The Seven Tenets #s 6 and 7: Practice Prevention and Share the Utility
Practice Prevention
This concept starts to pull it all together in the garden. Practicing prevention involves other five tenets: place, soil, balance, water, diversity. Do all these things together and you will be practicing prevention. You will need fewer inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides; you will have fewer pest problems that take the fun out of all your hard work; your product will look and taste better and you’ll get more of it; your costs will be lower and your garden that much more enjoyable. Prevention is about maintaining a diverse, healthy ecosystem in your corner of the universe that contributes to broader environmental sustainability and in turn rewards you with prolonged success.
Share the Utility
The product is the bounty we create and share with our families, neighbors, friends and customers. For me this mostly means food production (fruits and vegetables), cooking and eating from the garden and being healthy. Dinner parties are great when you can cook and serve food you grew in your own garden. For others it could be flowers and ornamental plants, shrubs and trees that create a peaceful, beautiful space to sit, think or entertain. Or it could just mean having a bench in the middle of a serene waterwise garden with a little fountain, sitting with a friend and chatting.
My own gardening journey is filled with stories of sharing the utility of my labor of love, not the least of which was how I courted my now wife with a freshly prepared Salad Niçoise. Everything but the egg and tuna was right out of a small garden I forged in the ramshackle yard behind my Philadelphia apartment building. In another moment of great gardening joy, we invited friends to a Sunday brunch that included a few perfectly ripe Brandywine tomatoes I had grown in the tiniest of garden plots adjacent to our first house in the Philly suburbs. Our friends devoured the tomatoes with a flash of spiritual insight on just how delicious they were. Unfortunately, the sublime Brandywine is notoriously low yielding so I could not then give them more of what they craved. The look on their faces and their vocal expressions of joy told me that this garden bounty was very special.
The best advice I can provide is to read and educate yourselves; be prepared for an iterative process with lots of mistakes and failures; be good stewards of the environment in your own space. Gardening is the perfect blend of creativity and science and in my experience, you must focus on both equally to enjoy success. Be careful about the many gardening hacks, tips and tricks you will hear. I don’t trust in any one thing until I see some scientific evidence to back it up, and even then, I use trial and error to understand what works best. There will be failures, but the earth is forgiving. Like in life, nothing is permanent. If you mess up, you can always fix it if you stay the course.
