Signs of a neglected garden
[HOST INTRO] In the dead of summer, gardening can feel less like a relaxing diversion than a test of endurance. Enthusiasm fades as the mercury rises. In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand talks to gardening teachers Clay and Josie Erskine about some cures for the summertime gardening blues.
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More signs of a neglected garden (mine)
Josie: I think a lot of people feel guilt that their garden, when it turns a hundred degrees, starts dying. They feel guilty about it.
Hand: Josie Erskine says a lot of gardening guilt sprouts up as temperatures soar this time of year. But she has some advice.
Josie: You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, ’cause gardening isn’t always about making it through a full season.
Hand: She says you should adjust your gardening goals to reflect your personality.
Josie: Sometimes when you start a garden what you realize is I only like to garden in the spring. That’s when I like to garden. I don’t even like to garden in the fall. And I think embrace that. Embrace the fact that you’re a spring gardener.
Letting a summer garden go fallow may make you a happier gardener
Clay: You can also, like Josie was saying, just plant a spring garden . . .
Hand: That’s Clay Erskine
Clay: . . . and then come late June, early July, pull it out, put some straw down there and just let it go fallow for the summer. The weeds won’t grow if you don’t put water on it and then come spring, that will have broken down enough, you can just work that straw into the soil and plant your spring garden again.
Hand: Clay says, you could also plant a low maintenance cover crop. But if you want vegetables through the whole season, Josie suggests planting a small garden that’s closely connected to your daily life.
The best decision might sometimes be to put down that hoe and head for the river
Josie: Look at your path from where you step out of your car or get your mail to your front door. Sometimes we put our ornamentals in that area, but really maybe if you have sun there that my be some of the best places to put your vegetables, because you walk past those multiple times a day. It will make the maintaining of those things a lot easier, especially if you don’t have to walk out your back door and walk far across the yard. If they’re just right there you can give them a drink of water before you even walk in your house.
(Music fades in) Hand: After all, most of us don’t garden for survival. We garden for the satisfaction. But when summer temperatures start to burn that out, Clay and Josie Erskine suggest one more thing.
Josie: Just garden for fun, if that’s what you like to do is garden for fun and every year you feel frustrated in August when it’s just a big singed up thing, get over it, you’re gardening for fun.
(Hand) For The Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture.
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