Growing Food: An Introduction

Although my dad had small gardens in a couple of our houses when I was a kid, I didn't start gardening myself until we moved to Blackrock and I had a GIANT established vegetable garden at my feet. I learned a lot from the MiL, and made a lot of my own mistakes.

Then we moved. And we have had a garden in the three houses we've lived in since: on the Canadian border, in a narrow strip in front of our house in a tiny northern New Mexico village, and here, where we started with bare dirt that seemed devoid of life. 

All those years and all those houses have had gardens, and I have grown food. It's what I do.

Also what I do is take an excessive number of photos of things I grew (and then ate).

People have asked me quite a few times over these fifteen or so years how I garden. Although I've written a lot about my gardens, I've never written about my actual process much. I decided to do it this year, though, because it really drives me crazy that most of the things written about gardening seem to imply that it takes a lot of start-up money for products.

It doesn't have to. I've never had a fancy set-up for seed starting, but I always start seeds. I've never tested my soil, but my plants grow. I don't have a drip system for watering, tomato cages, or even a trowel I can find reliably (thanks, kids). 

Maybe I would have bigger harvests if I had those things, but even without them, I still grow food.

I'm not an expert gardener, but I have found that seeds really want to grow. Really! It's their destiny! All you need to provide for them is a good-enough environment. It doesn't even need to be perfect. Plants have a great survival drive, and will grow and produce food even in non-optimal conditions. Maybe not as much food, but always some.

Tomatoes grown without benefit of soil blocks, garden grow lights, purchased amendments, or a pH tester.

I'm not the sort of person who enjoys keeping data and being precise about things. So I don't do that. I have found over the years the way that works for me, and that is the minimal input needed to produce at least some output. Sort of lazy gardening, I suppose, although that's actually an oxymoron. Growing things is hard work, even with shortcuts.

I suppose my gardening philosophy can be summed up thusly: Grow food with the least amount of expense and effort possible.

With that in mind, tune in tomorrow for the beginning of our garden year: Seeds!