A perfect time to start

Gardening, for me, is a “long haul” creative project, one that I usually end up having very little control over come August. While I’ve come to accept (and even appreciate) that fact, I still love to start the season with a delusional amount of planning, prepping and daydreaming of the garden to come.

Here in Michigan (zone 6b) we get deep freezes and consistent cold for a few months, usually December through February and our last frost isn’t until the middle of May, although sadly that’s been changing over the last few years, erratic winters, crazy warm spells in January then freak freezes over Memorial Day weekend. Keeping up with the changing climate seems to always keep my on my toes and forces me to be ready for anything.

I love the down time winter offers as a gardener. For years I dreamt of living somewhere I could succession sow and harvest all year round, try my hand at growing anything and everything under the sun, but now I’ve learned how vital it is to rest, recuperate, and have time to daydream and build excitement for the season to come.

January is when the gardening season truly starts for me, and it begins with looking back over the last seasons highs and lows, what worked and what didn’t (there are ALWAYS failures), and setting my intention for the growing season. Last year I moved into a new house which meant a whole new garden! Planning, putting up fencing, making new in ground beds, putting in raised beds and figuring out soil health, sun, wind, pests (OHHH the pests!) and irrigation, the intention for last year was growing my tried and true varieties of vegetables and flowers that I knew always grew well for me, that way I could focus on building up the garden and evaluating what works best here.

While it was important to do, I missed the excitement of trying new varieties and experimenting with weird and wild colors. So, that’s my gardening intention this year. I want to grow things that make me excited to go out into the garden every day! Most seasoned gardeners will tell newbies to “grow what you eat” but my motto has always been “grow what excites you”. I was never a fan of okra, green beans, zucchini or winter squashes until I grew them. It would have been a huge disservice to myself if I just never grew those vegetables just because I didn’t eat them from the grocery store. Expanding my prior garden allowed me to try out a few types of beans and squashes which is when I realized I had been missing out!

Since then my love of the garden (partly) comes from growing at least a few things that I would never be able to find at the grocery store or even my local farmer’s market. Another part I love is giving these weirdly shaped and colored tomatoes, wildly long purple beans, and bouquets of wonky flowers to family, friends and unsuspecting strangers that make them smile and ask “what the heck do I do with this?!” which always leads to great conversations about nutrition and cooking. What better way to get out of a food rut then having tomatoes you want to highlight in a gorgeous tart?!

Here’s to a season of curiosity and magic!