Further Reading: Learning what to plant, and when

Please feel free to learn from my mistakes.

Mar 31, 2023

– Diane Wilson, The Seed Keeper

I just finished reading Diane Wilson’s brilliant novel, The Seed Keeper, a 360-page treatise on the reason why so many of us become gardeners: to keep memories alive.

In Wilson’s case, she is writing about several generations of a Dakhóta family, who pass seeds down through generations. They sew them into their hems as they are driven off the land in the era of the Trail of Tears; they mourn the casualties of the mid-century craze for seed-patenting and pesticide spray. Throughout this time, they garden to remember what was lost, and to preserve what remains.

This work, the work of gardeners, is pragmatic and philosophical, all at once.

In a grief gardening workshop I taught last week, a group of grievers gathered online with me to talk about mourning the losses incurred on our family-building journeys. There, we discussed a question women have asked themselves for millennia: How do I know what and when to plant again?

I’ve continued to mull over this question ever since, as well as many other thought-provoking questions gathered from that inspiring group. I’ll be sharing some of what came up for us in the weeks to come. My answer, like Wilson’s, turns out to be pragmatic and philosophical, all at once.

(Sidenote: If you have a gardening question you too would like answered, please let me know in the comments below.)

“Gardeners grow by gardening … Let your small successes build your confidence. Learn from your mistakes. It’s a matter of entering the flow, forgetting your day-to-day cares, and linking your nature with the nature all around you.”

– Daryl Beyers, Gardening Instructor, New York Botanical Garden

In a previous post, I talked about planning a garden by first watching the light – determining what you have the energy, both personal and solar, to grow this year. But when we garden to keep memories alive, often we also have specific plants in mind. Plants that were blooming at an important time of year, plants that symbolize the moment of conception or birth or passing, plants that help us feel steady and grounded, plants that nourish us with their beauty or food in meaningful ways, plants that we remember handling as children in the gardens of our mothers and grandmothers, plants that we plant to burn for remembrance and cleansing.

A gardener’s love for a single plant is a fine place to start.

In fact, it might make for a better start than the one I had in my first real garden. Though I grew up among gardens and gardeners, then spent my early adulthood among farmers and chefs, my initiation as an adult gardener myself came much later, when I moved to a two-bedroom in Queens with a promising-but-underloved back lot.

Back then, I wanted to plant everything all at once. I’d been living inside tiny apartments in Boston, Seoul and Brooklyn for years, drawing my dream garden in my head—and now, I had access to land. Albeit land that had not been carefully tended and respected for a long time — likely not since the Lenape were driven off this slice of what was, then, paradise.

I filled my notebook with ambitious sketches for the land. Our little Mazda 3 sagged from the weight of all the topsoil we had to purchase, from a hydroponic greenhouse supply company that seemed to mainly supply recreational weed-growers, so that we could cover the claylike ground with something more workable. I pressed my friends into service to help carry pounds of this soil through the apartment and out the back door. I paid them in beer (and later, zucchini). I tucked shoots and roots into every corner I could find, from the succulent garden I planted in a shoe organizer hung over a shed door, to the chives I stuffed into the crevices inside cinder blocks.

I had just gotten married, and I felt like motherhood was around the corner for me. My brother had also died the year before. His birthday is March 31st (today), and as it rolled around that year, I felt keenly aware of how short life could be. I gardened that first year like I was running out of time.

Hanging strawberry plants in Queens, to keep them safe from city rats.

As it turned out, we had plenty of time. It would take me another four years to conceive my son. Six years later, I conceived and lost my daughter in late pregnancy. Another year passed as we gardened to heal from grief.

What we did not have was enough water—there was no hose in the back lot. I watched as my Pinterest-perfect succulents died, while my heat-loving tomato plants took over the land.

I did things differently the next year, and every year after. I have learned much about waiting, and restraint, since then.

