People tell me all the time that I have a green thumb. I demur, and tell them there is no such thing...that there's only a stiff back at the end of the day. But, they protest, everything you plant seems to grow...your garden always looks beautiful.
Well, not always...and this is one of those years when I'm the first to admit it...it looks pretty sad.
Farming is just gardening on a commercial scale. And both farming and gradening do take some skill and knowledge...much more so in the case of farming than gardening, simply because of the scale of the endeavor.. But I think it also boils down to discipline, as well as skill. To attribute one gardener's success to the possession of some elusive "Green Thumb" sort of discounts the effort that goes into the process, and attributes it instead to the luck of the draw.
Yet, there is an undeniable aspect of luck involved in both farming and vegetable gardening. Whether you are a rural gardener with a large garden, or an aspiring urban gardener, with just a few plants, the same basic rules apply.
Do what needs to be done, know your soil, keep an eye on the weather, be diligent and don't be lazy. Vegetables will almost always result when you plant a garden, but bumper crops usually require some work. And, it can't be denied, luck.
A good poker player can mitigate his or her losses over a game where he consistently gets dealt bad cards, but he will still lose. Gardening is the exact same way.
Weather is The House, and The House always wins. It always sort of bugs me when people tell me I have a green thumb...they seem to be suggesting that I sprinkle angel dust on my plants instead of weeding them, inspecting them for predatory insects, fertilizing them, watering them, and paying attention to what the weather forecast for the next week looks like.
I do all of those things...and none of them have anything, whatsoever, to do with the color of my thumbs....which, I can assure you, are exactly the same color as yours.
Country singer Kenny Rogers' biggest hit song was "The Gambler." One of the lines of that song is "You've gotta know when to hold 'em, and know when to fold 'em."
As I watch this drought unfold in the Midwest, and see the toll it has taken on farmers, the wisdom of that one song line resonates with me. I can't imagine the weight, the pressure of the bad cards that have been dealt so many farmers, that they would take a hand of cards they held back in March, and held onto for months, before finally admitting to themselves that the cards are shit, and there's no rational option other than folding.
It goes against every instinct in their bodies, I suspect. For the urban gardener, the occasional vegetable planter who quickly attributes his or her failures to amateurism and a brown thumb, I have this to say: Sometimes you can take up a hobby or a pastime at the wrong time, and sometimes you don't have the dedication to make it successful...but gardening is a learning experience. Nobody is born with a green thumb. They enjoy what they are doing, and they pay attention to what worked and what didn't...they spend a little time at it, sometimes they even keep records to remind themselves of what they did and what happened.
Green Thumbs are acquired through trial and error, and perseverance, and joy from the contact with the earth. Not through DNA or some Plant Fairie. If at first you don't succeed...as the saying goes...try, try again. (And remember what you may have done wrong last time.)
My tomatoes are not looking so hot this year, and I live in the Pacific Northwest, where we have escaped the weather extremes that the rest of the country is dealing with. In fact, though I scaled back considerably on vegetables this year, and reverted to flowers in much of my growing spaces...even the flowers aren't looking all that fine.
I've done pretty much everything I know to do, and I'm a pretty decent gardener. It's just been a weird year in many ways. Sometimes in draw poker you get dealt 5 shitty cards, discard three of them, and get dealt 3 even shittier cards. That's the nature of the game. It doesn't mean you're a bad poker player. And if you are a beginning gardener, a couple of disappointing seasons doesn't mean you have a brown thumb. It's not as easy as that.
You have to learn from your mistakes, as well as learn from your successes. And most importantly, you have to know your soil and weather. Here in the PNW, we are cursed with heavy clay soils. It takes a lot of input to amend them. You can bring in a truckload of horse manure, as I have done, and a unit of compost, as I have done, and you can still end up with what nature bestowed upon you: heavy clay soils. It takes time to transform what nature has wrought into a growing medium that is ideal.
I am probably going to allow my garden to go fallow next year. I plan on planting a cover crop of red clover this fall, allowing it to grow through the winter and ealy spring, and rototilling it under, and the planting a spring green manure crop to do the same thing. If I have the money, I'll still order a load of horse manure, which is easily found on Craigslist...If there are horse owners or stables in your area, there are people who have manure to dispose of. You can easily contract with another Craigslist "hauler" to pick up a truckload for free, and drop it off at your place for about 75 bucks or less. It beats buying it by the bag from your local box store.
But it all begins will the soil. Good soil = good gardens, or good farms. Bad soil = disappointment. If you are knowlegeable about clay soils and mulch and keep the moist, you can mitigate that disappointment, and minimize your yield loss in weather such as much as the country is experiencing, and if you don't, you are likely to end up with a gardening let down.
Don't let that dissuade you from pursuing gardening, whether it be for flowers or vegetables. It has nothing to do with your having a "Brown Thumb." There is no such thing.
There's only a gardener who is determined to do better next year than this year, and is observant of what took place and what they did. Gardening, or farming, for that matter, isn't about innate talent, or mystical qualities...it's about paying attention to details, and getting down on your hands and knees when it's required. Laziness and gardening do not mix. Gardening is no country for lazy men. Nor is it, I should add, slavery.
It's just vigilence. And care. And a desire to see something grow and thrive. And, most importantly, the smug determination to have the first, and the largest, tomato crop in the neighborhood.
I don't have a Green thumb, but boy do I have the swagger that comes from absolutely smoking everyone else when it comes to my tomato crop. (Or corn crop, for that matter). Yes...for geeks like me, there is a certain reward in that.
But it's not the point of gardening. And I don't encourage you to follow in those footsteps. Just grow something. And if it doesn't grow well, read up a bit on it, and learn from your mistakes, if you made any. You very well might not have made any...some years are just shitty that way, and if that's the year you decide to dive into the deep end of the gardening pool, I can see where it could be discouraging, and you would internalize the experience by saying "I'm not cut out for gardening."
We all are cut out for gardening, unless we absolutely hate dirt. Give it 3 years...and try to learn from the experience, as opposed to becoming discouraged from it.
Nobody is born with a green thumb...they acquire it over time. And it's more like a green brain, and a green eyesight. The thumb has nothing to do with it.
And as for this year...my condolensces go out to so many who probably put a lot of effort into what they hoped would be a productive vegetable garden, only to see the rug jerked out from underneath their feet by the weather.
That's poker. And that's gardening, and that's farming.
What's the take away lesson? Cause there always is one. What will you do next year?
For my part...I won't plant plant my tomatoes quite so early...I will buy the starts as 4 inchers and transplant them into one gallon pots, so that they can get more developed roots and grow taller before putting them into the ground. That way, I can trim more bottom leaves and plant them deeper, hoping for a more established root system.
That's living and learning.