All Gardeners!
Neophyte, Newer, Veteran, and Expert Gardeners, alike!
This website and blog, and the accompanying book, are meant to help all gardeners: neophyte, newer, veteran, and expert gardeners.
For Those Newer to Gardening
For those new or newer to gardening, we start with the most important fundamentals of gardening. These are the actions that are absolutely critical to success and contribute the most to plant growth, health, and production.
Staying grounded in a solid foundation of the fundamentals as your gardening knowledge grows to encompass increasingly nuanced aspects of gardening, you will not only continue to understand how to grow healthy, productive plants amidst the sometimes confusing and contradictory array of gardening advice, but your wisdom may also soon rival that of even many experts.
What’s more, these fundamentals are presented in an easy-to-learn format and taught in such deceptively simple terms as to make them seem obvious, easy, and almost effortless. The actions described will take effort, however. Good gardening does. But each step is given with several tiered options based on the effort you want to (or can) exert and the level of results you desire. While the ultimates in effort and results are given as backdrops, they’re given only as options, without judgment, and, for many, just to demystify why some get such massive results and to make you comfortable and confident with your choices about your efforts and results. The amazing experience is growing your own food, not being perfect! Choose what’s right for you based on your life and be overjoyed with that! That’s the beauty!
Each lesson also has accompanying videos to help illustrate all that is easier to learn when seen and heard directly.
For Veteran and Expert Gardeners
For veteran and expert gardeners, there are five reasons to read this blog, website, and book.
First, they are produced in homage to you. They are meant to honor and give credence to the wise, discerning actions you’ve used for decades—those most essential parts of gardening you, as experts, do every year because you know they’re imperative to success. In fact, they are so crucial as to be the fundamentals—the foundation of all great gardening.
Their ubiquity and necessity, however, also sow the seeds of their current state of demise. They are such second nature among expert gardeners as to go often unnoticed and undiscussed. Expert’s take them for granted as givens, and, for possibly the same reason, they are only given very short explanations, if any, in most of the gardening literature. Their absence, however, causes the most common and most glaring mistakes made by novice, newer, and even veteran gardeners. It’s this absence that reminds us that not everyone understands what experts take for granted and of the wisdom experts inherently hold. Furthermore, with their absence in the literature and with fewer people learning these fundamentals from an expert in their own family, this crucial knowledge is becoming increasingly rare and, with a large number of the true experts getting up there in years, is in danger of becoming lost.
Yet, I would bet almost everything I have that you, as gardening experts, would love to share that wisdom, as simple and obvious as it may seem to you. You know what a great joy gardening has been for you and how it’s added peace and fulfillment to your life in ineffable ways. And, I know the spirit of a gardener: You want to share that experience, to sow the seeds of someone else’s growth, so they can have those same ineffable moments of peace, tranquility, and self-sufficiency.
We should, thus, talk openly about the fundamentals. And we should give them the prominent position they deserve for everyone else to see and learn from—in ways that respect (and hopefully add to) what you, as experienced, expert gardeners, have always done. They’re the most important parts of what you do. Let’s acknowledge them and share them!
We, therefore, mean to set the record straight. There are only a few sources that talk openly about and expand upon the often ignored wisdom about the most important fundamentals of gardening. In this effort, we mean to change the conversation about gardening until it reflects first on your wise practices, and you feel empowered to share them with those who care. And we wish to add to those few sources who already do this until the wisdom you’ve known about these fundamentals is ubiquitous among all gardeners!
So let’s start the conversation!
Second, this blog, website, and book unite the discrete fundamental practices of expert gardeners together into a cohesive whole so they can be used as a blueprint by others. The open discussion of these ideas gives us an indispensable common language for our most essential practices. Just as importantly, it allows us to place each piece of the often overwhelming array of gardening information—the litany of advice on pests, diseases, and specific plants and methods—each in its proper context. When searching through the gardening literature in an attempt to solve a novel issue in our gardens, even veteran gardeners can feel overwhelmed when encountering the array of advice, especially when it’s sometimes seemingly conflicting and even disparate. A united, deeper whole of understanding provides us a foundation to sift and winnow through this advice. We know what makes sense because we know in general what works in our gardens. We know how to put this advice in the context compared to the most important, fundamental aspects of garden health.
This deeper, united understanding of gardening works the same as it does with any knowledge or skill. Have you ever been bewildered by a medical or mechanical problem, for example—and by the overwhelming “answers” from those with only cursory knowledge of the field—only to have the issue truly illuminated—and all of the disparate advice put into sense-making context—by someone with a deeper, united understanding of the problem? Just like the deeper knowledge of a truly great mechanic or doctor can illuminate a problem in our car or body, a united understanding of the fundamentals of gardening—those that have the greatest impact on garden health—illuminates our understanding of garden problems. For those who’d benefit from a bigger picture to overarch the separate pieces of their gardening, it provides a theoretical framework—a practical, informed underpinning—to the wise practices experts have always done, not only explaining how but also explaining why, uniting these wise practices into a practical whole of the larger context of overall garden health.
Third, for the veterans and even some experts who are looking to make their practices more efficient, this blog, website, and accompanying book give several options and ideas for best practices at differing levels of required time, energy, and exertion. One can take and use discrete parts and benefit their practices in their gardens, but, if one applies it holistically, it provides a blueprint for working as efficiently as possible—in terms of time, effort, and cost—to create the healthiest garden using the gifts provided by the earth free of charge.
Fourth, as experts, you always want to know more. That’s why you’re experts. People who are great at any pursuit, especially the nurturing arts like teaching, coaching, and gardening, are constantly searching for ways to improve their craft. They will beg, borrow, and steal great—or even just good—ideas from anyone and will voraciously seek, devour, and try any new knowledge, “tricks,” or concepts they can find. You will find that same spirit—and hopefully a few new perspectives and nuggets of knowledge—here.
Fifth, even gardening experts and veterans need a gentle reminder every now and then to refocus on the fundamentals, especially in today’s day and age of massively distracting information overload. Maybe you’ve gotten distracted by the plethora of information on plant pests and diseases and have been forgetting to consider the powerful role of the the most prominent fundamentals of gardening in solving these problems. Perhaps, you’ve failed to notice simple but profound effect of increased shade by some growing trees and their detriment to the health of your garden or have otherwise gotten so busy with the details you’ve forgotten the whole picture. These things happen to all of us at times. Therefore, we all can benefit from refocusing every now and then on the fundamentals and their incredible effects on plant growth and health.
As a veterans and experts, you may have to tolerate some wording that’s meant for those newer to the craft, but my hope is there’s much here from which you can benefit.
