The Case for Seasonal Herbs
· 2 min read
The soil is stronger every year, mostly because I stopped digging it. Leave some corners messy; the insects will thank you.
Where it started
A friend once described fruit trees as calm work, and the phrase stuck. Here is what changed, and what stayed exactly the same. Compost is slow magic, and it cannot be rushed.
Half of gardening is noticing what grows on its own. The organic part is rarely the hard part; consistency is. The difference showed up gradually, then all at once. If something here is unclear, that is on me, not you.
Saving seed means next year’s garden starts this autumn. This is less a primer and more a record of what worked for me. The best advice I got was just to slow down.
- Stop before you are tired
- Budget twice the time you expect
- Compare against last summer
First steps
A friend once described cover crops as calm work, and the phrase stuck. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. Thanks for reading, and for the gentle jottings that keep arriving.
What surprised me most was how little equipment it needed. You can get unexpectedly far with a rain barrel and some time. A friend once described wildflowers as calm work, and the phrase stuck. I keep coming back to cover crops, mostly because it rewards time.
What I would do differently
A cold frame extends the season by weeks at either end. Most of what I know about herbs came from getting it wrong first. Nothing here requires a hand trowel, though it does make things easier. None of this is new, and that is partly why it works.
Nothing here requires a secateurs, though it does make things easier. It is not glamorous, but it holds up. It took me eight attempts to see the pattern.
Before and after
If you only take one thing from this, make it the part about seed trays. Below are a few jottings, roughly in the order I picked up them. I like tomatoes that shows the marks of how it was made. For a long time I treated compost as an afterthought. The wild part is rarely the hard part; consistency is.
I like raised beds that shows the marks of how it was made.