A Gardening Journal for Real Life By JL Anderson North Carolina
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life Copyright © 2026 Grow Damn It! A Gardening Journal for Real Life JL Anderson All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author, except for brief quotes used in reviews, social media posts, or emotional support gardening memes. This journal is intended for personal use only. Please do not photocopy, upload, redistribute, or sell these pages without permission. Sharing tomatoes: encouraged. Sharing copyrighted pages: less encouraged. This book was created for overwhelmed gardeners, optimistic plant buyers, tired humans, and people trying their best to grow beautiful things in real life. No gardening expertise required. The author is not responsible for: overwatered basil, emotionally aggressive zucchini plants, mysterious plant deaths, tomato-related emotional instability, squirrel crimes, impulse garden center purchases, or mint-related consequences. Especially mint-related consequences. Some gardening disasters may have been slightly dramatized for comedic purposes. The weeds, however, are very real. Printed in the United States of America First Edition ISBN: 9798182054737 Imprint: Independently published
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life For everyone learning as they grow. Including me. And for my husband, who calls every new plant “the next victim” and has never once stopped me from buying one.
Grow, Damn It! | Disclaimer Gardening Disclaimer Welcome to Grow, Damn It! Before we begin, there are a few things you should know. This book cannot guarantee: • thriving tomatoes • obedient squirrels • perfect weather • emotional stability during July This book also cannot prevent: • impulse plant purchases • overwatering panic • underestimating zucchini plants • buying “just one more” flower at the garden center “Please garden responsibly.” Inside this book, you may experience: • dirt under your nails • strong emotional attachment to basil • confusion about weeds • unexpected plant funerals • and occasional moments of peace while watering things at sunset These side effects are considered normal. A Few Important Reminders Before You Begin Dead plants happen. Sometimes you forgot to water them. Sometimes you watered them too much. Sometimes nature simply chose violence. This does not make you bad at gardening. It makes you a gardener. Your garden does not need to look like the internet. Real gardens have weeds, bug bites, unfinished projects, crooked tomato cages, and at least one mystery plant situation. That’s part of the charm. Progress counts. Even if you only grew one tomato, your herbs got weird, or you spent more time buying plants than planting them. Tiny victories still matter. This journal is not about perfection. It’s about learning, experimenting, laughing, trying again, and growing beautiful things in the middle of real life. “One final warning: if you plant mint directly in the ground, you are now in a long-term relationship with mint. Good luck.” — JL Anderson
Grow, Damn It! | How To Use This Book How to Use This Book (There Are No Gardening Police) First of all: there are no rules here. You do not need perfect handwriting, color-coded systems, matching plant labels, or a five-year garden plan. You just need curiosity, a willingness to try, and maybe a reminder to water things occasionally. This book was made for real life — meaning messy schedules, forgotten plant tags, unfinished projects, and gardeners learning as they go. Use it however it helps you most. Inside You’ll Find Twelve chapters covering everything from finding your planting zone to navigating the garden center, understanding your soil, choosing what to grow, watering, pests, seasons, and tools. Each chapter includes a Plant Therapy Session, because every gardener has a plant that deserves acknowledgment. Garden Layout Pages with a numbered tracker system so future-you knows exactly what that thing poking up through the mulch in April actually is. Plant Trackers, Watering Logs, Seasonal Check-ins, and reflection pages including a Fails Graveyard, Garden Wins, Garden Daydreams, and Notes for Future Me. Comedy Lists and Checklists throughout, because gardening is funny when you’re not in the middle of it, and sometimes when you are. Free Full-Color Printable Pack: The illustrated tracker pages — Garden Daydreams, Fails Graveyard, Garden Wins, Plants I Absolutely Did Not Need, and the Seasonal Tracker — are available as a free color download. See the link/QR code at the end of Chapter 11. The Most Important Rule This book is not about perfection. It’s about showing up, paying attention, and making something grow — even when you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing. Take photos. Write notes. Doodle in the margins. Tape in plant tags. Cross things out. Start over. Make this book look loved. “Even if your zucchini gets weird.”
Grow, Damn It! | A Note From the Author A Note From the Author (Please Lower Your Expectations Accordingly) I once killed a succulent. If you don’t know, succulents are famous for being nearly impossible to kill. They evolved in desert conditions specifically to survive neglect. They are the cockroaches of the plant world, in the best possible way. And I killed one. I’m not proud of this. I’m also not entirely sure what happened and I’ve chosen not to investigate too deeply because some things are better left as a mystery. This is the gardening background of the person who wrote this book. I’ve been gardening, off and on, for more than twenty years. I’ve gardened in Southwest Florida, which is a specific kind of humbling — a climate where things either grow so aggressively they try to take over the house or refuse to grow at all. I now garden in the piedmont region of North Carolina, which is beautiful and manageable and still finds ways to surprise me every single season. In twenty-plus years, I have killed an amount of plants that I will not put in writing because it seems like it should be confidential. My husband has a line he delivers every single time I come home from the garden center: “Is this the next victim?” He says it with love. He is also not entirely wrong. What I have, in place of a perfect track record, is twenty years of paying attention. Of learning what actually works in a real yard with real soil and a real schedule and real squirrels who have strong opinions about my tulip bulbs. I wrote this book because the resource I wanted when I started didn’t exist. Not a textbook. Not an aspirational fantasy. Just an honest companion for real gardening — the kind that happens between everything else in a busy life, by someone who loves it even when it’s frustrating, even when things die, even when the succulent doesn’t make it. I am not an expert. I am a gardener. Those are different things, and for this book, the second one is more useful. Also, the hydrangeas I’ve been chasing for twenty years are finally blooming. So there’s that. — JL Anderson North Carolina
Grow, Damn It! | Table of Contents Table of Contents Front Matter Gardening Disclaimer How to Use This Book A Note From the Author Chapter 1 Welcome to Gardening Chaos You decided to garden. Nobody can stop you. Not even you. Chapter 2 Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything Sun, shade, zones, and why that plant died before you got it home Chapter 3 The Garden Center Is a Trap And we’re going in anyway Chapter 4 Dirt The unglamorous foundation of everything Chapter 5 What Do You Even Want to Grow? Flowers, food, shrubs, and the plants that come back whether you’re ready or not Chapter 6 Mapping the Chaos A sketch page and a prayer Chapter 7 Watering Too much, too little, and the week you completely forgot Chapter 8 Tiny Villains Weeds, pests, and mysterious plant drama Chapter 9 Keeping Things Alive Through the Seasons Spring energy, summer survival mode, fall cleanup, winter denial Chapter 10 Tools, Gadgets & The Lies We Tell Ourselves at the Hardware Store You need four things. You will buy fourteen. Chapter 11 The Wins, The Losses & The Things That Surprised You A celebration of surviving another season Full-color illustrated tracker pages available as a free printable download — see Chapter 11 for details. 1 9 19 29 39 55 67 83 97 109 119
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
1Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos (You Decided to Garden. Nobody Can Stop You. Not Even You.) Okay. So something happened. Maybe you scrolled past a photo of someone’s hydrangeas — those big, absurd, show-off blooms — and thought, I could do that. Maybe your neighbor has one of those raised beds and you’ve been side-eyeing it for two summers. Maybe you bought a basil plant at Trader Joe’s, it died in four days, and now you’ve made it personal. Maybe you just want something alive and growing in your yard that you can take credit for. Whatever got you here: welcome. Pull up a folding chair. There’s dirt on everything and that’s fine. This is not a book about doing gardening correctly. Correct gardening has approximately eleven thousand books, a robust YouTube ecosystem, and an entire subreddit where people argue about soil pH with the energy of people who’ve had their hearts broken by it. Go check those out if you want. They’re very informative. They’ll also make you feel vaguely bad about yourself for approximately forty-five minutes. This book is for people who want to put some things in the ground and see what happens. That’s it. That’s the whole plan. “If it died, congratulations. You’re officially gardening. Dying is part of it. Welcome to the club. The club meets whenever.” Common Gardening Lies We Tell Ourselves (A brief, accurate list) • “I’ll definitely remember where I planted that.” • “I only came here for potting soil.” • “I don’t need another tomato plant.” • “This won’t turn into a whole thing.” • “I’ll label everything later.” • “I just want to look around.” • “One more plant won’t hurt.”
