From My Garden to Yours

As the gardening year begins in Florida, it is time to make the tough choices over what to plant in our limited garden space and time. Take into consideration our growing conditions of a spring-like autumn, frost-punctuated winter, and summer-threatened spring. Although we can garden almost year round, the staccato seasons keep our selection matrix feverously processing.

Speaking of the matrix, I have seen numerous graphic representations of decision-making grids. Usually applied to some business productivity model, these crosshatch designs can help organize our fuzzy ideas into a focused plan. Even with our crop selection plotted in black and white, selecting the crops for the food we nourish our bodies with is never a turnkey process.

Centered on a blank sheet of paper, draw a large plus symbol. On the vertical line, label it ‘Easy’ at the top and ‘Difficult’ at the bottom. On the horizontal line, label it ‘Like’ and ‘Yuck’ at opposite ends. Create one of these pages for each gardening season. On the back of these pages, list what crops you want to grow in your garden for that season.

Each crop you choose to plant will have two factors: how much you like them and how easy they are to grow. On your crop lists, rate your crops by these two factors. Now we can plot them on a monthly planting matrix. I like beans and they are easy to grow. I will plot them high on both the easy and like categories. Tomato transplants can still be set out, I like them, but they require extra care. Tomatoes will be high on the like axis line, but rate medium on the difficult axis. Endive is easy to grow, but I just don’t like it, so it produces another grid coordinate.

After plotting your crop choices for a season, clarity will form as clusters on the matrix. The quadrant of easy/like is our no-brainer planting choice. Other groups of plotted crops will require more of our time to decide whether to plant or not. Some decisions will be based on a labor of love, others on practical production for the dinner table. Of course, the difficult/yuck quadrant can be left for next year!

Special note: Many gardening events are springing up all over town as our growing year begins. To get involved, just visit the Sundew Gardens or Simple Living Institute Facebook pages, call an IFAS Extension Agent or Master Gardener, attend any number of gardening festivals, or drop by my booth at the Audubon Park Community Market on Monday evenings.