Jessica Sowards - The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables: All the know-how and encouragement you need to grow--and fall in love with!--your brand new food garden

ALL THE KNOW-HOW AND ENCOURAGEMENT YOU NEED TO GROW

and fall in love with!

YOUR BRAND-NEW FOOD GARDEN

JESSICA SOWARDS

OF ROOTS AND REFUGE FARM

I do not believe that anyone actually has a black thumb. A gardener may be slightly distracted, underinformed, a little neglectful, or may have been dealt a bad hand of circumstances. Whatever the issue, it can be amended. You can be a gardener. You and your thumb can grow food.

I used to claim to have a black thumb, and for a while, I was genuinely convinced that I could not garden. I would say that if my mothers home was a rehab center where even the sickest plants could go and live, mine was the hospice where they went to die. I killed a tremendous amount of plants.

My first food garden was an 8 10-foot (2.4 3 m) patch of soil that I cultivated by hand in my suburban backyard in my early 20s. Even though I considered myself a black-thumbed plant murderer, I had been wooed yet again by the seasonal displays of plants and seeds at the local home improvement store. I had very little money and even less knowledge, but what I lacked in those departments, I made up for in zeal and pigheaded determination. I would be a gardener, I decided.

It took a solid 2 days of work to rip out the grass and dig the rocks out of the soil with hand tools. I exhausted my entire budget on a dozen started plants, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and one lone basil. As I put them in the ground, I began to feel a little hope. My shoulders were sunburned, and my back was screaming. But maybe my thumb wasnt so black after all.

Then it began to rain and continued to do so for 17 consecutive days. The local news talked about the record-breaking rainfall. The river breached its banks, farmers lost their spring crops, and in my suburban backyard, my very first garden died a watery death.

Thank you for allowing me to be your teacher and guide on your journey to becoming a vegetable gardener.

Ive always felt that having a garden is like having a good and loyal friend. C. Z. Guest

The garden and I may not have had a very smooth start, but now, we are very dear friends. In growing food, I have found one of my greatest passions. These days, my garden is an expanse of over 10,000 square feet (929 m2). Within its fences, I grow a large majority of my familys vegetable needs. Its still hard work, and I still fail and kill plants. However, I have no qualms in calling myself a gardener.

As the years have passed and my harvest baskets have seen overflowing bounty, Ive found another passion in the garden: I love encouraging other people to take the first step of their food-growing journey. Planting the love of gardening in the hearts of others is almost as thrilling to me as tucking seeds into the soil. Seeing a harvest of gardeners gushing over their successes and overcoming their failures brings me almost as much joy as a basket full of sun-warmed tomatoes sitting on my kitchen table.

There are few things in life quite as thrilling and rewarding as a seedling breaking through the soil, tiny fruits forming on plants, and a plate of food that you grew yourself. This will be a journey, and you will never fully arrive. The garden is a continual classroom for anyone who is determined to be a continual student. For this first stage of your journey, it is my great honor to be your teacher.

WELCOME
to the
CLASSROOM

Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo. Jon Sinclair

M ore than anything else, as a teacher of gardening, I want to create a space where there is grace to learn. Sometimes I find myself reiterating basic phrases like, If you dont know something, you dont know it! This should not be a profound statement, but for whatever reason, in our modern-day society, people are intimidated and ashamed by their own ignorance.

To be ignorant is to simply be uneducated in a matter. Its okay if you are ignorant about gardening. It has not been a normal part of our education. It has not been an integral part of most of our upbringing. Its okay that you havent learned this before, but I am so proud and thankful that you are learning it now. There are no dumb questions here.

You made the choice to read this book. You are making the choice to become a gardener. You are choosing to be a student, to take the approach of constant observation, learning, and growing.

This is not a pass/fail class. You do not garden for a season and turn your harvest in at the end to receive your final grade. Its not a college course that must be repeated if it isnt passed. Make no mistake, you will have failures.

In fact, I hope you overcome spectacular failures in your journey, because people who fail big are people who took big chances and tried new things. These are the people who end up making new discoveries and developing new methods. The key, I have found, is to fail in a forward motion. If something doesnt work, make observations, change variables, and try again.

Growing your own food is such a thrilling and empowering endeavor. You can have lots of success in your first year of gardening, and Im excited to help you. However, you will be harvesting more than meals from your garden this year. You will also be harvesting wisdom.

Growing your own food is an empowering act. Yes, it takes time and effort, but its well worth it.

Understand that with every lesson, every mistake, every success, every harvest, every spectacular failure, you are growing a gardener. Yes, you. This year, instead of stating that you have decided to have a garden, state that you have decided to become a gardener. Every good gardener is still learning, adapting to the weather, troubleshooting issues, and growing in skill year after year, season after season.

You will learn so many lessons during your first gardening season. You may learn how large tomato plants get (very large!), or how fast okra grows (very fast!), or how many cucumbers can grow on a single plant (very many!). You will learn how to judge whether soil is damp enough, and you will probably have at least one moment where you look at an insect and think, What the heck is that?