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You’re sure there aren’t any bugs in the garden.  The plants, the few that grew, don’t look like there’s an infestation or fungal problem.  There’s no odd spots or discolorations.  And yet, the radishes and carrots, with their deceptively lovely tops, haven’t produced anything more than pencil-thin roots underground.  The tomatoes produced one or two extremely delicious globes of fruit so that’s encouraging, but they never got to the height you expected or produced the amount you thought they would.  And forget about the lettuce.  It didn’t even show.  In fact, the only thing that seems to be doing well is the parsley and sage you planted as an afterthought.

This pretty much sums up my first two years gardening.  Discouragement haunted me those first two years and only four things kept me from giving up entirely:  the articles here on SurvivalBlog about prepping and TEOTWAWKI, the beautiful pictures I saw in Howard Garrett’s book on gardening in Texas, comments I heard at the local farmer’s market, and that one delicious tomato that had a taste I didn’t know was possible inside those typically mealy and expensive fruits.

For those who have started gardening and feel like they have a black thumb, I offer a list of things to check that I used, one beginner to another.  My garden looks much better today because of it and we may even have enough tomatoes to add salsa and spaghetti sauce to our food storage.

1.  Soil

Ideally, this should be checked before you even put plants in the ground.  We did.  But we didn’t know what to do with the information.  Our soil test said we needed to add more nitrogen.  We’re trying to avoid using conventional [petrochemical fertilizer] methods of growing since we doubt it’ll exist after the collapse.  So, we did some research online and found some who said nitrogen is always low because of the nature of the test and not to worry about it, while others said the problem could be fixed by adding more compost. 

We tried adding more compost.  It didn’t work.

We then read a book called Gardening When It Counts by Steve Solomon.  I highly recommend every beginning gardener read this book.  Through it, we learned not only that soil must be balanced, but so must compost.  I won’t go into all the details here since every garden’s soil is different.  The book does a much better job of explaining.  To sum up, compost is not the answer to every soil problem.  In fact, if it’s unbalanced, it will make the problems worse.  In our case, we found cottonseed meal and blood meal did an excellent job of adding nitrogen.  Our plants are growing much better than we expected, even with our laxity in the other items I will add to the checklist in a moment.

Another important question to answer is whether your soil leans toward clay or sand.  It’s a pretty simple test and I’ve seen it in more than one place.  Solomon’s book discusses it, as does another gardening book I like, the e-book Growing Your Groceries by Kimberly Eddy.

Take a quart canning jar with a lid that will screw on tight enough that no water will escape during the test.  Then, take about a pint of soil from where you plan on growing your garden.  Clear out any plant matter and rocks, pummel the soil until it’s as fine as you can make it, put it in the jar, make a line or similar mark to show where the top of your sample is inside the jar (we used masking tape and a permanent marker), fill it up with water to about an inch from the top, add 1 teaspoon dish detergent to help break up the soil, screw on the lid, and shake vigorously for five to ten minutes.  Older kids and a spouse come in real handy during this process.  What you’re trying to do is break the soil up as completely as possible.  Once your soil is looking uniformly finely ground, set down the jar in a sunny window or some other well-lit place and time two minutes from the moment you set the jar down.  While you wait, get a flashlight since you may need it for the next part as well as a marker and possibly some tape.  We found masking tape worked well.  At exactly two minutes, you’ll see that some of the soil has accumulated on the bottom.  We didn’t have any difficulty seeing it because of the nature of our soil, but some might, so shine the flashlight on the jar to help find the top part of that accumulation.  Make a mark.

That first mark is the amount of sand in your soil.  We have extremely sandy topsoil;  that’s why ours was easy to see.  At two hours, make another mark to show where the accumulation is at that point.  That’s your silt level.  If you really want to be thorough with this test, wait until the water turns clear to get your clay level.  It could happen within a day.  Ours took several days.  It looks like we have very fine clay in our soil.

Once you have all these marks, calculate the percentage of each.  Divide the height of that original mark into the other marks you made after the shake-up.

Solomon recommends doing this for every soil layer up to three feet deep or until you reach the point at which roots can’t go beyond, whichever comes first.  We’ve only done topsoil so far. 

The reason this test is so important is because it lets you know how much water your soil will hold, if any.  Ours is almost entirely sand.  There’s so little clay in it, it’s not worth measuring.  It doesn’t hold any water.  Judging by how bad our foundation is, I’m guessing the subsoil is sand as well.  I’ll come back to this when we discuss watering.

For those with the resources, it may be easier to add topsoil and ignore the ground underneath.  Some of our friends did that, and they have found the cost is worth it in the amount of vegetables they got.  We feel strongly we should try to improve the soil in our area, if not for ourselves, then for those who may try to grow something after we’ve moved elsewhere.

If you don’t have the money to do much to your soil, or feel as we do, then the next item becomes even more important.

2.  What Are You Growing?

My husband and I discovered we were trying to grow medium to high maintenance plants in poor soil.  We also were growing them too close together for our climate.