2 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos Every single one of these has been said by every single gardener. Including the ones with the gorgeous Instagram gardens. Especially them. My Gardening Personality Check all that apply. Be honest. I buy plants without a plan I forget to water things I panic-water after remembering I absolutely overcrowd plants every year I think “future me” will stay organized I lose plant tags immediately I get emotionally attached to tomatoes I have said “maybe this spot gets enough sun” with zero evidence I start ambitious projects at inconvenient times I believe every garden center plant is speaking directly to me Mostly checked? Congratulations. You are officially a gardener. This is your people. What Gardening Actually Is (A Realistic Assessment) Gardening is putting living things in dirt and then watching them either thrive or collapse while you stand there holding a watering can, slightly confused about what you did wrong. Sometimes you’ll do everything right and something will die anyway. That’s not failure, that’s Tuesday. Plants are living organisms with their own opinions, and some of them have simply decided they hate your yard specifically. It’s not personal. (It might be a little personal.) Sometimes you’ll do everything wrong — forget to water for a week, plant something in the wrong season, let a volunteer tomato take over a corner of your yard because you didn’t have the heart to pull it — and something will grow anyway, massive and smug, producing more zucchini than you have any use for.
3Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos This is normal. This is gardening. The sooner you make peace with the chaos, the happier you’ll be out there. “Gardening is 30% planning, 20% actual gardening, and 50% standing in your yard in a robe staring at something and thinking, huh.” The Lies You’ve Been Told About Gardening Let’s clear some things up right now, before you go spend $200 at a garden center on a Tuesday because you passed it on the way home and got excited. Lie #1: You need a green thumb. You don’t. You need a willingness to try things, pay occasional attention, and not give up the first time something goes sideways. Green thumbs are just people who’ve killed enough plants to know what not to do. You’re building yours right now. Lie #2: You need a lot of space. You do not. People grow food in apartments on south-facing windowsills. People grow herbs in recycled cans on a fire escape. If you have a patch of outdoor ground that gets some sun, you are already ahead of a significant portion of humanity’s gardeners throughout history. Lie #3: You need to know what you’re doing. Nobody knows what they’re doing, not really. We’re all just guessing based on vibes, the tag that came with the plant, and a text from a parent who’s also not totally sure. You’ll figure it out as you go. That’s the whole method, and it works fine. Lie #4: You have to do it perfectly or it doesn’t count. This one is the most evil lie and I need you to put it directly in the bin. A slightly lopsided peony you actually grew is worth more than a perfect one you didn’t. Your messy, overgrown, slightly chaotic garden is a real garden. It counts. You’re doing it.
4 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos What You Actually Need to Get Started Not much. Here’s the real list: • Something to plant (seeds or seedlings — we’ll talk about both) • Somewhere to put it (ground, pot, container, whatever you’ve got) • Dirt that isn’t terrible (we’ll get into this — it matters but not as much as people imply) • Some sun (how much depends on what you’re growing) • Water (occasionally, not obsessively) • Low expectations and a high tolerance for learning the hard way That’s the list. Anyone who tells you that you need $400 of equipment before you start is selling you something — garden centers are delightful, but don’t let them convince you that you’re not ready. You’re ready right now. Today. With what you have. “The best time to start a garden was last spring. The second best time is whenever you’re reading this. Do not wait until you feel prepared. That feeling doesn’t come.” How to Use This Book (Or Don’t, I’m Not Your Supervisor) This is a garden journal — part informational, part a place for you to write things down. Future-you is going to be so grateful, by the way. Future-you will stand in the yard in September wondering what that plant is, and present-you will have written it down, and there will be peace. You can use this book however you want. Fill in the journaling sections or don’t. Read it cover to cover or flip to whatever chapter matches your current chaos. Dog-ear the pages. Write in the margins. Draw a little sad face next to the plant that died. There are prompts throughout to help you track what you’re growing, what you’re learning, and what is currently making you feel mildly unhinged. There are no wrong answers. There are only answers that will be funny to read later. One request: write stuff down. Even if it’s just “planted tomatoes, May 3, the stakes fell over immediately.” That’s a garden journal entry. That counts. You’re keeping records now. You’re practically a farmer.
5Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos Your First Journal Entry: Why Are You Even Here? (Write whatever. There’s no grading. I promise.) What made you pick this up? What’s the dream, even the embarrassing one? (“I want those hydrangeas I keep seeing on Instagram” is a completely valid dream. So is “I want to grow my own tomatoes” and “I just want something alive in my yard” and “I saw a cottagecore TikTok and I’ve lost my grip on reality.”) What are you hoping to grow, even if you have no idea yet? What are you most afraid will happen? (Write it down. Name it. Plants can’t read.) What does success look like for you, at its most basic? Not Instagram success. Real success. Your version.
6 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos “Whatever you wrote up there? That’s your garden’s origin story. Every plant in your future yard starts right here, in this ridiculous little paragraph. Good job.” “The basil was not a failure. The basil was the beginning.”
7Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 1: Welcome to Gardening Chaos Okay. Let’s Go. The rest of this book is going to walk you through the actual stuff: figuring out your yard, shopping without losing your mind, understanding your soil (sort of), choosing what to grow — vegetables, flowers, herbs, shrubs, perennials that come back every year like they own the place — keeping things alive, dealing with pests, and what to do when things actually work. We’ll go season by season, problem by problem, plant by plant. You don’t have to have it all figured out before you start. Nobody does. You’re going to learn by doing, which is chaotic and sometimes heartbreaking and also the only real way to learn anything. Your first plant might die. Plant it anyway. You might forget to water for a week. That’s okay. Most things are more resilient than the internet makes them seem. You might grow something so abundantly that you have to leave bags of zucchini on your neighbors’ porches in the middle of the night and run. That’s a gardener rite of passage. We’ve all been there. We’re all so sorry. You might get those hydrangeas. Genuinely. We’ll talk about it. Now go put something in the ground. We’ll figure out the rest together.
