How many iterations can a single season’s garden have?
Since sowing our first sets of Contender bush beans on March 12, I have reconstituted our warm-season plantings four times, resulting in a landscape completely different than that of early March — and certainly one far removed from what I conceived in winter, when all there is that needs doing is cooking up best laid plans.
Looking back, I jumped the gun planting so early this season (an overreaction to planting so late last year). I stuck my first seeds in the ground when the temperatures were too low for the young sprouts to thrive. This lack of vigor left them vulnerable to the woodlice that were still thriving in the spring rains, as well as to the numerous young grasshoppers whose voracious nibbling the first-round edibles were not able to withstand. Several attempts to reign in the grasshoppers failed, and the second round of plants followed the first into a hundred tiny bellies. By April the weather had warmed sufficiently to coax the rabbits and squirrels out of their winter burrows, and the third wave of plantings, having had no time to mature, got eaten up after just a few days of foraging.
Thus, version 4.0.
The latest iteration differs from those that came before, having acquired several key adaptations in the grueling march of natural selection that has dominated this growing season. Whereas my first and second attempts involved direct sowing of seeds in the ground, much of our current garden is potted so it could be grown close to the house, tucked into the zone we most frequent and can closely guard. While little of the initial plantings were located in our front yard, much of the current garden resides there — far from the canyon and near where the frequent traffic of people and pets and cars deters the rabbits and squirrels. And those plots that have been replanted in the upper backyard (we have yielded the lower yard, for now, to the varmints) are made inaccessible with floating row covers, which, while unattractive, have succeeded in keeping out the squirrels and insects where the fencing we’d used in earlier plantings failed.
At this point, it’s not about aesthetics.
I have also introduced a few new varieties of squash, including several heirlooms that are native to the west, in the hope that an uncommon, traditional type might prove resilient and endure to harvest — perhaps possessing an adaptation that can compensate for the slow evolution of a novice grower. These include Sibley and Golden Hubbard squash, as well as Calabasa de las Aquas, Mayo Kama, and Navajo Gray Hubbard. These last I acquired through Native Seed Search, a site that specializes in “aridlands-adapted heirloom crops”.
So far, so good — though I hesitate to tempt fate with such a rosy assessment. Many of the vegetables I have recently planted need 100 days or more to mature, which puts a lot of time between now and picking and eating. But in many other climates we’d be working against a hard deadline of declining temperatures, and at least in San Diego we hardly ever do that kind of deadline.
There’s still time.
I think I’ve finally resorted to doing almost everything as transplants to avoid the pests. I too was constantly battling pests in the beginning of the season, also having jumped the gun. Good luck!
I feel like the gardening gods are conspiring against you and trying to keep that little blue line from ever getting anywhere near the green line.
Hey Jason, check out a catalog called Bountiful Gardens. It is the brain child of a guy named John Jeavons. They have many optimized heirloom, certified organic, and open pollinated seeds and products. They run a test farm in Willets. Also they operate on the principal of permaculture but also extremely high yields. They offer seed packages that have different functions like soil building, carbon sequestration, and high calorie output.