How I Grew a Green Thumb and You Can Too
As someone who has been gardening my entire life, I often take for granted that the things I've learned are not common knowledge. When I see garden "tips" or "advice" I often scoff and shake my head because I know better, but a lot of laypeople don't and so I want to give you all the tools you need to be a successful gardener and hopefully someone who better understands themselves, plants, and their environment.
Firstly, to be a successful gardener, you need to change your perspective. Treat gardening, whether it be growing house plants in your apartment or maintaining an acre of wildlife habitat, as land management. To better facilitate this, let me define some terms:
Land Management - Overseeing and making decisions about the use, development, and conservation of land
Environment - The circumstances, objects, or conditions by which one is surrounded
Ecosystem - An interconnected system between organisms and their environment that forms through their interaction
Permaculture - An agricultural method that seeks to integrate human activity with nature to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems
So, to be a successful land manager, you need to understand your environment and your goals. Understanding your environment will help you know what conditions you will be working with or against. Understanding your goals will help you know what routes to go down based on your environment.
Example Environment Questions:
How much light does this area get?
How much humidity is in this area?
How much wind or airflow is there?
What temperature is it and how much does it fluctuate?
What kind of weather is typical here?
What are the seasons typically like here?
Where does the water in the area come from?
Where do the nutrients in the soil come from?
How much do I want to invest in establishing my garden?
How much do I want to invest in maintaining my garden?
How permanent or temporary do I want my garden to be?
What kind of garden do I want to create?
What purpose do I want my garden to serve?
What methods am I interested in using?
Why do I want to use certain plants or methods etc?
This is where ecosystems come into play. Everything you grow was once (or is currently) wild and evolved with adaptations and relationships specific to the environment it was (or is) originally from. This knowledge is key to being a successful gardener of any kind because the secret to a green thumb is to provide (organically or artificially) an ideal version of your plant's (or plants') native environment.
Artificial environmental changes can be methods, like tilling, tools, like grow lamps, structures, like greenhouses, infrastructure, like irrigation, or a combination. Artificial changes work against the existing environment and typically offer more immediate results at the cost of long term sustainability. Their goal is to alter an environment to create conditions ideal for a plant not able to integrate with the existing ecosystem. These methods are best for when a gardener is able to be highly involved.
Organic environmental changes can be methods, like leaf mulching, tools like rain barrels, structures, like swales, infrastructure, like pond systems, or a combination. Organic changes work with the existing environment and typically offer less immediate results but have long term sustainability. Their goal is to alter an environment to create conditions ideal for a plant able to integrate with the existing ecosystem. These methods are best for when a gardener is not able to be highly involved.
As a gardener, you must identify where your goals and your environment are in conflict and decide which should change, how to change them, and the impact that will have on your ecosystem.
Permaculture then is the logical conclusion of the gardener as land manager perspective.
Permaculture has three ethics and twelve principles.
Apply self-regulation & accept feedback
Use & value renewable resources & services
Design from patterns to details
Integrate rather than segregate
Use small and slow solutions
Use edges & value the marginal
Creatively use and respond to change
While we will not be going in depth into permaculture, keep in mind that, no matter what kind of gardener you are, you can use these ethics and principles as a guideline.
So, now you should understand why "Top 10 Easiest Fruit Tree" lists are not helpful unless they consider your local environment or ecosystem and you should also have a basic idea of how to assess those things yourself to better understand what you need to be a gardener based on your own criteria of success.
Understand plants, understand your environment, understand yourself, and understand your ecosystem.
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