To Weed or not to Weed?

“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows.” - Doug Larson 

     Now as we’re thinking about planting gardens, especially with the Fit to Garden vegetable garden plans we’ve discussed, Doug Larson’s humorous quote is important to us! Mr. Larson was a columnist for several Wisconsin papers for many decades, and his columns were based on observations about human interest stories, and always had a humorous observation embedded in the column. You may have heard this definition of a “weed” before, and now you know its origin and may add some ideas about weeds of your own as your garden evolves.  

     We’ve learned a lot about the importance of a garden plan, and that discussion last week led me to look at some garden plans of famous landscape designers, documented over the years on their websites or in gorgeous coffee table books about their work. From simple graphite sketches to high tech 3-D software design programs, I realized there is no particular way that could work better than any other way – as long as you have a plan and an open mind about learning from your plan, your garden’s success is highly likely!  

     Through Fit to Garden, we’ve had a lot of exploration and conversation about what our gardens mean, and what we remember from gardens we have enjoyed as well as increasing evidence that gardening is a great tonic and stress-reliever. I was looking at different web sites to see what I could recommend now that we aren’t meeting IRL (that’s text message talk for “In Real Life”) and discovered one site I wanted to share in this message.  The University of Oregon has offered its online courses for many years, with critical accolades and is a well-respected source for gardening information for the home study student. This month, they are offering their “Getting Started with your Vegetable Garden” for free, instead of the $45 fee to audit the course. I thought you might like to take a look at that site, see what is new, and what is a review, for you. Feeling confident is an important aspect of gardening, and seeing how much you already know is a great boost to that confidence!  It was a feel-good factor for me to see what I thought about the different things they shared and how their info was similar to what I thought or when I was getting new insight. If you want to check it out, go to https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/course/master-gardener-series-vegetable-gardening to see that course, free, during the month of April. They don’t collect information they will use later in a database, and you will not be asked to subscribe to their course. There is no cancelation fee. It’s simply there, in their series of modules from Oregon State Master Gardeners, and this course is the one they chose to make free this month.  

     I hope to see you IRL at some point, meantime, feel free to send messages and I can get you answers or info about your question, through our Fit to Garden site. In closing this week’s message, how about more from Doug Larson: “ Patience is buying a hammock, then planting two trees.”