Looking Forward to Gardening Season!

We have reached what is typically the coldest part of the winter, when it seems like all of nature lies dormant, and that is also when I really start looking forward to the start of gardening season!

No, I'm not referring to "yard work," I'm talking about the growing vegetable garden we have been working on since about 2012.

Although they were by no means "alternative," nor hippies, my parents kept a large kitchen garden. Their reasoning was simply that home grown was so much better than the food you could typically get from the local shops.

So I basically grew up with the idea of getting my hands dirty and making things grow, and it remains one of my favorite ways to "decompress" when the rest of the world feels stressful and overwhelming.

Of course, we can't really do much more than plan for a while yet. Typically the average last time for snowfall and hard freezes is around March 10th, so that is still about a month out. Even as I write these words, there's a bit of fresh snow coming down!

The beginning of last season's tomatoes

Growing food here in Washington state is so very different from my experience doing so where I lived in Texas, before moving here. In many ways, gardening is easier in this temperate climate vs. Texas, where everything gets baked to death by the summer heat, and most things don't even have a growing season beyond April or May.

On the other hand, I've had to learn the ways of a whole new set of pests and plant diseases typical of cool wet climates. Not to mention the eternal plague of slugs and snails!

But — as much as anything — what I really enjoy is just the process of growing something, whether it leads to a bumper crop or just a handful of veggies.

Since it is still a while before gardening is "on", I will likely be starting some seedlings in the garage to get a jump on things. I remember we used to do that back in Denmark when I was a kid. It was one of the ways we managed to grow things not typically available in stores.

A harvest of snow peas from this past summer

We grow much of what we harvest from seeds we gather from the previous year. Our green beans — for example — are still growing from seeds we first sowed in 2014! Part of it is just for the fun and challenge of it, and part of it is an effort to be as self sustaining as possible... just in case.

I'm by no means some kind of doomsday prepper, but these are uncertain times, and even though it has been some time since the Covid-19 hooplah, there are still days when surprisingly many slots at our local supermarket remain empty. Maybe that's just part of life in the 2020's.

Regardless, it makes us happy to be able to pull home grown veg from the big freezer in tha garage, at all times of the year. Most of the time, we end up with enough put away to last us till the next growing season... in our best years, we harvest as much as 600lbs (270kg) of fruits and vegetables for our own use. It might not cover everything we need, but it gets pretty close!

Maybe it sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that — by weight — more than half of that will be apples and potatoes.

Apple blossoms in spring

Anyway, I am really looking forward to the "gardening meditation" to resume... because working with the earth and growing things really is good for your mental health!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great Friday!

How about you? Do you enjoy gardening and growing things? Do you have a good place in which to do so? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2025.02.13 19:25 PST
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