Gardening basics

After just a few years of trying to grow our own food, our knowledge has increased by light-years. We have done a lot of things right; and a lot of things very, very wrong. Gardening is a tricky business. There’s growing zones, heirloom varieties, soil acidity, and pruning shears…

Most people know that I am not a natural green thumb. I am more of a hit-or-miss gardener who has had a few successes and a lot of really frustrating losses. Last year we redesigned our garden to include raised beds; planted; and hoped for enough rain, sun, and wild bees to achieve adequate pollination. Instead we got too much rain, too much sun and heat, and the wild bees were absent.

To minimize the losses this year, we are taking positive steps by nestling a colony of honeybees in a corner of our garden while also leaning on some apps to transform us into successful gardeners.

• To start, I have downloaded the Planter app, where I have built a garden that matches the dimensions of our garden and am dragging vegetables onto the plot to visually see how things look. This app offers pointers, like spacing, depth to plant, how much sun, frost-tolerance, watering, and harvesting.
• My second tool is the new Seedtime app, which includes a customizable calendar with click-and-drop planting schedules, moveable crop planting schedules, an easy seeding and harvest filter, year-round harvesting information, frost zone information, printable views, and weekly checklists.

With mother nature’s help through the bees and the technological guidance of the apps I can already see what I’ve been doing wrong. I can capitalize on what I have been doing right. Which means we are in for our best gardening seasons yet!