By the time you read this you may feel you are already behind – behind in starting indoor seeds, in laying out your beds, in finding area native plants sales to continue your work restoring nature to your yard.
March is when I sit down and take stock of what seeds I have from last year, buy some on-line at organic nurseries or replace some supplies. March is when I know winter is nearing its end, but I wait for other snow shoe to drop. Hints of spring show in the spikes of green exposed and worm-robbing robins scratch up my leaf cover. But since our zone has moved from 5 to 6a, climate change makes a reliably 50 degrees or above weather for a planting start a fugitive target.
April is the compressed month when the ground quickens and so do our gardening hearts. April is when I enter with glee my favorite local nursery to find starter tomatoes, but it seems like gardeners with a more finely tuned garden clock have already moved through like hungry locusts.
I’ll write this column as the passionate amateur gardener that I am. I will share experiences, point you to resources and be an advocate for creating ever-larger pockets of nature so we are connected through our yards, neighborhood by neighborhood. I am proud of how big my knowledge leaps are – but I’m not above sharing with you some of my embarrassing experiments of years past. We learn by doing.
I started my Wauwatosa garden in earnest eight years ago, after long-distance gardening for nearly 10. Those early efforts were heroic even if misguided, and included having the neighbor’s huge tree, slumping into our yard, removed. Once that eye-level tree canopy was out, we removed all the sucker trees and weedy vines. The yard was so disturbed I mowed with a weed whacker. Only on moving back to town in 2017 did I work seriously to bring the yard to life through food and flowers.
I dug the ground by hand, putting in one, then three, now five rows of five each of the 3 foot by 3 foot raised containers for food. My planting in these raised beds has shifted over the years, from 18 tomato plants one year (I was chasing down strangers in the street to force produce on them) to six last year, with more flowers, lettuces and the occasional “how does that grow?” plant. I’ve experimented with nature by sowing adzuki beans, cucamelons and okra just to know how they grow. I didn’t have enough light for any of them to do well, but that’s the lesson.
It isn’t just the plants in my yard that grow with all this work. I am growing too, learning how to be a better steward of this small patch of land for all the creatures that depend on it for food and shelter. In 2017 my yard was mostly invasive plants and sucker trees. Today, the native parts of my yard shake with buzzing life, and my compost investments keep food waste from the landfill. I am working towards 75% native plants in my front and back yard, with blooms across the seasons for early food, as hosts for larvae and leaving habitat for overwintering. Every year I keep trying, and I’ll share my list of improvements with you over the coming months.
We gardeners are poised to get to work – just don’t get in our way, we have sharp tools in our hands!
A Few Gardening Resources
BUYING PLANTS
EDUCATION
SUSTAINABLE GARDEN INFORMATION
