Beware the gardening expert, because in truth, we’re all gardening experts – and perpetual learners.

Gardening Experts

I just finished participating in an interview for Hobby Farms magazine on seed starting. I don’t know which, if any, of the information I shared from my personal experience will appear in the magazine. But it felt rather odd to be interviewed for Hobby Farms.  I first subscribed to that publication over a decade ago. I found a copy of the magazine on a newsstand in Penn Station one evening while waiting for my train; of all the places to find a hobby farming magazine, I’d put Penn Station in New York City dead last on the list, but there it was.

Hobby Farms fueled my dreams for owning my own hobby farm someday. Here I am today, being interviewed for the same publication that inspired my own dreams of living in the country. God has a great sense of humor; I always sense loving irony in the universe. I’ve written personal essays where I’ve described “my life always comes full circle” and here’s another example of that – the magazine that fueled my dream is now asking me to comment so I can fuel others’ dreams.  I shake my head in wonder and mingled fear. How did I suddenly become quotable? Does this mean I have to hide the dead plants when the neighbors come to visit?

I think that all gardeners are both experts and perpetual novices. For everything you learn, you discover there are a 100 new things to learn. Gardening is one of those things you just sort of learn by doing. I learn more from my mistakes than anything else. For example, my potato mistake.  I never grew potatoes before; this year, I’ve harvested not one but two crops.  John dug up another 20 pounds or so this past week.  Although I thought I’d harvested all of them back in July, clearly I missed some little spuds, and they decided they knew better than me and flourished, producing a bumper crop.  I got some tips from my neighbor Mel, who gave me the original batch of seed potatoes, a bag of sulfur, and some advice, but it’s really been trial and error.  I have a feeling I’m going to be digging potatoes from that bed for a long time to come.

The first year I moved to Virginia I read in some ‘expert’ book that cabbage could be planted in the spring here, so I raced around planting cabbage, broccoli and all the fall crops I knew from Long Island. Talk about a disaster. Well, it was a disaster for me but not for the cabbage moths, who really feasted on the sudden early spring growth of their favorite plant. I think I supplied the whole moth larvae population of south central Virginia with food that year. I remember picking a head of cabbage and dumping it in the sink, only to pick little yellow worms out of it.  Eeew!

This year, I did the smart thing; I talked to neighbors and asked them when they planted their cabbage and broccoli.  I asked one local fellow whose family has farmed these parts since the late 1700s. Now if he doesn’t know the answer, nobody will.  He said plant it in the fall.  I’ve got beautiful heads of cabbage and broccoli ready to eat out in the garden now, and probably some annoyed insects, but tough luck – we’ll eat the cabbage, thank you!

No matter what I grow, I’m always growing. Experience teaches us gardening; we garden writers and teachers just transmit the knowledge.