The Seven Phases of Gardening
Our First Harvest 2010
On my right sidebar, I have Psalm 128:2 typed out for all to read. I really like this verse as it pertains to homesteading. “You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessing and prosperity will be yours.”
Gardening is labor-intensive. It takes time, sweat, and love to grow your own food. There are certain phases that a garden goes through. Phase One is the planning stage. You chose what you want to grow, how you want to plant, and where you want to plant. During Phase One, I draw out my garden on paper and have everything decided before I go into the next phase.
Phase Two is the preparation stage. You prepare the soil, till the land, make rows, purchase your seeds and/or plants. Without modern day equipment, this stage can be back-breaking. Even with the proper tools, my muscles ache at the end of the day.
Phase Three is the fun part. My kids do not even complain about this phase. Phase Three is the planting phase. Keeping track in a journal of what you plant, how you planted, etc can be helpful the next year. If something worked well, you have recorded what you did. If something failed, you have record of what not to do again.
Phase Four is the growing phase. I do enjoy watching my seeds germinate and become big plants. It is a horticulture science lab for your children. Observing the stages of growth of a plant is fun. If you fertilize, then this is also the time to treat your plants or soil. This is also when I mulch with old hay.
The least fun part of the whole gardening experience in my opinion occurs in this phase. Your plants are not the only things growing. Weeds are trying to grow too. Mulching well is very effective in prohibiting weed growth, but the old-fashioned weeding by hand or with a hoe is most effective. I prefer to use both types for weed control. I weed by hand or with a hoe, and then I mulch with hay. Then occasionally adding more mulch and spot weeding by hand is all you need to keep your garden free of unwanted plants.
My garden has just entered Phase Five. Now your garden becomes really time-intensive, but your rewards are being harvested as well. Phase Five involves maintaining your garden while simultaneously harvesting your produce on a daily basis. You must pick daily for the most tender vegetables. Squash and zucchini are notorious examples of vegetables that go from being tender and ready to be picked to tough and the size of your leg in seemingly a 24 hour period.
Yesterday was the first day any of our squash was ready to be picked. I planted squash on six mounds four feet from each other. Now I step on the squash plant trying to peer down into them. They are easily six feet wide in diameter. I picked about twenty-five beautiful yellow squash. I am a little worried about the amount I harvested. I might lose friends by the end of the summer. They will see me coming and run the other way screaming, “No more squash!!!” On my first day of harvest, I already gave half of the squash away.
The half that I kept I steamed with onion. I pulled up four potato plants to harvest some red potatoes. I also gave half of those away to the same person. I boiled the potatoes I kept for dinner. Then I picked some of my leaf lettuce and a radish. We had a delicious dinner straight from the garden. This is the blessing of gardening. You will eat the fruit of your labor and get to share it with others.
Phase Six is when your garden is producing so well that you stop weeding. All your time and attention is on picking, putting up, and preparing the produce. Many of my gardening friends tell me that they start hoping the plants will die. They have already canned everything they can, their freezer is full, their family cannot eat anymore (plug in the name of any vegetable), and their friends refuse free vegetables.
All kidding aside, you are very lucky to enter this phase, if you do at all. It means that your garden prospered and your hard work paid off. Not all of us are as fortunate. I was just reading a book by Esther Hautzig called, The Endless Steppe. It is a true story about Polish Jews being relocated to Siberia. They toiled and toiled to grow potatoes during the short growing season of the steppe. In all the years they lived there, they never once got close to a Phase Six.
Phase Seven is the finishing stage. You pull up your plants. I leave them in the garden to break down. I remove all the cages and supports that I put in my garden for the cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, etc. We shovel in composted chicken poop. Then my husband tills the land once more to help chop up the plant matter and evenly distribute the fertilizer. The garden is then allowed to rest until we begin all over again.
Just throw me your extra squash or zuchini. It is our absolute favorite in the summer because once frozen it is mushy. I cube it and fry in some olive oil with minced garlic and a little soy sauce. Yummm. I never plant enough.
Blessings,
Carol
This is a great review of how to properly grow a garden. A person doesn’t realize how much goes into a healthy garden and getting enjoyment out of one. Every new gardener should read this.
Okay, please tell me what you do to get all those squash! Can you send the extras to Georgia? LOL! Last year, my first garden, squash vine borers did my plants in. So I started this year, using DE to try to keep them away. Then mildew came. So I sprayed with Neem spray. They got better. Then more mildew on the new leaves. So I sprayed with Neem again, but this time I got it too concentrated and half-killed my plants.
New leaves are appearing, but I’m wondering what’s coming next. I’ve had about 3 zucchini and 3 summer squash from 12 plants, which aren’t looking anything like the kudzu-like plants you’re describing! Anyway, I’m glad for your squashy blessings!
You are welcome to all of my extra. I wish I knew you personally because then I would just tell you to stop by. Lara
I would love to give my extra squash to you, Susan. I have not had any problems growing squash here. I rotate my crops within my garden area each time I plant so that the same vegetable is not growing in the same place year after year. I think this helps the soil as well as helps with insect problems. I make mounds on which to plant my squash. I place them about 4 feet from each other. This year I made six mounds. On each mound I plant three squash seeds in five places like where the point of a star would be on the mound. I water regularly. I hope this helps, but it is not some secret formula.
Lara
It sounds like mine are maybe too crowded which could contribute to mildew. Thanks for the tips. So maybe I’ll try again next year! Thanks for offering your squash! If Georgia was closer to Texas, I would stop by!
Susan,
You are very welcome. I hope it works better next year. I wish you could stop by; it would be fun to meet you. Lara
Maybe somewhere around phase 5 or 6 there should be a “sleepless night/general panic phase” in which the gardener awakes screaming and sitting up in bed after a horrible nightmare in which downy mildew fungus is so thick on the squash plants the leaves look like cotton parasols, or maybe sleepless nights with the bedroom window cracked listening for the sound of nocturnal pests munching on the fruits of your labor, or for cutworms slicing through the stems of your newly-thinned bean plants. Or maybe the gardener was testy with her husband because she’s just STRESSED at that lousy stand of okra out there, and at the thought of replanting a THIRD time! (This year I personally witnessed a gopher pull a whole jerusalem artichoke halfway down into the ground, and I can tell you, it almost pushed me right over the edge.)..or maybe we don’t need a phase for all this. Maybe that’s just gardening!
Susan Lea- My squash has had bad powdery mildew this year. Maybe it’s just a bad year?? I do find planting further apart helps, so I for one am following Lara’s kind advice for the rest of the planting I do this season (right now I have rows). I have never done hills for squash before and it may be just what I need. For plants with the powdery mildew I have found neem oil to be very effective. Knocks it down quick and is cheap and organic.
People eat neem oil as a health aid, so it is not toxic.
Best wishes! And thanks Lara!!
I trimmed off all the powdery mildew leaves and cut back the short, fat “vine” part of my squash plants for better circulation of air through there. It didn’t seem to hurt the plants at all. I figure they can be guinea pigs for trying stuff since at this point I have nothing to lose.
I’ll keep y’all posted how it goes!
I love it, Adrienne. I will think you of today when I am weeding and harvesting my garden. You will keep a smile on my face while sweat is dripping off my nose and my back aches. Thanks for making my day.
Lara
Just FYI-
Trimming the leaves off really helped the plants. I think it helped keep good air circulation around the developing fruit, too. I got another couple of weeks of harvest out of them.