A New Way To Look At Your Garden
Hey BB Farm Family! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. The weather has been so amazing this past week. Isn’t this what we call fools Spring here in Kentucky?
If you’re a gardener at any scale then you’ve probably received seed catalogs in the mail. But before you start buying a ton of new seeds I think it would be worth your time to consider a new way to look at your garden. So you’ll know what you want from you garden.
A big part of my farming philosophy and mission here at BB Farm is to inspire and educate our farm family. I think it is a wonderful time to get your hands in the soil and create something that will bring new meaning into your life. I’ve talked to so many people about their gardening plans this year. But before you start preparing your seed orders…think about WHY you are gardening.
If your why is to provide a natural habitat to help wildlife thrive, perhaps a cottage garden or wildflower patch might suite your fancy. These sorts of gardens don’t have as much structure as a market garden or a flower farm. They can be as low or high maintenance as you’d like. You could tuck one into basically any space you have available and there’s plenty of options for full-sun and shaded growing conditions.
Maybe your why is because you want to experiment with growing different types of food and love to try new things in the kitchen. Raised beds, container gardens, or grow bags would be a wonderful choice. You can even grow in ground and setup your garden in fun shapes and squeeze in as much growing space as possible. I love the idea of edible landscaping for this type of gardening.
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When it comes to planning our garden here at the farm we see things through a few different lenses. I grow flowers to boost our farms natural ecosystem and to support our farm financially. We grow fruits and vegetables to feed our family for a year. I have a market style garden for flowers and to put food away for the off season. This means I plant in long rows that are the same length and width. I also love expressing my creativity through the garden. My raised beds provide herbs and its a place for me to try new things on a small scale without taking space away from commercial production out in the field. My future cottage garden will be a place to relax and reflect. It’ll host medicinal herbs and flowers to use for the “apothecary”. You don’t have to be limited to one type of garden, different spaces have difference purposes.
When you understand why you are gardening it helps you when you start to plan your garden.
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But no matter what, I think its so important to just try! You never know what you really want until you try. And things change overtime as well. What we wanted last year might be different from what we want this year, but we’d never know without trying first!
🌱Your Farmer & Friend,