The Garden Primer

Green Side Up

I firmly believe that in order to learn anything you have to be willing to ask dumb questions. A lot of people say to me, "I don't know anything about gardening," and some of them just let it go at that. Intimidated by the sheer volume of gardening lore they find around them, much of it very scientific and arcane, they leave gardening to those who presumably have lots of time to read and better yet, have a "green thumb." But others, unable to resist a pastime they suspect may be a lot of fun, wade right in. I love people who ask things like "What is mulch?" and "What part of the plant do you stick in the ground?"

The aim of this book is to answer as many elementary questions about gardening as possible. I may not be able to anticipate everything you want to ask, but I will explain to you how pruning can make your plants bushier, more compact or more fruitful. I will tell you that muclh is a layer of material such as shredded bark that you lay down on the ground chiefly to keep weeds from growing and to keep the soil moist. And I will try to come to your aid when you are standing there alone in the garden, holding a plant that looks like an amorphous tangle, and you have no idea what to do with it. If I could go out into the garden with you I would tell you what my friends Mary Ann and Frederick McGourty, professional growers, tell their fledging workers: "Plant it with the green side up." Everyone has to start somewhere.

I am the first to admit I have my own idiosyncratic approach when it comes to gardening and garden knowledge. Someone once called me an "old-fashioned dirt gardener," and I guess the description fits. I use relatively few commercial fertilizers and almost no pesticides. I prefer hand tools to power ones. I like to take cues from the way nature gardens, and also from the gardens of the past. I read as much as I can about scientific advances in horticulture and I'm usually willing to try something new; but I must say that most of what I do when I garden has come from just plain experience. There is no substitute for spending time in your garden and using all your senses to judge what is going on there. Are your plants' leaves a healthy green? Does your soil feel porous and fluffy when you stick your fingers into it? Does your sick plant have bugs on it or is there evidence of disease? Far more gardens fail because the gardener is absent or not paying attention than because he or she lacks erudition. Yes, you need to know your ABCs, but the more you garden, the more you will know what works and what doesn't and what problems to look for.

One of the hazards of writing a gardening book is that the author is addressing gardeners in many different localities with many different climates, soil types and selections of plants to choose from. The more exact the information I give you, the less accurately it may pertain to the specific conditions of your very own yard. I have to tell you what to add to your soil, for example, without knowing what is already in it. I have tried, therefore, to steer away from formulas, though there are times when saying "Add some fertilizer" is not enough. ("Should I add a spoonful or a bucketful?" I hear you asking.) So use my recommendations as a starting point, and try to learn as much as you can about you own garden's needs. Local resources such as nurseries, universities and the Cooperative Extension Service can be very helpful.

You will find most of the general information about gardening in the first four chapters of this book; the rest deals with specific kinds of plants and how to grow them. Use the book by going back to the early chapters if you need to have one of the basic questions answered. The index will help you if a cross-reference does not steer you to the answer at just the point when you need it.

Gardening, for all its down-to-earthness, has always had some mystery about it, a mystery that each culture had its own ways of expressing. In ancient times you might have a village maiden dance around the fire to impress the corn god, or you might make a burnt offering of the harvest to thank the deity that made it all possible. Now we do soil tests, take clones and even try to become gods ourselves in our quest to create new genetic plant material. But try as we may, I don't think we will ever shed so much light on gardening that we dampen the awe a gardener feels when the first vegetable seedlings start to come up in spring. We may never explain things like why we are attracted to flowers just as butterflies and bees are, even though normally we have no role in their pollination. Perhaps their form and fragrance are somehow luring us to some fateful role in their survival. I don't think we'll ever know all there is to know about gardening, and I'm just as glad there will always be some magic about it.

So just go out there and start doing it. It is often said that a green thumb is a dirty thumb. Choose good spots for your gardens, prepare the soil well, keep a close eye on things. And remember, the green side is always up.

Excerpted from The Garden Primer. Copyright (c) 1999. Reprinted with permission by Workman Publishing.