01/05/2024
Raking Bad 2024
Jack Cunningham
What if gardening was fun? What if you try something, just to find out what happens? What if you want your beets planted between your petunias? From the video channels and throughout social media, there are literally thousands telling you can’t. There are rules. You wouldn’t be following the rules. Holy cow, didn’t you read the rules? What if they’re wrong?
I had to chuckle recently when I saw an article extolling a “new” trend of “chaos” gardening. “Chaos”. When in fact chaos was taking a bag of mixed seeds and tossing them about randomly, out of season, with no thought whatsoever to who their companion might be, whether or not they face south, or were planted ¼” deep. In other words, nature. Chaos was simply spreading seeds as nature does, then relying on nature to germinate those seeds at the right time, in the conditions best suited for that plant. The plant will do everything it can to grow and successfully reproduce. We take from that our harvest when the plant reaches the stage we prefer.
My wake up began last season after I had followed rules and planted my onions on the perimeter of my tomato beds in good companion form. As the season progressed, my tomatoes grew, and my onions flourished. Then, a day of reckoning arrived. My onions had matured, the tops had laid over as they should, and it was time to cut off the water. How would I stop watering the onions amongst the tomatoes that needed plenty of water? This was the beginning of me questioning rules.
On social media you will find endless commenters, I refer to them as the “finger-waggers”, who will dog-pile to excoriate anyone who suggests, or asks about an alternative to what they “know” as the hard, fast rule if you’re ever going to grow an acceptable turnip. As it turns out, the only rule that holds absolutely true is the one about everybody, opinions and…, well, I’m sure you can finish that on your own.
Gardening really is just harnessing nature, briefly. In the same vein that a w**d is just a plant growing where you don’t want it, gardening is convincing nature to let us have, to some degree, our way. Now this is not to say that we don’t know a lot about what we choose to grow, and there are ways to maximize our results. But there is never just one way. And, I want to encourage you to find yours. Mostly, I want you to not let yourself be intimidated into not trying things you think might work.
January 2024 is a new season in the garden. In the northern hemisphere, this is our time to plan our gardens, order seeds and dream about our harvest. We look at what we’ve done that worked and what didn’t. What can we do that might lead to a better result? This year put aside the fear you might not be doing something by the rules and try what you think might work best for you, in your garden. When you’re on social media, read through the comments, but look for those from gardeners with similar conditions, who’s tone is more of a suggestion and who are relating their own experience. Ignore the mass who have regurgitated an influencers post and now consider themselves experts. In the garden it’s not just the plants growing. We learn, succeed and sometimes fail. But most importantly, we need to keep experimenting, not worry about if we are raking badly, and have fun. We need to let ourselves grow too. (By the way, the tomatoes won.)
