I’m no pro, but I’m savoring the little joys as I learn.
And just like that, there goes the summer! After a long hiatus, I’m happy to be back on the blog, chronicling my adventures in homemaking as the later summer sun shines through my living room window.
Since moving to Virginia in December, I’ve been learning and re-learning many things about creating a home environment that can help my family thrive. Besides the basic settling in and getting acquainted with neighbors, there are new goals and skills I’d like to develop. One of them is (drum roll, please) … gardening.
I’ve never had a green thumb (or at least, I’ve never really tried to see if I have one!), but I’ve always admired those who keep backyard vegetable gardens and have dreamed of having one of my own. So when we arrived at in Virginia and discovered that we were inheriting a beautiful little herb garden on one side of our new house, I was delighted — and determined to keep it going.
Thankfully, the previous owners gave me a head start. The box garden was sturdy and well-sized, and it still had a rosemary bush (which, I later discovered, is fairly difficult to grow from seeds!). After the winter months, I found that some thyme and spearmint had also survived. All this gave me the boost I needed to dive in and learn about herb gardening. While I’m still very much a beginner, here are a few takeaways I picked up this spring and summer.
1. Find the “why.”
“Why start a garden?” The answer to this question is very personal, but it’s important to answer before beginning! I knew that if I were going to go through all the time and effort trying to garden just for Instagram likes, my career as a gardener wouldn’t last very long.
There could be many reasons to grab the shovel and spade, from the therapeutic effects of fresh air and manual labor to the satisfying results of colorful and fragrant blooms. Here are my big “why’s” for herb gardening:
- Fresh ingredients. Personally, I’ve always loved the idea of garden-to-table ingredients. Besides the freshness and opportunity to save money, it offers a sense of ownership and connection to the food that I’m providing my family and friends.
- Nature connection. There’s no denying that spending time outside in the fresh air is a boost to physical and mental health. Gardening is a great motivator to get off the couch and get in touch with the great outdoors through multiple senses. Feeling the dirt, smelling the herbs, and later (of course!) tasting how they enhance a dish or drink can be both relaxing and invigorating.
- Human connection. My toddlers love helping me in the garden, from digging in the dirt to watering the plants. It’s a great way to have fun together and also do something productive. A garden is also a great way to bring friends together. Communal gardens are already popular in many neighborhoods, so why not bring the idea to a backyard? I love the idea of inviting friends over to plant their own seedlings, share the harvest (which is often more than enough for my table!), and enjoy each other’s company.
Of course, all of this removes the convenience of grocery store herbs, but I have hope that the extra steps will bring more joy and satisfaction to preparing, serving, and enjoying meals with my family and friends.
2. Research — but not too much.
As glorious as my gardening dreams were, I didn’t know anything about preparing soil, hardening-off seedlings, or harvesting rosemary. I needed some help.
Thankfully, there’s no shortage of gardening guidance out there. In fact, there’s an abundance. After skimming several blogs and getting several books from the library on herb gardening, I realized that if I read everything before beginning…I might never begin!
The mountain of information can be overwhelming. After figuring out exactly what I wanted to learn first (for me, the nuts and bolts of gardening herbs), I decided to limit my resources to one book (appropriately, Herb Gardening for Dummies) and one blog (epicgardening.com), at least to start out. Otherwise, I knew I could get sucked into rabbit holes looking for the verified answer to each of my questions. Keeping it simple helped me move from the sofa to the soil.
3. One step at a time
It was easy to imagine having every herb under the sun blossom in my garden bed overnight. But I soon found that each herb has its own needs, so if I was to care for each one well, I needed to start small. Sure, there might be lots of “beginner herbs” out there, but if I could achieve the small success of helping one, maybe two flourish, then I would have the confidence to venture further.
Besides, even for one plant, there are a host of things to keep in mind: watering, pruning, warding off pests, harvesting, and transferring inside for the colder months if necessary. Then there are the “bonus skills” that seem ideal for a “real” gardener: growing from the seed, making your own compost, collecting rain water, etc. There are any number of skills, but if we start to think that we need to pursue them all at once, it’s going to be very difficult to begin — and very easy to call it quits.
So, even though I hadn’t finished “Gardening for Dummies,” I made a trip to the local garden nursery, picked out an Italian oregano plant, and took it home. I also bought some basic tools to get started, including a small shovel and rake, gardening gloves, and a watering can. I also decided to buy some compost instead of making it. Maybe that’s a future phase in my gardening journey, but for now, this approach helped me get out of the research phase and simply dive in. I can learn more as I go.
4. Enjoy the small rewards.
Even though my herb garden is still a new thing for me, I didn’t want to wait until it seemed “perfect” before I began enjoying it with my family. Thanks to the already mature plants that had been there to welcome us, as well as my adopted oregano plant, we could start enjoying fresh herbs almost as soon as the warm weather came around.
It’s wonderful to be able to snip some rosemary, thyme, and oregano and enjoy them in a roast chicken or soup that evening! Not only do they add a fresh flavor, but also just knowing that they came from right outside instead of a grocery aisle adds a hint of pleasure and pride to the meal. It’s enough to keep me hooked on this gardening adventure.
5. Be patient.
Gardening, I’m finding, is a wonderful skill to learn, but it also has to be integrated into a life with many other tasks and priorities. This spring and summer, the beautiful reality of pregnancy with baby #3 meant that my attention was often turned away from the herb garden, but I didn’t mind. I simply had other, amazing tasks to attend to (including taking naps and eating saltines for survival)!
So even though my dream of regular spring gardening turned into regularly watching the herbs grow on their own and occasionally watering, fertilizing, and harvesting them, I still am so glad I started to try. The garden will always be there. I didn’t have to give up learning the skill, but I just needed to go at a slower pace.
In the end, the only new herb I contributed to my inherited herb garden was some Italian oregano that I got from a garden nursery — but hey, it grew a lot, and I didn’t kill it! (See the before and after pictures above — hooray!) I’ll take that as a success. I still have many dreams for my herb garden, but I have other dreams too. I’ll keep chipping away at each of them, hoping that those that are meant to be will blossom in their own due time.
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