When I bought a house 10 years ago (I lucked out, and live on 6 acres in Maryland), I made a raised bed and planted tomatoes and it did not go well.
I tried growing vegetables and tomatoes again the next spring…it did not go well.
Then I planted a rosemary bush…and I needed to split it 2 years later. Wooo!
Then I grew herbs aeroponically in a countertop system and got some yield. Then I upgraded to a very automated DIY hydroponics system that I designed myself. I grew basil, tomatoes, green beans, and peas, and my wife was able to make a big batch of pesto every week for months.
So, I learned that I wasn’t a bad gardener – gardening just takes a lot of effort. I had a full time engineering career, I was going to grad school for a PhD in Materials Science, and my family was growing – so gardening tasks were always last on my list and often didn’t get done.
I was also trying to grow food organically and without buying fertilizer – pretty much impossible unless you have animals (I have chickens now) for manure, or an established composting system.
But all this failure led me here – I didn’t have the time to garden, so I looked for easier ways to garden and to automate as many garden tasks as possible. This led me to a concept called “Permaculture”.
The basics of permaculture boil down to: 1) grow perennials that give you a yield, and 2) make systems of inputs and outputs that work together without your involvement…hmmm…sounds like engineering…
Then permaculture led me to native plant gardening because many of the flowers native to my region are perennials – the root systems stay intact over the winter (and continue to grow) and they send up new stems every year. Native Plants are permanent cultures.
Truly, the main point of writing this post is for me to say that if you are a new gardener, just follow the old engineering maxim “Keep It Simple, Stupid” – KISS for short – and grow herbs and native perennials first and then, you can move into other areas like fruit trees and bushes, and then vegetables. DIY hydroponics was and is very interesting, and highly automatable, but there is soooooo much plastic – bins, net pots, even the foam for starting seeds (gross).
However, I’ve recently had some ideas on how to cut out a lot of those plastic items, and there are other inventors with a similar mindset to me.
It’s kind of crazy that everyone seems to start with vegetables since you can get a quick yield, but unless you really know what you’re doing, it will not be a high yield, or enduring yield.
And yes, vegetable seeds are cheap, but so are seeds of every other plant.
Leave a Reply