Lessons I've learned from the garden this spring
All growth is good. Even when it's spindly, weak and slow.
I give so much credit goes to my mom and dad for the reverence of nature they instilled in me from a young age.
Me, age 5: Crouched in a mint bush as I carefully set up twigs to make the most perfectly hospitable home for fairies.
Me, age 8: Counting the number of rings on a tree stump at the local forest preserve’s ‘Woodlands’ summer camp—and eager to go back, day after day.
Me, age 14: Muttering benign curse words under my breath as I spread mulch and weed my mom’s garden on Mother’s Day.
Me, age 23: Stunned into silence on my road trip out west upon seeing mountains for the first time in my life.
Me, age 29: Elbow-deep in rich compost as I prepare my small community garden plot for another season.
Growing up alongside nature was a gift—one that taught me just as many lessons, perhaps, as my own parents could teach me.
Lesson #1: Our experiences echo the symmetry of the garden.
I’m overcome with emotion every single time I welcome a fresh, new seedling to this side of the soil. Against all odds, a seed germinated, then put down tenacious enough roots to anchor it as new, fragile growth pushed its way to the light, by which point it perhaps suspected the hard part was mostly over with.
But there’s still so much to be done: gather nutrients, grow true leaves, develop flowers and fruit. And it all needs to be done while standing strong through the elements and defending against pests.
By September, there’s a good chance that very same seedling will have grown into a weathered old plant. But it also will have yielded delicious and nutrient-dense food before calling it quits at the first frost.
There’s a lovely symmetry to the garden. A fragile seedling returns to a fragile state toward the end of its life, blooming with strength and bounty somewhere in the middle. I think it speaks to the ebbs and flows in strength and vulnerability we all experience through our lives—starting out as babies, relying on care from those around us, then at the end, returning to that same childlike state of dependency, and this cyclical experience happens in pockets throughout the years, too.
Lesson #2: Plant more than you need.
Each year, I enter a frenzied state in February. This is around the time that I begin planning and plotting for the gardening season ahead. What am I excited to eat this summer? What did I learn from last season?
Then it’s time to start sowing seeds and I always follow the same formula. Whatever I’m most excited to enjoy, I sow double or even triple. If there are veggies that fall in the category of nice to have, I’ll give them an unserious whirl. It’s a low-pressure balance of acknowledging the fickle presence of luck and nurturing what you’re eager to collect on down the road.
There are times when I sow double and am still left with nothing usable for the garden. This past year, I was desperately excited to plant my favorite tomato varieties. I had a full tray of tomato seedlings, and one by one, they died off for one reason or another. I had no tomatoes and it was so disappointing to admit failure. I ended up finding a lady on Facebook Marketplace who was selling a Sungold tomato starter, which was the variety I decided I couldn’t live without for even one gardening season.
In the past, I’d chalk it all up to luck—whether I got an outcome I sought or not. Gardening has taught me that you can do all the things right and it still may not turn out the way you wanted, but that isn’t an admission of failure after all.
If I care about something, I put down extra seeds and work hard to make them all grow. And if none of them do, it’s time to mastermind plan B.
Lesson #3: Don’t squash something until you know what it is.
It was a rainy spring, and with wetter conditions came a new variety of pests. Earwigs, spiders galore, green stink bugs, leafhoppers, grasshoppers, and more. I had never had an abundance of earwigs in my garden before, and now, they collected beneath the foliage of my sugar snap peas.
I will be the first to admit, I have minimal tolerance for pests and don’t always take their presence in stride. My community garden is 100% organic and the same goes for pest control.
While I believe “we all must share a little” when it comes to gardening (after all, we are creating abundant ecosystems for many living things) I do get disappointed from time to time when I discover a hornworm on my tomato plant or an abundance of aphids hiding in my cabbage leaves.
So when I discovered a high concentration of tiny yellow oblong eggs underneath a pea leaf, I didn’t hesitate to smush them. I didn’t even give them a second thought besides snapping a quick photo for later investigation.
And I should have.
Later, once I decided to be curious, I Googled the pest that was responsible for these eggs. Turns out, those were ladybug eggs.
…Yep. I winced—did you? Some lovely ladybugs determined my garden was a safe place and was a good source of food, and they mated. I decimated a leaf-full of would-be ladybugs, a coveted beneficial insect in nearly every garden across the globe.
I wish I was exaggerating when I say I lost sleep over this blunder. But it taught an important lesson in giving the benefit of the doubt. Perceived risk is powerful in swaying overreactions.
To complicate things, these eggs were very similar to cabbage moth eggs. If I had left them, could they have hatched into little worms that would have munched through my cabbages and brassicas? Perhaps. But they also could hatched into an insect I love to welcome into my garden any day.
Next time, a little patience and some forethought would have done me (and the garden) some good. That goes for so many experiences in this particular season of life I’m in: let’s not go squashing things before I have the chance to learn what they might become.