Hi there I'm Christy Wilhelmi from Gardenerd. Today's video is admittedly a little bit of a rant.
It is spawned by questions or rather comments I'm getting from a few clients who really aren't...
they're very new to gardening, let's just say that. And I realized that this is something that
a lot of people probably think. I'm talking about managing expectations in your vegetable garden
throughout the season. All right, there's one thing you need to know for sure and that is that most
vegetables are annuals, meaning they live out their life cycle. They start out lush and beautiful and
tiny and then they grow and they start to develop flowers and then they set fruit. And then after
you pick them they really start to wane. And that process is about anywhere between three to four
months. In some places, depending on your growing season and your frost dates, you may be choosing
short season varieties which means they come to maturity in probably less than 60 days but there
are some varieties out there that take 100 to 120 days to get to maturity. And then they die. And so
when I hear from people mid-season or even late season like this-- I'm shooting this in September--
What I hear from people is "my garden doesn't look like my neighbors" or "my garden doesn't look as
lush as it should". And I take one look at it and I think it looks pretty darn good for late September.
Because that is what gardens look like in late September. I deliberately chose the ugliest
background I possibly have, my most dead garden bed, because that is what...that's reality. Magazines are
lying to you. It's something that we see all the time in society. You know, every model has been
airbrushed and photoshopped and her body's been reshaped and wrinkles have been removed.
It's the same with garden magazines. They take out dead leaves, they fill in spaces with
other vegetables or fruits or whatever that wasn't actually there the photo shoot.
And I've seen I've even seen magazines where the tomatoes are wired to the
to the vine it's, it's not real. So I want you to take a deep breath with me.
Yeah. And understand that gardens have a cycle and really every...every plant has a cycle. Some plants
keep their leaves all winter long. Others they defoliate they drop their leaves. They go into
dormancy and then they come back in spring. But when it comes to vegetables they pretty much going
to live out their life cycle and we get to witness that whole process. For me the end of the season is
sort of cathartic. You know, it means that we get to wipe it all out and start fresh the next year.
And some things like this this two-year-old pepper behind me, we get to kind of nurse along.
if we want to keep it. And it's gonna look ugly for a while. Yeah it is. It looked awful for a long
time and now it's got new leaves and it's still, let's be honest, kind of ugly. But it's given me a
ton of jalapenos, so I'm happy to have a little bit of ugly in my garden for high production.
Because second year plants that do survive...super productive because they have a deep root system,
and they're already established. So you don't have to do as much work. If you want to really engage
in this process of the garden's life cycle, here's an idea. Take your seed packets
or the plant tags and look at the back. It will have something called "days to maturity" and that is
going to be the amount of time the number of days that it takes for a plant to reach the point where
it's fruiting and you can start picking it. Some are before ...some you can pick before that like lettuces
and whatever but you'll be able to use that as a guide as the midpoint of the season. After that
things are going to start waning, and if you choose something in a garden with a long season like we
have here in Los Angeles, where we basically have, you know, two summers, uh, you're going to want to
strategize to plant a second round of crops just before that date to maturity if you can.
That way that second round of crops will carry you through the icky months where things start to look
not so great in the garden. And you'll have something fresh producing for you for the
rest of the season. Either way, take time to enjoy the garden in all of its stages
and understand that it's not always supposed to look pretty. New life comes from expired plants.
Plants bolt to seed, send out flowers, set seed and then they renew. They will drop the seed and then
you'll have volunteers next year, or you collect them and store them for next year. So I'm gonna get
off my soapbox now. I just want you to take away from this video that it's okay for your garden to
look like hell sometimes. It's supposed to. Ignore those gardening magazines. They're a snapshot in
time at the peak of season and the rest of the time the garden is either coming in or going
out. That's reality. If you like this video share it with your friends don't forget to subscribe
and, of course, you'll learn all about the garden's season and cycles and everything you need to know
about gardening in my book Gardening for Geeks. And be sure to check out my newest book Grow Your Own
Mini Fruit Garden. Consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to support the free stuff that we
do here at Gardenerd. And of course we are nothing without you so thanks for watching. Happy gardening!