So, what follows from here is what I would tell my then-self, about how to begin gardening with just one or two important plants in mind. (Last year, my Important Plant was a sunflower, as I wrote about here.) It is also what I told my fellow gardeners last week, in our workshop.

My succulent garden, before it bit the dust.

How do you know what to plant, and when?

Gardens are entirely personal creations. Knowing what to plant is like knowing which paint color to use in your own painting – it’s truly up to you.

That said, paints differ from plants because plants do have preferences as to how they are used. If you start with 1-3 things you’d like to plant, you can then begin to research a little bit into these preferences, and this will give you some sense of when and where.

Here are some of my general rules of thumb to keep in mind in terms of when:

Plants that are annual and/or edible – like squash and sunflowers – like to start from seed in the spring, and already-started seedlings like to go into the ground after the last frost. You can find out when the last frost is in your area by checking the online Farmer’s Almanac, and block off your planting weekend accordingly.
Plants that grow as perennial bushes or hardy perennial herbs – like roses, hydrangeas, thyme and rosemary – also like to go into the ground after the last frost. You may find it easier to purchase these from a nursery and plant them versus growing them from seed.
Plants that grow from bulbs – like daffodils, tulips and hyacinths – like to be planted in the fall and early winter, after the ground dips below about 60 degrees, about 6 weeks before the first frost. (See the Farmer’s Almanac for more info here.)
If you’re eager to grow something now and you’re not as picky about what – go to a good local nursery and tell them that. They’ll point you in the right direction. (You can always grow a snake plant or an Easter cactus inside!)

Again, I recommend that if you are a beginning gardener, you just pick 1-3 plants, versus plotting out an entire garden. This way, you can also cater to their soil needs without making your life too complicated.

Should I start with seeds, or pick up plants from a nursery?

Starting plants from seed makes sense in a few specific cases: (a) if you want to grow something cool and unusual, like a purple carrot or a pink head of celery, (b) if you want to get two harvests from the same growing season, or (c) if you live in an area where the growing season is so short that you need to give some plants a head start.

You can look at my zone, 7a, as an example for (b) and (c). This calendar from Urban Farmer (shown below) shows which seeds would start inside and which would start outside, and when. Starting beets inside would give you two harvests; starting tomatoes inside would allow you to have a nice long harvest season in late summer, when you want fresh tomatoes.

If you don’t want to complicate your life to that degree, you can just buy already-started seedlings from your local nursery in April or May, and pop them into the ground after the last frost.

Where do I plant things? How do I know what kind of soil my plant needs?

In addition to having preferences for light, each plant likes its own recipe for “soil soup,” which will be listed on the plant tag or seed packet when you purchase the plant. You can mix this together in any well-draining container. (If you’re planting into the ground, try to group plants together that have the same sun and soil needs.)

Some basic tips on soil needs:

Plants that you’re growing for food, like squash: tend to be hungry plants that like compost-rich soil. They also do well in basic potting mixes – which are basically the all-purpose flour of the gardening “pantry.”
Plants that are hardy and hail from desert or Mediterranean climates, like thyme and succulents: like rockier, more well-draining soil. You can add sand or perlite to a regular potting mix to create this recipe, or buy special succulent/cactus potting mix if you find that easier.
Plants that grow from bulbs: like soil that has been enriched with ash and bone, or other acidic elements like coffee grounds. They’re goth like that. You can buy these supplements and add them to your regular potting mix, and/or add your own from your French press.

You should wear gloves if you are actively trying to conceive, particularly if you have outdoor cats around, to avoid health risks like toxoplasmosis. As you shop for soil for your plants, you should look for an organic mix, which is safer for you as a gardener to handle and has potential antidepressant effects. Just another one of the reasons why gardening is good not just for the body, but also for the mind, and — as Wilson brilliantly shows through her novel— the soul as well.

How do you decide what to plant, and why? Do you garden to keep memories alive, to look forward to the future, or for some other reason? I’d love to know.

In Tending

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