8 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
9Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything (Sun, Shade, Zones & Why That Plant Died Before You Got It Home) Real quick — before you buy a single plant — we need to talk about your yard. Not in a homework way. In a “this will save you actual money and several small heartbreaks” way. Here’s a scenario. You’re at the garden center. Something catches your eye — it’s full and lush and the color is unreal and it’s clearly thriving under those greenhouse lights. You buy it. You bring it home. You find a spot that seems fine. Three weeks later it looks like it’s given up on the whole project, and you’re standing there with an empty watering can wondering what you did wrong. Here’s the thing: you probably didn’t do anything wrong. The plant just needed different conditions than your yard offers — different light, different cold tolerance, or both. Nobody hands you this information at the register. So we’re covering it now, before the garden center gets involved. “Knowing your yard before you plant anything is not extra homework. It’s the difference between a plant that thrives and a plant that slowly gives you the silent treatment until it dies.” Your Hardiness Zone: The Number That Explains a Lot The country is divided into hardiness zones based on how cold it gets in winter — specifically the average lowest temperature your area hits in a given year. Your zone is basically your climate fingerprint, and every plant tag uses it to tell you whether that plant can survive your winters. So if a tag says “Hardy to Zone 6” and you live in Zone 5, that plant is a one-season guest. It’ll grow beautifully all summer and then die in January, and you’ll think you did something wrong. You didn’t. The zone did it. This is not on you. The good news: finding your zone takes about forty-five seconds, and you only have to do it once.
10 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything Find Your Zone in 45 Seconds Scan the QR code or go to: planthardiness.ars.usda.gov Type in your zip code. That’s it. The map was updated in 2023 — about half the country shifted zones. If you looked this up years ago, check again. Once you have your zone number, write it down here. You’ll want this every time you’re standing in a garden center aisle squinting at a plant tag. Things gardeners say when they don’t know their zone: • “I think I’m a 7? Maybe an 8?” • “My neighbor said we’re a 7b but her lavender died so I’m not sure she’s right.” • “It’s pretty warm here except when it isn’t.” • “I just buy things and hope for the best.” You are no longer one of these people. You looked it up. Write it down. My Hardiness Zone: ___________ Average First Frost Date (Fall): ___________ Average Last Frost Date (Spring): ___________ If you don’t know your frost dates yet, that’s fine — your local cooperative extension office has them, or you can search “[your city] average frost dates” and get a reliable answer. Frost dates matter because they tell you when it’s safe to plant things outside in spring, and when you need to wrap things up in fall.
11Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything “Your frost date is the universe’s way of telling you when winter is officially done playing around. Plant before your last frost date and you will find out what frost does to impatiens. Plant after it and you’re golden.” What Your Zone Doesn’t Tell You (And Is Just As Important) Your zone covers the big picture — winter survival. It doesn’t tell you anything about summer heat, humidity, how much rain you actually get, or the very specific personality quirks of your individual yard. Two neighbors on the same street can have genuinely different growing conditions based on their trees, their fences, and which direction their beds face. Gardeners call these microclimates — sounds technical, but it just means your yard has its own little personalities in different corners. The south-facing wall of your house that’s noticeably warmer than everything else. The low spot that holds water for a week after rain. The strip along the fence where three different plants have quietly died because the maple tree roots have claimed that territory and nobody told you. You’ll learn your yard’s quirks over time just by being out there — and honestly, figuring this stuff out is one of the more satisfying parts of the whole thing. Eventually it just clicks: heat-lovers go by the garage, hostas go in the shady strip, nothing goes in that corner by the fence because the maple has spoken. For right now, the most useful thing to understand about your yard is where your light lands. Reading Sunlight in Your Actual Yard Sunlight is where most new gardeners get tripped up — not because they’re not paying attention, but because light is sneaky. A spot that’s blazing at 9am can be fully shaded by 2pm. A yard that feels bright and open in March can be buried in tree shade by June once the canopy fills in. Light changes constantly and your plants notice even when you don’t. Plant tags use four sunlight categories. Here’s what they actually mean in real life: Full Sun: Six or more hours of direct sunlight per day. And we mean direct — sun actually hitting the plant, not bright indirect light through a window or a few hours
12 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything of morning glow before the house shadow takes over. Roses, lavender, most vegetables, and a lot of the showiest flowering perennials want full sun. Give them less and they’ll grow, sort of, but they’ll skip the flowers and just stand there being green at you. Part Sun / Part Shade: Four to six hours of direct sun, and yes, these two terms are technically the same thing on most tags — which is extremely unhelpful of the plant industry, but here we are. In practice, look for a spot with solid morning sun and afternoon shade. Morning sun is gentler; afternoon sun is intense. A lot of flowers and leafy vegetables are genuinely happy in this range, and it’s more forgiving if your watering schedule is, let’s say, optimistic. Full Shade: Less than four hours of direct sun, or filtered light most of the day. This does not mean a dark closet. It means the plant prefers to avoid the harsh stuff. Hostas, ferns, astilbe, bleeding heart, and impatiens all live here happily. Trying to grow tomatoes in full shade is a months-long lesson in why tomatoes need sun. Dappled Shade: Indirect, filtered light — think the soft shifting light under a tree canopy. Woodland plants were basically designed for this. It’s gentler than part shade and not as dark as full shade. If you have a big tree and want something pretty under it, start here. The easiest way to actually know your sunlight: pick one clear day, go outside three times — morning, midday, late afternoon — and look at where the sun is hitting. Ten minutes total. Takes maybe ten minutes total across the whole day. Write it down on the map at the end of this chapter. You will reference that sketch more than you expect. “Check your sunlight on a clear day — morning, midday, late afternoon — and write it down once. The amount of mystery this eliminates is genuinely unreasonable.” How to Read a Plant Tag Without Googling Every Word Plant tags are small rectangles of optimism that contain more useful information than most people realize. Flip it over. Read the back. There’s actual stuff there. Here’s what the common terms actually mean:
13Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything Hardiness Zone: The zone range the plant can handle. If your zone falls in that range, you’re in business. If it doesn’t, this plant is a beautiful summer fling that won’t call you in winter. Buy it if you want to — just go in knowing. Mature Height / Spread: This is the plant’s full adult size, not its current size. That sweet little shrub in the four-inch pot? It might be six feet wide in three years. Check this number before you plant something directly in front of your window or two inches from your walkway. The plant will win that standoff. Bloom Time: When the flowers actually show up. Worth knowing so you can plan for a garden that does something interesting in more than one month. Also worth knowing so you don’t spend all of August staring at a plant that finished blooming in May wondering why nothing is happening. Annual / Perennial / Biennial: Annual means one glorious season, then you replant. Perennial means it comes back every year like a reliable friend. BBiennial means it takes two full years to bloom — a commitment most of us have to consciously decide to have. More on all of this in Chapter 5. Water Needs: Low, medium, or high. Low means once it’s established it can mostly take care of itself — great for people whose watering schedule is enthusiastic in theory. High means this plant wants consistent moisture and will let you know when it’s not getting it, loudly, by wilting dramatically in the afternoon. Native / Non-Native: Native plants evolved in your region — your soil, your rainfall patterns, your local bugs. They tend to be lower maintenance once established and genuinely good for pollinators. Non-native isn’t automatically bad; most garden favorites aren’t native. But native plants are often more forgiving of imperfect care, which is a quality this book appreciates deeply. “The tag is not a contract. It’s a suggestion from someone who grew this plant under controlled conditions. Your yard will have opinions.” Getting to Know Your Yard’s Personality Every yard has quirks. The spot where nothing grows no matter what you do. The corner that floods every spring. The patch that’s inexplicably dry even after rain. The place
14 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything where something volunteers itself every year and you have no idea what it is. You don’t need to solve all of these right now. But writing them down is useful, because patterns emerge over a season and future-you will want to know that the east bed floods in April and to stop planting things there that hate wet feet. My Yard Sun Map Sketch your yard below — rough is fine, this is not architecture — and mark where you get morning sun (M), afternoon sun (A), full sun (F), and shade (S). Add compass direction if you know it. Do this once and you’ll reference it forever. North is from where I’m standing. My house faces
15Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything My Yard’s Quirks The things your yard does that are specific to your yard. The wet corner. The mystery volunteer. The place the deer always find. Write it here so you stop being surprised by it every year. The spot that seems to get more sun than everything else: The spot that’s always shadier or wetter than expected: Anything I’ve noticed about my soil (hard, sandy, clay-heavy, ??): Wildlife situation (deer, rabbits, squirrels, the neighbor’s cat): Other quirks worth remembering:
16 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything “Your yard is telling you things all the time. You just have to stop walking past it with your eyes on your phone long enough to notice.” “Read the tag. Believe the tag. The tag has seen things.”
17Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 2: Know Your Yard Before You Buy Anything Okay, You Know Your Yard Now. Or at least you know more than you did twenty minutes ago, which is genuinely enough. You have your zone. You have a rough sense of where your light actually lands. You know what the tag is trying to tell you. That photo on the plant tag, by the way — the one with the enormous perfect blooms? Taken under ideal conditions by a professional grower who does this full time. Your garden is real life, and real life is messier and also more interesting. You’re in good shape. Next up: the garden center. We’re going in. We are going to be strategic about it. We are absolutely going to buy at least one thing that wasn’t on the list. That’s fine. We’re planning for it.
18 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
19Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap (And We’re Going In Anyway) The garden center is engineered to separate you from your money, and it does this beautifully. The smell alone — dirt and flowers and that particular greenhouse humidity — hits you the moment you walk in and something in your brain goes, yes, I need all of this. The colors are overwhelming. Everything is blooming. There are little chalkboard signs with charming fonts. There is a display of hand tools near the entrance that you do not need but that have very satisfying wooden handles. You came for one tomato plant. You will leave with a flat of annuals, two perennials you can’t identify, a bag of fertilizer someone told you was good, a ceramic pot that caught your eye near the succulents, and the vague sense that you should have brought a list. This chapter is the list. Or at least, it’s the mindset that helps you make one. “Going to the garden center without a plan is like going to the grocery store hungry. You know what you need. You will not buy only that.” Things that happen every single time you go to the garden center: • “I’ll just look around.” (This is a lie you tell yourself.) • Everything smells hopeful and your brain stops working correctly. • You pick up one plant to look at the tag and somehow it ends up in the cart. • You find a plant that’s not on the list but it’s perfect and you deserve it. • You spend twenty minutes justifying a purchase to yourself in the parking lot. • You get home and realize you have no plan for where any of this is going. This is not a character flaw. This is the garden center working exactly as designed. Now that you know that, you can work with it instead of being at its mercy. Why The Garden Center Gets You Every Time It’s not weakness. It’s design. Garden centers are very, very good at their jobs. Everything that’s in peak bloom right now is placed at eye level at the entrance. The things that are technically better for your garden — the plants that are hardier, more suited to your zone, better long-term investments — are often less showy and further
20 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap back. The flashy annuals are up front because annuals need to be replaced every year, which means you’ll be back. The perennials that quietly come back on their own for a decade are in the back where you might not wander. The tables are also at a height that makes it very easy to pick things up. This is intentional. Retail is full of these details. None of this is sinister. Garden centers are small businesses mostly run by people who genuinely love plants and want you to love them too. But understanding the setup helps you walk in with your eyes open, which is better for your wallet and, honestly, for your garden. Impulse-bought plants often end up in the wrong spot because you bought them for how they look right now instead of whether they actually fit what your yard needs. “That plant is beautiful. Is it beautiful for your yard, in your zone, in your light conditions? That’s the question. You are allowed to put it back.” Annuals vs. Perennials: The Thing Worth Understanding Before You Spend Anything This is the single most useful distinction to understand before you shop, because it directly affects how much you spend and how much work you do year after year. Annuals Annuals live for one growing season. They sprout, they bloom, they go to seed, they die. You plant them again next year. They tend to bloom abundantly and for a long time — petunias, marigolds, zinnias, impatiens, most of the stuff you see in big colorful flats near the garden center entrance. They’re not a bad buy. They provide a lot of color for a reasonable price. But they are a recurring expense, and they require you to replant every single spring. Annuals are great for filling gaps, trying out colors, and getting fast results while your perennials are still establishing themselves. Think of them as the accessories. They pull the look together but you swap them out seasonally. Perennials Perennials come back every year. You plant them once, they die back in winter, and they return in spring — often larger than they were before. Coneflowers, black-eyed Susans,
21Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap hostas, daylilies, lavender, peonies, astilbe. This is the category that eventually does the heavy lifting in a mature garden. The tradeoff: perennials are more expensive upfront, and many of them look fairly unimpressive in their first year. They spend year one establishing their root system underground, which means you’re basically staring at a small plant thinking, this was fifteen dollars, doing what exactly. Year two is better. Year three they start to look like something. Year four you’re dividing them and giving pieces to neighbors and feeling very smug about the whole thing. Perennials are the long game. Annuals are the quick win. A good garden eventually has both. “Perennials are a investment in future-you’s garden. Present-you has to be okay with the fact that the payoff takes a couple of seasons. Future-you will be extremely grateful.” Shrubs and Trees Worth mentioning because they often get overlooked by new gardeners who are focused on flowers. Shrubs are the backbone of a garden — they provide structure, year-round interest, and they don’t require replanting. Hydrangeas are shrubs. So are roses, lilacs, spirea, viburnum, and a hundred other things. They’re a bigger initial investment but they earn it. If you want those enormous hydrangeas from Instagram, you’re buying a shrub and giving it two or three years to get there. It’s worth it. We’ll talk about how to actually get hydrangeas to bloom in Chapter 5, because there are some things to know. How to Spot a Plant Worth Buying Not everything at the garden center is equally healthy, even when it looks equally pretty. Plants that have been sitting in their pots too long, underwatered, or stressed by temperature swings are going to have a rougher transition to your garden. Here’s what to actually look at: Look at the roots, not the flowers. Tip the pot gently and check the bottom. If roots are coming out of the drainage holes in a dense tangle, the plant is rootbound — it’s been in that container too long and is ready to fall apart once it hits real soil. Some circling roots are fine. A solid mass of roots with no soil visible is not ideal.
