September is the start of a whole new season. The tendrils of winter are slowly being shaken off, and by the middle of the month, we will be officially welcoming the spring.
For me, it is a bittersweet time. Although I am beside myself with joy seeing all those new shoots and buds, smelling the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow blooms, and just generally basking in the warmer weather, the new season is a time of planning, seeing the rewards of hard work, and embracing the sadness of letting go.
Over the past almost 3 years of growing my own vegetable garden, I’ve been reminded of many lessons. Just as life is about timing, patience and letting go, nowhere is this philosophy more prevalent than in the vegetable patch.
A Lesson in Timing
Anyone tending to a garden of any kind, particularly a garden grown from seed, knows that timing is the essence of success. For vegetable gardening, if your timing is out of whack, you can end up with a late crop. Â
I’ve found that teaching myself when to start new seeds has been rather difficult, especially since our seasons are a little upside down. I always think I have enough time to start planting seeds right until the autumn is almost upon us and I realise I have no new seedlings on the go.
Considering that it can take around 3 months to harvest things like broccoli and cauliflower, I’d definitely starve at the rate I have been going.
When working a vegetable garden, you learn to appreciate the passing of time and you learn to love every season. You learn the value of time and just how important it is to plan properly. It also gives you a greater appreciation for past civilizations and the planning they needed to do just to have access to consistent food supplies.
A Lesson in Patience
Growing a vegetable garden is a lesson in patience because it takes time to perfect and even more time to give you anything.
From planting your seeds to planting out the resulting seedlings, it can take months, and during the time in between, if you are a like me, you’ll be spending most of that time on the edge of your seat, constantly checking on the seedlings to see how they are getting on.
Once the little plants are in the ground, it can take a further few months to harvest your food. And during that time you’ll be watering, fertilizing and weeding.
I can faff over my vegetables to the point that I can spend an hour a day checking them and even talking to them. I make no apologies, they are my babies.
There are also other times you will need to be patient. Waiting for rain or waiting for a warmer new season, is something that will have you treasuring each moment but also eager to get started with new plants.
The patience that you will develop can be almost meditative, and something that you can apply to other areas of your life. You will learn more about how patience can be key to success and it can definitely help you develop an attitude of gratitude, yeah I’m using that cliché, I’m down with the kids.Â
A Lesson in Letting Go
At this time of year, my winter greens are dying and the summer seedlings are ready to go. I use the time before spring to start making way for the new seedlings but each plant I pull up feels like a piece of me.
Having spent the last 6 months or so caring for the plants, nurturing them from seed to maturity, now at their death, I am at absolute pains at having to remove them after all we have been through. This year has been particularly difficult, as I tended my garden a little more regularly than usual, after an unseasonal hail storm in June almost wiped out my garden completely.
Ideally, I’d love my plants to live forever, but as with all things in life, everything dies and the old plants have to make way for the new.
Pulling my few plants is always a ridiculous emotional struggle, and I normally end up leaving them way past their production stage as I anguish over the thought of losing my hard work. But at the end, if I want to have space for new plants that will be productive, it is just another gardening task I must do.
In this global chaos, planting and tending to my garden has been a mental relief. It feels impossible to avoid news that seems so intent on creating a depressed and anxious society, but solitude in the garden, even though I don’t have the biggest space, has been a blessing I wake up grateful for each day, for both the lessons it teaches me and the peace it bestows on me.
