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A Year in the Garden
On this page, you’ll find information about gardening’s two overlapping annual cycles, including:
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- The vegetable garden’s Seasonal Growing Cycle and its Annual Care and Stewardship Cycle
- The events that take place in each of a vegetable garden’s two seasonal cycles.
- An overview of what care a vegetable garden requires to prepare, plant, maintain, and harvest.
- Why growing vegetables in a home garden is so rewarding to every gardener.
- How to adapt the cycles of the garden to your region, climate, and conditions.
One Garden—Two Cycles
A gardening season actually consists of two separate but overlapping cycles:
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- The first gardening cycle involves growing. It includes preparing and planting, followed by care and harvest. It roughly follows three of the year’s seasons—spring, summer and autumn—for nearly all gardens found in most areas of the country.
- The second gardening cycle provides continual garden stewardship throughout the year. It spans all four of the seasons, from before winter starts, and on through the entire year until winter comes again.
To be sure, most of us are more interested in the growing cycle than in the land-care and stewardship cycle. However, both cycles combine to give us a bounty of fresh, tasty and home-grown vegetables.
Those who live lives unbound from the soil seldom understand how much enjoyment results from growing vegetables in home vegetable gardens. They see the work but not the joy, and think about the problems, not the rewards.
Whether you reap enjoyment from nearly every aspect of gardening and wait with anticipation for the first signs of spring, or have only casual interest but want delicious meals from your garden, follow the two cycles of gardening to reap and hit your goal.
The Growing Cycle
Read the explanation of the first of these two cycles—the Planting Cycle—here. Learn all about the Stewardship Cycle on the next page [See Become a Garden Steward].
While vegetable gardening requires time and commitment, it needn’t overwhelm, nor be consuming. What makes up a year in the garden? Let’s look and see.
Planning
Before a garden is planted, some research is needed—visiting nurseries and garden centers, talking with fellow gardeners, gathering ideas and materials. Here, you’ll discover how much care the garden will require. You’ll also learn how to incorporate work-saving changes. Finally, you’ll plan to avoid any problems you may have experienced in prior seasons.
The results of such planning can be a mental exercise or be formalized on paper—a sketch of the garden layout; a notation on a calendar; a turned page in a catalog, magazine, or book; a shopping list; or all of these.
Planning ahead for following years may also mean harvesting, collecting, and saving seed from your most successful vegetable plantings [see Collecting and Saving Seed].
Proper planning reduces unnecessary work, eliminates false starts and rework, saves on costly materials, and, most important, it gives you the best chance of having great results for the effort you will expend.
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Preparation
Preparing to plant may include sharpening tools, painting lattice, installing raised beds, building a compost bin, installing a drip-irrigation system or any number of other tasks.
Most important is turning and raking the soil so it is ready to receive seeds and transplants, installing trellises and supports for climbing plants, and fertilizing and amending beds.
While generally a springtime activity, much takes place after harvest in the autumn. Some preparation steps continue throughout the gardening season as you sow new plantings and add new ideas.
Planting
When it comes right down to it, little of a vegetable gardener’s time is spent planting. Out of months of garden activity, planting actually may take only a few days.
Still, just that brief bit of time properly spent ensures that your young vegetables get off to a good start. It also helps them avoid early problems from disease. Good planting practices mean that conditions are right:
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- Proper soil temperature for the type of plant,
- Right planting location, and
- Correct selection of plants suited to your region and site.
Planting also means replanting throughout the season [see Planting Vegetable Successions]. As a vegetable matures and is harvested, space opens for new plantings of the same or other vegetables.
Care
Most of your time spent in the garden involves nurturing. That means you’ll care for the health and well-being of your vegetable plants:
- Watering,
- Fertilizing,
- Controlling growth through pinching and pruning,
- Cultivating to prevent weeds and aerate the soil,
- Mulching, and
- Preventing pests and diseases.
You’ll spend time enjoying your garden and inspecting the plants and their surroundings, even the soil. Have insects visited your vegetables? Are blossoms setting fruit? How’s your foliage’s color and your plants’ vigor? You’ll happily test the ripeness of produce to see if its ready to pick.
You’ll also reflect, correct, and adjust. Is a planting too dense? Remove the weakest plants or transplant them to other areas of the garden.
Does a vine need support? Build a structure for it to climb.
Are some vegetables doing poorly? Consider new sites for future seasons while helping them survive.
For many, caring for their garden is also is the best time of the day, moments when they form a bond between the gardener and their plantings.
Harvest
We sometimes think of harvest as once and done. It’s really a long affair.
Harvest time actually lasts from a few weeks after the garden is planted until late in the season. Great gardens feed a family for months and months.
Quick-maturing crops, such as radish and lettuce, are first out of the garden. Next are perennial vegetables, including asparagus, artichoke, and berries. Midseason brings harvests of corn, beans, peas, and summer squash. Autumn yields winter squash, pumpkin, root vegetables, and others that are long to mature, as well as late autumn and winter vegetables such as endive and beets.
You’ll need a good eye and growing knowledge of how vegetables ripen. Is a tomato at peak ripeness, for instance? When is corn is sweetest and juiciest?
How will you store and preserve vegetables as your garden’s bounty begins to overflow?
Pickle some, but process and can, freeze others. Store hardy fresh vegetables for the upcoming cold winter months, when those fresh garden tastes will be most appreciated.
Postseason Care
When the first frost finally hits and there’s a smell of rain or snow in the air, it’s time for the garden to be cleared of dead foliage. Fall is the best time to prepare soil for the coming spring. Neaten beds by removing all clutter. Add a layer of fresh manure and dig it in. Layer mulch over perennial vegetable beds to protect them from washing away in the rain or compacting under the snow.
When your garden meets your standards, it’s time to repair, thoroughly clean and store your garden tools. Remove rust, sharpen blades, repair motors, and replace worn or broken parts economically as garden stores close out their seasonal inventory.
Vegetable gardening has been compared aptly to boat ownership: there’s always something that needs to be done. Fortunately, for true gardeners, there’s joy in the doing. Rare is the gardener who feels stressed or depressed after spending the day in the sun and fresh air amidst growing plants.
Annual Garden Stewardship
Every vegetable gardener feels quiet contentment when they are actively gardening. They enjoy visiting garden stores to pick out plants, preparing to sow seeds, planting transplants, watering, cultivating, and harvesting.
Simple pride shows when they share fruit, berries, or other produce with neighbors and friends and receive a compliment or thanks. They find gardening fulfilling.
It’s common in our busy world to wonder if we can fit vegetable gardening into our schedules, even whether it will become a burden. Follow this simple rule: Start small, try it out for fit as you would any new activity, and see whether it rewards you as it has millions of others for centuries.
Expect lots of triumphs along with a few failures. Vegetables are remarkably resilient. They shrug off being ignored for a week or two, slow their growth, and wait for care to resume.
You’ll never know if gardening is your passion until you try it, even if it’s a patio container with a single tomato plant or some herbs.
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