For beginning gardeners: sun and soil

Jill Severn portrait

Finally, a spell of good weather will send both new and old gardeners into rapture. When the spring sun comes out, the sap doesn’t just rise in the trees. It feels as if every living thing in the world around us also rises. All that is alive becomes more alive. And pity the people who aren’t paying attention and who miss out on this surge of joy and new life.

Here’s a story about someone who wasn’t paying any attention: Once I was a guest on a radio talk show in Vancouver B. C., and a caller asked if he could grow tomatoes on his apartment balcony. I asked him what direction it faced. He didn’t know. He had not paid attention to what times of day his balcony was sunny. When he went outside, he had never noticed where the sun came up or went down.

I was glad we were on radio and not TV, so he didn’t see my jaw drop. He was glad to know that these were important questions and that he could answer them just by looking. He was going to start by observing where the sun was when he left his building to go to work in the morning.

Now that’s a beginning gardener. We hope by now he’s had successful tomato crops and improved vision. Most new gardeners can take comfort in already knowing more than that benighted person in Vancouver.

Paying attention paves the path to success in the garden, and to fully experiencing the joy of spring.

So here are some basic things to pay attention to, starting from the ground up.

Soil

Soil is wonderfully complicated: The list of vital plant nutrients in it is as long as your arm, and there is a whole world of living organisms in our dirt that even soil scientists have yet to fully understand. Fortunately, most gardeners can get away with learning the basics, covered in this previous garden column. And if we have soil problems, the Thurston County Conservation District will test our soil for $25, or $48 if you want the deluxe test. Thurston County also has a website with useful advice.

You can also learn a lot by playing with your dirt: You can see, smell, feel and squeeze handfuls of it to assess whether it’s too rocky, too sour, too sticky, too soggy or too compacted.

Adding compost or manure every year before you plant is the gardener’s go-to practice to improve your soil. If you have your own compost pile or your own manure-producing horses, cows, sheep, goats or chickens, you are blessed.

If you need to buy compost and/or manure, life is more complicated. Buying these products by the cubic yard will make you wish you owned a pickup; the delivery fees are the biggest share of the cost. But if you have to buy compost, manure or soil for raised beds from a nursery or big-box store, you might need to get a bank loan for that, too.

Sun

We sure do love sun, especially now, when we’ve been starved for it. But watching how the sun tracks across your garden this month can be misleading, because by the summer solstice, it will be on a different route. Shady spots will be in different locations. As the sun moves higher and to the north in the sky, heading towards the summer solstice, there will be a dramatic difference in where it lands. After the summer solstice, it will reverse course – or more accurately, the earth will tilt the other way.

So paying attention for the whole growing season is essential to understanding how sunlight touches down in a different place in June than it does this month.  Then, as the summer progresses, you can gauge how your plants respond and which might need to grow in a different location next year.

Space and Time

There are many ways to think about our place in time: Astronomical time, geologic time, our time in human history . . . the time it takes for seeds to sprout, grow and bear flowers, fruit or vegetables . . . and how much time you have to tend a garden.

All that can keep your brain busy for quite a while.

Beginning gardeners often underestimate how much time is required, and plant bigger gardens than they can manage. That’s not a catastrophe, but it can be frustrating. One solution is to make a garden smaller; the other is to spend more time gardening. Naturally, the latter is the better choice.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com