22 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap Check the base of the stem. It should look firm and healthy, not mushy, discolored, or pinched. A mushy base usually means overwatering or rot. Walk away from mushy. Look under the leaves. Flip a few leaves over and check for bugs — tiny dots, sticky residue, small clusters of anything that shouldn’t be there. Aphids, spider mites, and scale can hitch a ride home with your new plant and then introduce themselves to everything else in your garden. Check before you buy. Buds over blooms. A plant that’s mostly in bud rather than fully open will transplant better and give you a longer show of flowers in your garden. The fully bloomed one is beautiful in the pot right now but it’s already partway through its performance. The one with buds has more ahead of it. Avoid the clearance rack unless you know what you’re doing. Marked-down plants are marked down for a reason, and that reason is usually stress, disease, or serious neglect. An experienced gardener can sometimes nurse a clearance plant back to health. A new gardener setting themselves up for a win should probably just pay full price and start with something that isn’t already struggling. “A healthy boring plant will outlast a stressed beautiful one every single time. Buy the healthy one.” Shopping With a Plan (Even a Bad Plan Is Better Than No Plan) You do not need to arrive at the garden center with a color-coded spreadsheet. You need to arrive with three things in your head: • Your hardiness zone (you wrote it down in Chapter 2, go check) • The sunlight situation in the spot you’re planting (full sun, part shade, etc.) • A rough sense of whether you want annuals for immediate color, perennials for the long game, or some of both That’s genuinely enough information to make decent decisions. With those three things you can look at a plant tag, understand whether it works for your yard, and make a call. Everything else is preference and budget. A few other things worth thinking about before you go:
23Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap How much space do you actually have? Be honest. It is very easy to buy twelve plants for a bed that comfortably fits six, because the plants are small right now and your brain cannot picture them at mature size. Check the tag for mature spread and do the math before you get to the register. What’s already blooming when you want something blooming? If you want color in July, buy things that bloom in July. If you want something for early spring, look at what comes up in April. It sounds obvious but it’s easy to buy whatever’s blooming at the garden center right now without thinking about whether that’s actually the window you need. Do you want to attract pollinators? Bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds are drawn to specific plants — native wildflowers, lavender, salvia, coneflowers, monarda, milkweed for monarchs. If this matters to you, it’s worth planning for rather than hoping your random selection happens to include the right stuff. The One Unplanned Plant Rule Here’s a realistic accommodation for how garden centers actually work: give yourself permission for one unplanned purchase per trip. One plant you didn’t plan for, bought purely because it caught your eye and made you feel something. One. Not a flat. Not two perennials and a shrub because they were all so pretty. One plant. When you pick up the unplanned one, you still check the tag — zone, sun requirements, mature size — because you want it to actually live. But you don’t have to justify it or make it fit a master plan. Sometimes a plant just speaks to you. That’s fine. That’s part of this. One. The rule exists because “just one more” is how you end up at the register with sixty dollars of plants you didn’t intend to buy and no clear plan for where any of them are going. The limit is not a punishment. It’s the thing that lets you enjoy the spontaneous buy instead of feeling weird about it on the drive home. “One unplanned plant per trip. It goes in the cart, you check the tag to make sure it’ll actually survive your yard, and then you stop. This is the whole system.”
24 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap Seeds vs. Starts: What’s Actually Worth Growing From Seed Most of what you see at the garden center are starts — young plants already growing in pots, ready to go in the ground. Seeds are cheaper, offer way more variety, and require significantly more patience and attention, especially early on. For a first-year or busy gardener, starts are usually the right call for most things. You skip the germination phase, skip the seedling babysitting, and get a plant that’s already a few weeks along. Worth the price difference. That said, some things are genuinely easy and fast from seed, and worth knowing about: • Zinnias: Direct sow into the garden after your last frost date. They germinate fast, they grow fast, they bloom all summer. One of the most satisfying seeds to plant if you want fast results. • Sunflowers: Direct sow after last frost. Big seeds, fast sprouts, hard to mess up. Kids love growing them for this reason. • Nasturtiums: Direct sow. They don’t like being transplanted so starting them indoors doesn’t work well anyway. Plant them where you want them, water, step back. • Beans and peas: Both prefer to be direct-seeded rather than transplanted. Peas go in early — they like cool weather. Beans go in after frost. Both are fast and rewarding. • Herbs like dill and cilantro: These bolt (go to seed and die) so quickly that buying starts doesn’t make much sense. Direct sow small amounts every few weeks for a continuous supply. Everything else — tomatoes, peppers, most flowers, most perennials — is easier to buy as a start unless you want to get into the whole seed-starting setup, which is a separate hobby unto itself and not required for a good garden. “Seeds are great. Starts are also great. There is no wrong answer here. The goal is to get something in the ground, not to do it the most impressive way.”
25Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap Before You Go: Plant Wishlist Write down what you’re actually looking for before you walk in the door. Having it means you’re making intentional choices instead of just reacting to whatever’s prettiest at eye level. My hardiness zone: Sunlight in my planting spot: I’m hoping to grow (flowers, vegetables, herbs, shrubs): Specific plants I’m looking for: My budget for this trip: The one unplanned plant I’m allowing myself:
26 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap What Actually Came Home No judgment. Just write it down. Future-you needs to know what’s in the ground and this is where it starts. Plant Annual or Where It Name Perennial Went 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. What I actually spent: The unplanned purchase and why I’m not sorry:
27 “Every plant on that list is now your responsibility. Water it. Give it the right light. Watch it. Root for it. Even the impulse buy.” “Read the mature size on the tag. That cute little plant has plans.” You Made It Out. Mostly. You went in. You (probably) bought some things. Hopefully you checked the tags. Hopefully the zone matched. Hopefully the light requirements made sense for where these things are going. And hopefully you only went one plant over the list, which, honestly, is a win. Now we need to talk about where these plants are actually going. The soil under your feet is either going to help everything you just bought or make the next few weeks a lot harder than they need to be. It’s not glamorous. It’s also not complicated. And it explains a lot. Chapter 4 is about dirt. Specifically, your dirt, and what to do about it. Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 3: The Garden Center Is a Trap
28 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
29Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt Chapter 4: Dirt (The Unglamorous Foundation of Everything) Nobody gets excited about soil. Nobody is scrolling Instagram at midnight looking at beautifully amended garden beds thinking, I want that. The soil is the part of gardening that exists entirely behind the scenes, doing enormous amounts of work while getting absolutely no credit. And yet. The dirt under your plants is doing more work than almost anything else in your garden. If it’s compacted and depleted, it doesn’t matter how much sun you have or how carefully you read the plant tags — things will grow slowly, look tired, and you’ll spend the season wondering what you’re doing wrong. The answer will be six inches underground, invisible and inconvenient. Here’s the good news: you don’t need a soil science degree, a pH meter, or a compost setup that requires a weekly turning schedule and its own Pinterest board. You need to know what you’re working with and roughly how to make it better. That’s it. This chapter is going to stay mercifully short. “Healthy soil grows healthy plants. Struggling soil grows struggling plants that you then water more and fertilize more and worry about more, and they still look bad. Start with the dirt.” What’s Actually Going On In Your Soil Good garden soil isn’t just dirt — it’s an entire little ecosystem that you mostly never see. Billions of microorganisms, fungi, earthworms, decomposed organic matter, all working together to break things down and make nutrients available to roots. When this system is healthy, it hums along quietly and your plants do well. When the soil is compacted, stripped, or chemically wrecked, the system stalls — and plants struggle even when the nutrients are technically present, because nothing is moving them in the right direction. Most residential yard soil has had a rough life before you showed up. Compacted by construction equipment. Possibly stripped of good topsoil before the sod went down. It’s been walked on, driven over, and treated with who knows what over the years. None of this is your fault and none of it is permanent. It’s just a starting point.