When we first started, we used a very popular book on gardening as our guide.  The plants ended up spaced very close together and it felt like we were watering all the time to no effect.  Sometimes even with daily watering they would look incredibly limp during our blistering Texas summers. 

Based on what we’d been reading, we asked ourselves a few questions:

*  Is the soil right for this plant (each one has slightly different needs)?
*  Is it too close to other plants?
*  Is it getting too much sun?
*  Is it native to this area?  If not, does it grow well anyway?
*  Does anyone else have success with this plant?  (Places to find out include farmer’s markets, neighbors and co-workers who garden, local gardening clubs, etc.)  If they do, what do they do and how much effort does it take?
*  Is it getting too much water?  Too little?

If you planned your garden using a book, cross-reference your plant with other books to see what they have to say.  Definitely check out any and all guides you can find on growing plants in your specific area, the more local, the better. 

In our case, we found out that tomatoes do fantastic in Texas in our area.  They adore the heat.  We have planted lots of them and accept whatever free tomato plants others are trying to give away.  On the other hand, we’ve chalked the peach tree off as a loss now that we know they’re very high-maintenance trees in our area.  We are going to focus on blackberries instead.  We’ve also learned carrots are tricky when it comes to watering initially and have decided to focus on them next year.

If I had it to do over again, I would start my initial garden with a focus on herbs, beans, greens (like kale and collard), barely domesticated edible plants (like Jerusalem artichoke), and maybe some beets for soup.  Oh, and tomatoes.  All except the tomatoes are easier to grow.

3.  Water

Perhaps water is not an issue in your area.  If so, you are blessed. 

Here in Texas, it is.  We learned from Gardening When It Counts that spacing the plants too close together means the water in the soil gets absorbed faster by the plants.  Sure enough, this year, when we planted them a bit further from each other (closer than recommended in Solomon’s book) they seemed to like the room and water, though still an issue, was not as desperate a situation as previous years.  At least until the dog days arrived early.  However, because they had a better start than other years, they’re handling the heat somewhat better.

So, if your soil is appropriate, and the plants are low-demand, but they aren’t growing as well as they should, water should definitely be checked.  Unfortunately, the best advice we found is also the most frustrating for those like us who like measured amounts:  the right amount of water for a plant is whatever it needs. 

Another fantastic book we used this year is the American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Gardening.  Our tomatoes looked a little dry so, as opposed to just following what that initial gardening book said, we looked it up in the “EofG”.  The initial book recommended one to two gallons a week for tomatoes.  The recommendation from the EofG worked out to five to six gallons per plot a week in hot weather.  The latter one works much better for our tomatoes and has perked up our sluggish cucumber plant as well.  Now that we have an idea of just how much water our plants take, and now that we know the nature of our soil, we find ourselves, during dry spells, watering twice a day.

It is also possible, as we learned with carrots, to over water.  So, just like in the previous section, read lots of books and find out how much water locals use in their gardens and what they’ve found. 

Finally, on this subject, it’s also important to watch your garden plot during a storm or a similar deluge.  Watch where the water goes.  Does it sink in quickly or pool on the surface?  Does it gather in one particular spot while the rest stays dry?  I’m sure others could think up several more, but those are the questions that stand out when I watch the rain hit my yard.  I’ve tried to plant with those natural pools and drier spots in mind and that’s helped this year.

The point is to avoid any water-related stress.  It will stunt your plants’ growth at every stage.  Even if they seem to recover, a plant never entirely recovers from it.  It will affect growth.  I’ve found there’s an art to watering correctly.  With so many variables, it takes checking on the garden every day to make sure things are going well;  or, in our case, checking twice a day.

If you’ve done this much work so far, I’m sure you’re asking yourself, do I really want to do this?  I personally believe everyone should have a garden.  I believe this because of what I’ve found a garden requires:  discipline, a good work ethic, the ability to prioritize, diligence, and observational skills.  If a person doesn’t have these, a garden helps you acquire them, and at a faster rate than you thought possible.

A garden will help you understand the myths and stories of our ancestors.  If you’re Christian, it will help bring to life many parts of the Bible.  If you have children who work with you in the garden (even our four year old has learned how to pull weeds) it can become a shared metaphor for things like bad habits (they’re like weeds, easier to get rid of them when they’re small) or how our actions affect our lives (you reap what you sow… even if it takes three years to figure out how to sow and reap correctly).

It also encourages humility.  All it takes is one hailstorm to realize how dependent we are on Providence for whatever we get each year from our efforts.  Mistakes, cut corners, and any slacking in the above mentioned character traits also encourage humility.  Humility is definitely something we need in this age when we think we can control nature itself.

So, even if it’s a struggle to keep your plants alive, there are more reasons than fresh tomatoes to grow a garden.  Growing a garden makes one a better person.  With that in mind, please keep trying, keep learning, keep investing time while trying to make sure you aren’t wasting money.

And if, after all this, it turns out you truly can’t put in the effort, hone a useful skill and barter with the gardening friends you’ve made along the way for their produce.  If they’re anything like my friends, they’ll be willing to share with those who have something of value to trade.