Location: Vermont
This picture is late in the summer but I like to look at “finished product” pictures of last year’s garden when I am dreaming and planning for the next plot of plenty. April is the month for dreaming. When the seed and gardening catalogs come I get out my paper and pencils. Rows appear first out of mere fancy. Long rows of lavender, basil, and garlic. Sunflowers in a great spiral at the center of the garden. Maybe I’ll make the whole thing round. No, triangular!! And then logic comes back and puts the tomatoes just to the south where sunlight most like to linger and the lavender row gets shortened to a few plants. I go back to a square shape because I’ve been working and enriching the soil for a number of years and I don’t to waste an inch of lusciousness. The tomato cages are already solidly in the ground. No point in moving those. Then the ordering. I do need 500 garlic bulbs. I want so much of everything but then I remember, keep it simple. Ambition leads to an unhappy summer trying to keep the garden healthy and happy. Still, I know I will be more peaceful come August if the garden is a size I can actually manage. I don’t need 500 garlic bulbs. Maybe just 50. Plus I’d have money for a new rose bush. Oh dreams. April dreaming.
Deborah,
Hi. Your garden looks pretty good to me! For the past few years I have had that same “ambition” to grow a lot of everything. This is the first year that I am concentrating on planting less of evertthing and really taking care of what I do plant. Putting in 10 potatoes instead of 20 or 30 has allowed me to already spot and remove a few bugs that I would not have noticed before. Also with my pumpkins and squashes, I put in way less so I can really give them the proper amount of attention. I think the planning and dreaming part is so much fun in the middle of the winter. By then, the exhaustion of the busy season is draining away and that’s when those ambitious thoughts start revving up again.