30 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt The three things that matter most are structure, nutrition, and drainage — and they’re connected enough that improving one usually helps the others. The Main Soil Types, in Plain English Here’s the fastest soil test that exists and costs nothing: pick up a handful of moist soil and squeeze it. What happens next tells you most of what you need to know. What gardeners actually do with this information: • Pick up soil, squeeze it, have absolutely no frame of reference for what the result means, put soil back down. • Google “what does clay soil feel like” while standing in the garden. • Text a friend a photo of the soil as if they can diagnose it remotely. • Buy compost anyway because someone on the internet said compost fixes everything. The last one is correct. Buy the compost. Clay soil holds its shape when you squeeze it and is slow to crumble apart. Sticky, dense, heavy — the kind of soil that sticks to your boots and dries into something resembling pottery. Clay holds moisture, which sounds like a good thing until you realize it can sit wet for days after rain and roots genuinely struggle to move through it. The silver lining: clay is actually nutrient-rich once you get it loosened up. It’s not hopeless, it just needs patience and organic matter added consistently over time. Many a lush perennial garden is growing in amended clay right now. Sandy soil falls apart immediately in your hand and feels gritty between your fingers. It drains fast — sometimes so fast that water barely pauses on its way through. This makes sandy soil easy to dig and quick to warm up in spring, which is genuinely nice, but nutrients wash out with the water and plants dry out faster than you expect. The fix is the same as clay: organic matter, which acts like a sponge and slows everything down just enough. Loam is the one everyone is quietly trying to achieve. It holds its shape loosely when you squeeze it, crumbles apart easily, drains well but holds some moisture, and smells like what people mean when they say they love the smell of fresh dirt. Dark, rich,
31Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt cooperative. If you have loam already, your garden has a head start and you should feel quietly smug about it. If you don’t, you’re working toward it — and you’ll get there. Compacted soil is less a soil type and more a condition your soil got into after years of foot traffic, construction equipment, or just being ignored. You’ll know it when you try to dig and the trowel bounces back at you. Water puddles on the surface instead of soaking in. Roots can’t penetrate it. The fix is physically loosening it — a garden fork is your friend here — and then adding organic matter so it stays loose. It takes more than one season but it does improve. Chalky or rocky soil is exactly what it sounds like — pale, often alkaline, full of bits of stone or chalk. It drains fast, stays dry, and can be low in nutrients. Not the easiest starting point, but workable with the right plants and consistent amendments. Some plants, lavender and thyme among them, genuinely thrive in these conditions, so all is not lost. “Whatever you’re working with, the answer is almost always more organic matter. Compost solves a remarkable number of soil problems and costs almost nothing if you make it yourself — but we’ll get to that.” The Fix: Organic Matter (This Is the Answer to Almost Everything) Organic matter is decomposed plant and animal stuff — compost, aged manure, shredded leaves, wood chips, straw. It sounds unglamorous because it is. It also improves almost every soil type in almost every direction at the same time, which is a rare and beautiful thing: • It loosens clay soil, improving drainage and aeration • It helps sandy soil retain moisture and nutrients • It feeds the microorganisms that make nutrients available to your plants • It improves soil structure over time, making it easier to dig and easier for roots to move through • It’s essentially free if you compost your kitchen scraps and yard waste The most straightforward approach: buy a few bags of compost at the garden center — it’s cheap, often cheaper than a single annual plant — spread two to three inches over your bed, and work it into the top six to eight inches with a garden fork before you plant.
32 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt Do this every spring and your soil will quietly improve season after season in ways that become very obvious by year three. You do not need to test your pH first. You do not need to send a soil sample to a lab and wait for results. Just add the compost. For the overwhelming majority of home gardeners growing a mix of vegetables and flowers in average yard conditions, consistent compost is doing enough. The fancy diagnostic stuff can wait until something is specifically and persistently wrong. When to Get a Soil Test A soil test is worth doing if: something keeps dying that shouldn’t, your plants are consistently yellowing in strange patterns, or you’re working with a brand-new bed carved out of lawn or field. Your local cooperative extension office often offers soil testing for free or a small fee, and the results tell you exactly what’s missing. For most established home gardens, though, consistent compost application handles the heavy lifting without any further diagnosis. A Word About Containers Pots, planters, window boxes, half wine barrels, that colander you found at a garage sale and haven’t returned to actual kitchen use — containers are a legitimate and often excellent way to garden, especially if you’re working with a small space, a bad patio situation, or native soil that needs a few seasons of improvement before it’s ready for something ambitious. The thing to know about containers is that they have different rules than in-ground planting. They dry out faster — sometimes daily in peak summer heat — and the nutrients wash out with every watering, so they need more consistent attention. What they give you in return is complete control over your soil from day one, the ability to move things around, and the option to garden on a balcony, stoop, or driveway where there’s no ground to plant in at all. One rule that matters: use potting mix in containers, not garden soil. Garden soil compacts in a pot, drains badly, and turns into something approaching concrete after a
33Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt few waterings. Potting mix is formulated to stay loose in a confined space. It costs a little more and it’s worth it every time. Raised beds are their own topic — and honestly their own book, which is exactly where we’re going to put them. For now, if you’re gardening in containers or in the ground, this chapter has you covered. “Containers are real gardening. Don’t let anyone tell you a patio full of pots is less legitimate than a garden bed. It’s just gardening with better drainage and more flexibility.” Mulch: The Single Laziest and Most Effective Thing You Can Do Mulch is a layer of material — wood chips, shredded bark, straw, shredded leaves — spread over your soil after planting. It looks like the finishing detail people add to make a garden bed look tidy, but it’s actually doing a substantial amount of work underneath that tidy appearance. It is the most effort-to-reward efficient thing you can do in a garden, which is exactly why we’re covering it here. Here’s what mulch actually does: • Keeps moisture in the soil by slowing evaporation — which means less watering • Regulates soil temperature, keeping roots cooler in summer heat and a bit warmer in early spring • Suppresses weeds by blocking light from reaching weed seeds in the soil • Breaks down slowly over time and adds organic matter back into the soil • Makes your beds look finished and intentional, which is a bonus Apply two to three inches of mulch around your plants after planting, keeping it an inch or two away from the base of stems and trunks — mulch piled directly against stems traps moisture and invites rot. Then mostly ignore it. Top it up once a year when it breaks down. If you have trees that get mulched every spring in a perfect little circle, know that whoever is doing that is probably piling it too high against the trunk, which is called volcano mulching and is bad for the tree. A shallow, wide ring is correct. Flat, not piled up. But this is a mild tangent and we’ve all seen the volcano mulch.
