Staying Conscious

Patience is a major asset to people who live with plants. We get one chance every year to make the most of our garden, and no do-overs. Luckily, there's always next year. That's part of the beauty of gardening! The best farmers I have known are those with experience and that's not something you can learn at any fancy school.

We know we learn from doing and making mistakes. The more the merrier. It's very acceptable to fail but I don't think too many people realize this fact. Really, the more you suck at doing things, the better a chance that you'll be amazing at some point. Those who can't, probably gave up the first try I'd imagine. Consequently, the best year life will probably be our last. Now we think it's a lot nicer knowing that instead of having a "shelf-life", we just get better with age. Kind of like a fine wine ;)

Here are a few tips we think are useful when trying to make the most out of our time in the garden:

MULCH- There's nothing better than using old newspapers and cardboard (which we find for free) to do the work of keeping weeds out of the garden. Just lay down a layer to kill off the grass/weeds and top that with hay or a similar substance. Winning the war against weeds or your lawn is a HUGE time-saver. In addition, keeping the area above ground thickly mulched with straw does wonders keeping the soil moist in the summer. This is very important for areas like ours in northern California where the summers are long and dry. It also adds nutrients to the soil as it breaks down.

WATERING- I really enjoy watering my plants but when you're "maxing out" your garden space and trying to produce enough food to feed a family year-round it becomes almost impossible to do it by hand. Drip irrigation, soaker hoses, and Ollas (available at http://www.peddlerswagon.com/ ) are wonderful sustainable ways to irrigate garden plants without spending hours a day it saves a ton of water at the same time.

COMPOSTING- recycling garden and kitchen waste by creating a compost pile can save time AND money. We compost anything we can get our hands on and are finding that now that we have a sufficient amount growing in our backyard we are cutting down on outside sources dramatically. Just layer your dry and green waste and keep it moist and covered and you'll have fresh organic fertilizer for your garden in no time. There's also ways to compost directly in your garden beds by layering the compost ingredients and letting it sit for a while before planting directly into it. Also called sheet mulching, no till gardening, and layer gardening depending on who you ask. Lasagna Gardening by: Patricia Lanza was a great book I read about the subject and got us on the right track. We need hardly any extra soil to fill our raised beds this year since using the no-till method. And be sure to make friends with people that own livestock! Chances are, they have a ton of "fertilizer" they will be glad to let you take off their hands for free!

START SMALL- It's hard not to get really excited about growing your own food but keeping it simple when starting out means the first few mistakes are easy to recover from. Big gardens require much more planning, upkeep and time. It's a bit like working out, no one can run a marathon their very first day training. Ending up with something that seems more like a chore or having a yard full of dead plants you worked so hard to plant is very discouraging. Gardening should be fun and relaxing!

STAY ORGANIZED- We always try to own brightly colored tools and keep them in a designated area so we don't loose them. I cannot tell you how many times I've wanted to do this or that and just could not find that darn spade!!!

KEEP IT CLOSE BY- Keeping the garden close to where we live makes it that much more likely we'll notice when something needs to be done. When living in the city or suburbs it's not that hard to walk through the veggies and see how things are growing at least once a day.

LIVE CONSCIOUSLY- Yep. There are still ways to stay awake these days without slipping into dreamland where the mass media birdies tell you to buy buy buy neatly prepackaged ideas in electric colors. Here's a few things that we have found useful in our everyday lives....

-Growing what we can ourselves and totally supporting local organic farmers. Either way it's delicious! The slow-food movement in which eating local, in season foods is becoming the conscious way to eat!

-Shopping second-hand. Thrift shopping has become very hip these days and it's much cheaper. As a total thrift store junky, I cannot recommend this enough.

-Make do with what we have or go without. Who needs an extra trip to tahiti when you've created your own paradise right in your backyard?

-Eating only locally, sustainably, ethically raised and grass fed meat. Or go veg! The corporate meat industry is absolutely gross and inhumane.

- Keeping a sense of balance and not taking everything too seriously. Life is about having fun and working towards our goals one step at a time. No one is perfect and we know that all too well. We eat out just like everyone else and realize there's no sane way we can control 100% of our food. We do what we can and make improvements when we are able.

Anyone have some tips they'd like to share?