The everyday garden

By Christine Granild - www.hverdagshaven.dk

I had my first garden long before I started school. Back then it was filled with marigolds and other brightly colored summer flowers. Later, rows of peas, carrots, and radishes came along. That was the beginning of a life with everyday gardens and soil under my nails. Today, I still have a garden with summer flowers and vegetables, but there are also perennials, fruit trees, and shrubs, because a lot has happened since I had my first everyday garden. Right now, I have a 400 m2 vegetable garden, three greenhouses, and all the loose stuff where flowers and trees unfold. To help me, I have four mallard ducks that eat the snails, an old Golden Retriever that digs holes on its own initiative, and of course, the chickens that scratch, fertilize, crow, and lay eggs. I look forward to taking you into my everyday garden, and even though there may be weeds between the rows, I hope you will feel like finding seed bags and gardening tools and creating your own everyday garden at home.

Plan a new season in the garden

“You have to wait a year after you move in to get started.” The best gardening advice I ever received, I chose not to follow. I have regretted it many times since, because if I had followed it, I could have saved myself a lot of agony. If I had just waited a year to start my first “grown-up garden”, I could have quickly seen that the vegetable garden did not belong right where it was first planted: in the wettest corner of the garden, where a single shower was enough to put everything under water, so that the seeds rotted before they germinated. I had also discovered that the large birch tree was swallowing both light and nutrition from the plants in the greenhouse, even though I otherwise thought they were far apart. You don’t get those experiences in gardening books. You learn them the hard way, but luckily the garden is forgiving, and no matter how many mistakes I make out there, I get a chance to do it again next year.

Gardening begins at the desk

My fingers were tingling when I had to create my garden, but as you can imagine, I quickly learned that I had to make a plan first. To make it concrete, I started by drawing my garden as it looked. This gave me a starting point that I could fill in with garden dreams – even the big ones. Because even the ideas that weren’t going to be realized right away, I wanted to have on paper so that I wouldn’t forget them. In the drawing, I made room for a vegetable garden with compost and rainwater collection, I put in pictures of perennials and summer flowers to see if the colors matched, and then I also marked where the orchard, sun terrace and chicken coop would be.

Good questions to ask yourself

· How will I use the garden?
· How much time will I spend growing, weeding and maintaining?
· What do I like? Flowers, berries, vegetables, bushes or trees?
· How is the garden arranged now?
· How big is the garden?

Gardening takes time

The first thing you learn when you get a garden is that it takes time to maintain, and the bigger it is, the more time it requires. That's why it was important for me to be realistic about my time, so that the magic of the garden wasn't replaced by a guilty conscience. If I wanted to go on longer holidays during the high season, it wouldn't be a good idea to start a self-sufficient vegetable garden or fill the beds with perennials and summer flowers. Instead, I could just grow a few crops in pots or plant fruit bushes and trees. Remember, it's always easier to scale up than the other way around.

What do I want to do this year?

January is not just a new month. It also marks a new year and a new season in the garden, which is why I use the dark winter days to plan this year's garden and figure out what I want to grow in the coming months. I always start by taking stock and reading my garden notes from last year, because this is where I find answers to:

· What went well and what went less well?
· What do I want to grow more of?
· What seeds do I already have lying around?
· Which plants need to be moved?
· Should new beds be created?
· Will I have to install a windbreak?
· Is this the year I want a greenhouse?

And much more… The garden notes summarize the successes and failures of the previous season. It's good to keep this in mind before I order seeds and draw new beds.

Flowers between beans and basil

When you look around my garden, you may not immediately see what is a flower bed and what is a vegetable garden, because in my garden flowers and vegetables grow side by side. Many flowers can be eaten, which is why they have a place in the vegetable garden, just as cabbage and artichokes are beautiful in the perennial beds. On the fences, plate-smackerels, beans and pumpkins and vines climb to create soft transitions between the different garden spaces.

I originally did this to make room for everything, but now it has become my “signature” to mix things up. It also helps attract beneficial animals to the garden, which helps keep the crops free of pests and diseases. It strengthens biodiversity, making my garden even more diverse.

Classics in the small garden

· Cucumber
· Eggplant
· Leafy beets
· Chili
· Strawberries
· Herbs
· Salad
· Spinach
· Pole beans (which can grow tall)
Radishes
· Plate smasher
Tomatoes
· Peas

Classics in the big garden

· Artichoke
· Celery
· Bush beans
· Fennel
· Fruit bushes and trees
Pumpkin
Jerusalem artichokes
Potatoes
· Cabbage
Onion
· Turnip
· Melon
· Horseradish
· Leeks
· Root vegetables (carrot, parsnip, parsley root, beetroot, celery)
· Squash
· Tomato

 Find out more about the Everyday Garden at: www.hverdagshaven.dk