Patience Little Grasshopper

This is the time of year when the best virtue we can have as gardeners is PATIENCE! Even I get anxious and overly involved to get the many gardening tasks completed but it will all happen in due time. Realistically we will not get early lettuce micro greens until the first week of June at the earliest so we still have about 2 months of being patient and slowly getting through our gardening tasks. They talk about a slow food movement but maybe we are also having a slow gardening movement?!?!

This week I started my garden seeds (fennel, kale, tomatoes, squash and peppers) and I paid my Inuvik Community Greenhouse member and plot fees and got my registration forms submitted that is enough gardening tasks for this week.

 

My roommate is a newbie gardener both to the greenhouse and to gardening!! Yahoo! My best tips for newbies is just to be patient and go with the flow. You will not do anything horribly wrong with gardening and you will NOT have an empty plot/garden come June. Just ask your garden neighbours lots of questions and watch what other tasks people are doing in the greenhouse. Don't even worry about buying too much materials and supplies ahead of time as first see what appears at the greenhouse (free compost, some free seeds, etc).

That being said also take ownership of your garden, meaning don't rely on veterans for all your gardening needs; read the internet, experiment with own seeds and own planting and see what happens. You might have more success with your own approach then the veterans. But at the end of the day make sure to take advantage of the community part of the gardening experience.

As my roommate and I were planting seeds last night I thought of a few other tidbits for garden planning. You garden (Inuvik greenhouse plot/small space garden) should have a mix of experiments, tried and true, space savers and space wasters. Here are some examples:

Experiments- purple peppers, fennel, corn, sunflowers (just pick 1-2 of these)

Tried and True- carrots, green onions, basil, beets (easy to have 4-5 rows of this)

Space Savers- kale, cucumbers and tomatoes that are caged and grow upwards, peas and beans against a trellis at the end of your plot

Space Wasters- cabbage, broccoli, squash

There is definitely gardening excitement in the air right now, even North of the Arctic Circle. Don't get too caught up in the planning panic of this but rather take a deep breath and enjoy each task as it comes along.

S.