months.
Maybe that’s why we’re so addicted to before and after photos.
Every year something does well and something fails. Every year I focus on new things and neglect others. This year a garden that has been growing for several years but normally struggled without production due to certain four-legged stealers (read: deer) is producing like crazy. This year a new deer proof fence went up that surrounds a large garden filled with various apple trees, raspberries, blueberries, squash and other veggies and a huge variety of flowers.
The apples that supply us with enough for home canned applesauce, apple butter and an annual apple cider pressing are thriving this year.
But for years we struggled to protect them from the deer that quietly stole from them at night.
This years garden is unlike any other that we’ve ever had. From the bounty of apples this year to the new beds bursting with flowers, greenery and airy accents that are new to us this year.
Stop waiting to start something because you’re comparing your beginning to someone else’s 10 or 20 years of experience. If you never start, you’ll never grow. And such is that way that our garden flourishes. Every year we start in the spring. Some things grown in the greenhouse from seeds to be transplanted once the days warm up. Some things directly seeded into the ground. Some bulbs are overwintered and need their mulching to be uncovered and compost to be added, while some things need pruning and thinning.
Several crops this year that had in previous years thrived, took a beating this year. My celery crop that has previously thrived got hit hard by Aphids. Those little green bugs that everyone talks about being a Ladybugs most favorite meal found my celery and ravaged many stalks. I was able to salvage a lot, but it’s still hard to have success one year and then stumble the next.
My cucumbers also struggled. Last year I was swimming in cucumbers, many weeks producing 20-30 cucumbers a week from 2 plants! This year despite babying them in the greenhouse, making a hoop house for them in early spring and then tenderly adjusting them to the weather, they floundered. While they still produced an okay amount, many of the cucumbers were a bit yellow instead of a deep green color and the plants themselves looked sick.
Each day I find myself trying to focus on the positives. I’m learning how to grow things everyday. This little garden produces enough to eat throughout the summer with very little grocery store additions and will still allow us food into fall and early winter. It’s about learning and not perfection. Even though I want everything to look perfect, I’m practicing patience with myself and my garden skills.
This garden used to be a horse pasture. Up until a few years ago, a derelict rotten fence surrounded these 4 acres of pasture and this garden was only a dream. All the pretty images usually don’t show the cold wet muddy hours of work that it takes to create this space or the sweat and grime that we wipe off during the summer heat.
Don’t let those pretty images stop you from starting though. Even if you only have a small space in the city, you can build your dream garden. Even if you don’t know where to begin, you can start with one small bed and grow from there.