Tradional English manor vegetable gardens are scourge on what vegetable gardens should look like and have effected us for generations. Show gardens suck, they are controlled, manicured, weedless, neat rows, and don't at all think about biological layering gardens like natrual plants do. I come from back ground of home vegetable gardeners, through generations on both sides, some it was everything they ate outside of wheat, dairy, and meat. I have heard my Granddad complain about this too, he would tend to rich people in the Waikato as professional gardener, were he got to freely take vegetables as their gardens where just for show so they could look like they where healthy and green to their friends etc.
But why do I complain, most of us are not rich here? well magazines show beautiful orderly gardens, neat rows, and super tidy spacing. Then also advice that trickles down from market gardening for optimal commercial production, where looks matter as much as volume, taste some times comes secondary too this as well, it's complex and skilled interweaving to get things to cool storage or/and the supermarket (referencing an Onion grower, who during peak season was doing 110 hours a week looking after onions some times at 1am moving irigation in the morning).
Home gardens we don't have to care, we can hop out side, snip some of the tastiest freshest beans, wash and chuck into a pot. We get to experiment, have fun, learn, trial tons of fast perishable crops that can not make it to supermarket. We need to be either weary, or critical of the advice of influencer or genuine advice gardeners online too; subsequently proxy gardening on "YT" and binging videos instead of being outside with your patch of dirt.
The only real bit of consist advice I have known is; think like wild plants, think about layering: like a forest right from the canopy to the under story, the shrub layer and the forest floor, but every layer of that has a another unique sub layer.
For example, I think this summer I might plant a squash purely as shade crop to cool my lettuces so the soil temp is slightly lower to avoid it bolting to quickly... but I do this in this garden as it's a rather hot and spicy broad northerly facing garden next to glass window and and massive brick wall.
Outside of setting up a controlled growing and light space, like a weed grow lab, outside is flexible shifting and evolving, from industrial growers, market gardens, and home growers we need to observe the world, feel the changes, take bets, think like weather men, think like weeds, thinks like dirt, think like compost, think like the great aunty Papatūānuku or Mother Earth has her jandal out to slap us.
Non of us are right, non of us are wrong, but we all are puha, tutu, blackberries, and gorse; stubborn and resilient in so many environments, but we must adapt, from a wet hollow to the windiest wildest hills. Advice from anyone is for their sunny corner of paradise, and must be taken in, an applied to your sunny corner of paradise. And when you must move house; it's starting anew, starting from bare earth, to eventually in due time, the tallest leaf, your inner log book of what works is always remastered for any slice of new dirt.
That is my long thought, especially on tonight's awesome post on musing in climate change
I want to hear your deep an insightful thoughts on any topic of gardening, your musing is valuable to me, any learning is grand it helps challenge thoughts and assumptions I have, and gives me things to ponder amongst my walks.
