Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
The first step in planting a successful (container) garden is deciding what you want from your garden. What are your goals?
The five most common garden goals that I hear are:
- Sustenance/ Abundance
- Education
- Variety
- Medicine
- Dopamine
These goals are not mutually exclusive! But in a small garden it is hard to achieve more than a couple of them.
The main goals I have for my driveway container garden are education, medicine and dopamine, but I keep all of these goals in mind as I plan my garden. The ways I accomplish my main three goals are growing a large variety of medicinal herbs, teaching myself how to grow a new type of plant (or 6) every year, and ensuring that I plant things that make me happy and give me small harvests almost constantly.
Below I will go into a little bit more detail about how these goals can be incorporated into a small renter’s garden.
Sustenance/ Abundance
If your goal is to grow enough calories for your family to live off of for the next year, this will be impossible on a patio. You will not have enough space to grow the pounds of potatoes, corn, winter squash and beans needed to accomplish that goal. BUT if your goal is to grow enough of a certain produce product to last a year this is entirely possible on your patio garden. For example, if you love hot sauce you could grow several hot pepper plants and make your own hot sauce. If you love marinara you could grow an abundance of paste tomatoes. I love herbal tea so I grow an abundance of herbs that I can dry. Two 10 inch pots of lemon balm provide me with a year’s worth of dried lemon balm for tea and some extra for tinctures.
Education
This goal is great if your goal is to learn yourself or to teach others. Radishes and sugar snap peas are great seeds to start with because they can be grown at the very beginning of the growing season, they mature very quickly and they are some of the easiest seeds to grow which will give you the confidence to keep learning. Beginner friendly vegetables include things like tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers which are so popular you can find information about them all over the internet. Herbs are also great for beginner gardeners. If you are like me and want to continue to learn, consider planning for different types of plants in your garden each year or teaching yourself new gardening techniques. This year I will be planting tomatillos for the first time and I have planted a store-bought beet top which I’m hoping will flower so that I can collect free beet seeds.
Variety
Maybe you’re not happy with the produce you find in the store, if so, this goal might be for you. Many people love to grow distinct varieties of veggies and herbs so you can find all sorts of tomatoes, squash, fruit and more via seed or your local nursery that you would never find in the local grocery store. In my garden I focus on growing a variety of tea herbs that I can’t normally find like lemon thyme, lemon balm, hops and white yarrow. If you’re looking for something different on the veggie/fruit front consider ground cherries, cucamelons or there are literally so many different varieties of peppers and tomatoes.
Medicine
Herbs, herbs, herbs, herbs, herbs! As insurance prices keep creeping up many people (including myself) are turning towards traditional and herbal medicine to keep them healthy. Many of these medicinal plants are herbs that are very easy to grow in containers but you can also grow things like ginger and turmeric in containers. If you live in a colder climate it actually makes more sense to grow ginger and turmeric in containers because you can bring them inside when the temperatures get low. I grow a number of common medicinal herbs in my patio tea garden.
Dopamine
This is my favorite garden goal and I think it is a key goal for any gardener who wants to keep gardening. Gardening takes time, patience and devotion, if you don’t enjoy it then you’ll have trouble picking your spade back up next year. Think your favorite fruits, beautiful flowers and plants that remind you of happy times in your life.
Side note: I think dopamine is one of the main reasons gardening is great for folks with ADHD. Buy new seeds? Dopamine. Plant a seed? Dopamine. The seed germinates? Dopamine. True leaves? Dopamine. More true leaves? Dopamine. Up-pot? Dopamine. You can move the plant outside? Dopamine. Harvest? Dopamine. You get the picture.
Conclusion
Anyway, once you have your garden goals you will be able to better plan what you want to add to your garden this year. Once you know what you want, you can purchase, thrift, or make the containers you’ll need to grow said plants and you can buy your seeds!
No matter your garden goals, I highly recommend keeping a garden journal to track your goals and progress. An old notebook from high school or a blank workbook from the store will work great. You can customize them for the information you want and need to keep track of the facts needed for your garden and build yourself your own reference book for next year. If you’d like one that’s pre-formatted for gardening you can consider The Neurodivergent’s Garden Journal which I published on Amazon.
I wish you all luck and a little bit of chaos!