34 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt “Mulch is the lazy gardener’s best friend. It waters for you, weeds for you, and feeds the soil while you’re inside doing other things. Two to three inches. Done.” Fertilizer: What It Actually Does and When You Actually Need It Fertilizer gives plants nutrients they need to grow — primarily nitrogen (for leafy growth), phosphorus (for roots and blooms), and potassium (for overall plant health). Those three numbers on a fertilizer bag — say, 10-10-10 — are the percentages of each, in that order. Here’s the honest take on fertilizer for a home gardener: if you’re adding compost regularly, you probably need less fertilizer than you think. Compost releases nutrients slowly and consistently, which is actually better for most plants than a big dose of synthetic fertilizer all at once. Over-fertilizing — especially with high-nitrogen fertilizers — can produce plants that are very leafy and very green and produce almost no flowers or fruit. Tomato plants love to do this given the chance. That said, there are times when a little supplemental fertilizer helps: • Container plants need more regular fertilizing because nutrients wash out with every watering. A slow-release fertilizer mixed into the potting soil at planting, topped up with a liquid fertilizer every few weeks during the growing season, is a reasonable approach. • Heavy-feeding vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, and squash appreciate a boost once they start setting fruit. A tomato-specific fertilizer (lower nitrogen, higher phosphorus and potassium) used according to the package directions is the right tool here. • Flowering plants that aren’t blooming may benefit from a phosphorus- forward fertilizer, sometimes called a “bloom booster.” But first rule out the obvious culprits: not enough sun, wrong watering, rootbound container. • Established shrubs and perennials in good soil with regular compost addition usually don’t need supplemental fertilizer at all. They’re fine. Leave them alone.
35 My Soil Notes Write down what you know about your soil. You’ll update this as you learn more. My soil type (clay, sandy, loam, compacted, honestly no idea): Where drainage seems good vs. where water sits after rain: My planting setup (in-ground, raised bed, containers, some combo): What I’ve added or plan to add to improve the soil (compost, mulch, amendments): Anything weird about my soil I’ve noticed (hard pan, rocks, very dry, very wet): Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt When in doubt, less is more with fertilizer. Follow the package directions rather than doubling up under the logic that more must be better — it isn’t, and burned roots from over-fertilizing are a real and annoying thing. “Fertilizer is a supplement, not a substitute for decent soil. Fix the soil first. Add fertilizer where it actually makes sense. Don’t pour it on everything and hope for the best.”
36 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt “You don’t need perfect soil on day one. You need to start improving it and keep going. Every handful of compost is a deposit into an My Container Garden Notes If you’re growing anything in containers, track it here. Containers need more attention than in-ground plants and it helps to have a record of what’s in what, what mix you used, and how things went. Container / Location What’s In It How It Did 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Potting mix I used (or plan to use): Fertilizing approach for containers: What I’ll do differently with containers next season:
37Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 4: Dirt account that pays dividends in flowers and tomatoes.” “Lavender would like you to know it meant every word on that plant tag.” Okay. The Dirt Section Is Done. You made it through the soil chapter. Nobody’s favorite. Genuinely important. If you retain nothing else from these pages, retain this: add compost every spring, mulch after planting, and don’t over-fertilize. That’s the whole system. Everything else is refinement. Now. Chapter 5 is where we finally talk about what you’re actually growing — flowers, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, the perennials that show up every year without being asked, and yes, the hydrangeas. We’ve been building to this. Let’s go.
38 PlantPlant TherapyTherapy
39Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? (Flowers, Food, Shrubs & the Plants That Come Back Whether You’re Ready or Not) We’ve covered a lot of ground to get here — your zone, your sunlight, your soil, the garden center and its many temptations. All of that was setup. This is the chapter where you actually decide what you’re growing, and it’s the most personal decision in this whole book. Because here’s the thing: there is no correct answer. Some people want a vegetable garden that feeds their family all summer. Some people want a cutting garden full of things to bring inside in a vase. Some people want their yard to look like something — intentional, beautiful, alive with bees and butterflies — and have zero interest in growing anything they can eat. Some people just want that one thing they saw on Instagram and they’re willing to learn the rest as they go. All of those are good reasons to garden. None of them is more legitimate than the others. This chapter is here to help you understand your options well enough to make choices that actually suit what you want — not what you think a gardener is supposed to want. Let’s go category by category. Feel free to skip around. Gardening is for: • stressed people • busy people • tired people • hopeful people • people trying to reconnect with something real • people who just want ONE successful tomato before the world collapses emotionally • people who saw a hydrangea on Instagram and have not recovered “You don’t have to grow vegetables to be a real gardener. You don’t have to grow flowers either. You just have to grow something you care about, in a place it can survive. That’s the whole job.”
40 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Perennials: The Plants That Come Back and Keep Coming Back If there is a single category worth understanding before any other, it’s perennials. These are the plants that die back in winter and return in spring — often larger, often spreading, occasionally becoming such a fixture in your yard that you forget you planted them on purpose. They are the backbone of a low-maintenance garden and the reason some yards look effortlessly full while others stay thin and scraggly. The honest thing about perennials: they’re slow to impress. Year one, a perennial is spending most of its energy establishing its root system underground, which means you’re looking at something that seems unremarkable and paying fifteen dollars for the privilege. Year two it’s more confident. Year three it’s doing what the tag promised. Year four you’re dividing it and giving pieces away and feeling like someone who knows what they’re doing. The payoff is real — it just takes patience that annuals don’t require. Some perennials that are genuinely worth starting with, by what you’re hoping for: If you want something that basically takes care of itself: Coneflower (Echinacea) — Purple, pink, white, or orange depending on the variety. Blooms mid to late summer, tolerates heat and drought once established, attracts every pollinator in your zip code. Deadhead spent blooms to keep it going or leave them for the birds in fall. Comes back reliably for years and spreads slowly enough that it stays polite. Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia) — Golden yellow with dark centers, blooms summer into fall, reseeds freely which means you’ll have more of them next year whether you planned to or not. Very drought tolerant. Almost impossible to kill once established. Pairs beautifully with coneflower if you like that cottage garden look without the cottage garden effort. Daylily (Hemerocallis) — Not to be confused with true lilies — daylilies are their own very forgiving category. Each flower lasts only one day (hence the name) but the plants produce so many blooms in succession that you barely notice. Available in every color except blue. They spread, they multiply, they survive neglect, and they’ll still be there in ten years. The old orange ones you see growing wild along roadsides? Those are escaped daylilies. They’re that tough.
41Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Hosta — For the shady spots where nothing else wants to grow. Hostas are foliage plants primarily — big, bold, architectural leaves in green, blue-green, gold, or variegated — and they’re absolutely unbothered by shade. They do bloom (small lavender or white flowers on tall spikes in summer) but mostly they’re there for the leaves. Slugs love them, which is annoying but manageable. Everything else basically leaves them alone. Salvia (perennial varieties) — Spikes of blue, purple, or pink flowers that bloom for a long time and attract hummingbirds and bees. Very drought tolerant once established. Cut it back by about a third after the first flush of bloom and it’ll often give you a second round. This is the perennial equivalent of a reliable car — not flashy, genuinely useful, always shows up. If you want drama and you’re willing to give it a little attention: Peony — If you have any feelings about flowers — and clearly you do, or you wouldn’t be here — peonies are probably already on your list. Enormous, extravagant, impossibly fragrant blooms in late spring. They live for decades. They smell like something you’d pay for in a candle. The tradeoff: they bloom for about two to three weeks in late spring and then spend the rest of the season being attractive foliage. They need excellent drainage and resent being moved once established. Plant them in full sun, don’t bury the eyes (the pink growth buds at the crown) more than one to two inches below the soil surface — this is the most common reason peonies don’t bloom — and then mostly leave them alone. They will reward patience in a way that’s genuinely moving. Astilbe — Feathery plumes in pink, red, white, or purple, blooming in early to midsummer. One of the best options for partial shade — it’s one of the few genuinely showy flowering plants that doesn’t demand full sun. Loves moisture. Goes beautifully next to a water feature or in a low spot that stays a little damp. The dried plumes persist into fall and look intentional even after the color fades. Russian Sage (Perovskia) — Tall, airy, silver-stemmed with tiny lavender-blue flowers from midsummer through fall. Extremely drought tolerant. Deer resistant, which depending on your neighborhood is either a nice bonus or the entire reason you’re
42 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? choosing it. Gives a soft, hazy, almost Mediterranean look to a bed. Smells herbaceous and pleasant when you brush against it. Pairs well with ornamental grasses if you’re going for movement and texture. Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos) — Heart-shaped flowers dangling from arched stems in pink or white, blooming in spring. Very charming, slightly gothic, beloved by everyone who sees it. Prefers partial shade and consistent moisture. The foliage dies back completely in summer heat, which can leave a gap in your bed — plan something nearby to fill that space when it disappears. Worth it anyway. “Perennials are a commitment that pays you back with interest. Plant them in the right spot, leave them alone, and they’ll be there making your yard look good long after you’ve forgotten planting them.” Annuals: The Fast, The Bright, The Gone by October Annuals live one season and that’s the deal. They germinate, they grow, they bloom their hearts out all summer, they set seed, and they’re finished. You plant them again next year. In exchange for this annual commitment, they give you color that starts fast, blooms abundantly, and keeps going all season in a way that most perennials don’t match. They’re the summer soundtrack of a garden — bright, everywhere, reliably cheerful. And when the season ends, you get to choose something entirely different next year, which is either a feature or a bug depending on how you feel about commitment. The annuals worth knowing: Zinnia — The easiest flower you can grow from seed directly in the garden. Fast- germinating, fast-blooming, available in every color, and the more you cut them the more they produce. A zinnia plant left to its own devices is fine. A zinnia plant you’re cutting from regularly for bouquets is a machine. If you want a cutting garden and have no idea where to start, start with zinnias. They make you feel like you know what you’re doing immediately. Marigold — Bright orange and yellow, smell a little sharp up close (some people love this, some don’t), bloom all season without any deadheading required, and are
43Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? legitimately useful planted near vegetables because certain pests dislike them. Not the most sophisticated flower but they have never, ever let anyone down. Very hard to kill. Great for kids to grow. Petunia — The workhorse of the garden center entrance display. Trailing or mounding, available in basically every color combination imaginable, blooms continuously with minimal deadheading. They get leggy by midsummer — cut them back by about half and they’ll bounce back with fresh growth and new blooms. Good in containers and window boxes where they can trail over the edge. Impatiens — The shade annual. If you have a dark spot and you want color there, impatiens are the answer. They bloom in pink, red, white, coral, and lavender from planting until frost. They need regular water and wilt dramatically when dry, which at least gives you very clear feedback about whether they need attention. Keep them moist and they’ll reward you with non-stop color in spots where almost nothing else will bloom. Cosmos — Tall, airy, feathery-leaved plants with daisy-like flowers in pink, white, and magenta. Easy from seed, fast-growing, and they have a wildflower quality that makes a garden feel natural and full without looking manicured. They reseed themselves, which means if you let them go to seed you’ll have volunteers the following year with no effort. Cosmos in a cutting garden are romantic and effortless in a way that feels like cheating. Calibrachoa (Million Bells) — Look like tiny petunias, behave even better. Self- cleaning (no deadheading needed), trail beautifully from containers and hanging baskets, and bloom continuously from planting until hard frost. Available in an enormous range of colors. If you have a window box and want it to look full and colorful all season with minimal effort, plant calibrachoa. “Annuals are the garden’s way of giving you a do-over every year. Hated the color combination? Try something different. Loved it? Do it again. No long- term commitments required.”
44 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Shrubs: The Backbone (And Where the Hydrangeas Live) Shrubs are the part of a garden that beginners often overlook completely while chasing annuals and perennials, and then wonder why their yard never quite looks finished. Shrubs provide structure — something that’s there in winter, in early spring before anything else has woken up, and in fall after everything else has called it quits. They’re the framework everything else hangs on. They’re also where your hydrangeas live. So let’s talk about that. Hydrangeas: The Real Conversation Hydrangeas are shrubs. This matters before you buy one, because shrubs take two to three years to fill out — which means the enormous billowing cloud of blooms you saw on Instagram was probably taken in year four or five. The plant you’re bringing home is going to look modest for a while. This is normal and not a sign that something is wrong. There are several types of hydrangeas and they behave very differently from each other, which is the source of a lot of hydrangea heartbreak. The most important thing to know before you buy: Hydrangea Types at a Glance Bigleaf (Hydrangea macrophylla) — the classic mophead or lacecap. Blue or pink depending on soil pH. Blooms on old wood, meaning if you prune it in fall or have a hard winter, you may lose next year’s flowers. Needs protection in cold zones. Look for ‘Endless Summer’ varieties that bloom on both old and new wood. Panicle (Hydrangea paniculata) — cone-shaped white or pink flowers, blooms on new wood so you can prune it in early spring without losing blooms. The most cold-hardy type. ‘Limelight’ and ‘Little Lime’ are reliable performers. Smooth (Hydrangea arborescens) — big white or pink snowball blooms, blooms on new wood, very cold-hardy. ‘Annabelle’ is the classic. ‘Incrediball’ has stronger stems that don’t flop after rain. Oakleaf (Hydrangea quercifolia) — native to the Southeast, beautiful fall color, exfoliating bark in winter, blooms on old wood. Tolerates shade better than the others. Multi-season interest even when not in bloom.
45Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? The single most common reason hydrangeas don’t bloom: pruning them at the wrong time. If you have a bigleaf hydrangea and you’re trimming it back every fall or early spring out of tidiness, you are removing the buds for next year’s flowers. Leave them alone until after bloom, or switch to a variety that blooms on new wood. The second most common reason: too much shade. Hydrangeas like shade from hot afternoon sun, but they still want several hours of morning light. A spot that gets no direct sun at all will give you lush foliage and very few flowers. Planted in the right spot, left mostly alone, given three years to establish — hydrangeas are completely achievable and completely worth it. You will get those blooms. Other Shrubs Worth Knowing Spirea — Small to medium shrubs with arching branches covered in white or pink flowers in spring or summer depending on variety. Extremely easy, very cold-hardy, tolerates a range of soil conditions. ‘Little Princess’ and ‘Goldmound’ are compact enough for most yards. Cut them back hard after bloom and they’ll stay tidy. Lilac (Syringa) — If you want fragrance that stops people in their tracks in late spring, this is the plant. Large shrubs or small trees covered in purple, pink, or white flower clusters that smell like the best version of spring you’ve ever encountered. Bloom time is brief — about two to three weeks — and then they’re foliage for the rest of the year, which is fine because those two weeks are extraordinary. Full sun, good drainage, patience. They take a few years to start blooming heavily. Roses — We’re not ignoring roses, but we’re also being honest: roses are a whole separate hobby with their own learning curve, pruning schedules, pest management requirements, and devoted community. Shrub roses and landscape roses (like the Knock Out series) are significantly easier than hybrid teas and a reasonable place to start. Knock Out roses bloom almost continuously, are disease resistant, and require almost no special care. If you want roses without the rose drama, start there.
46 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Viburnum — An underrated workhorse. Depending on variety you get white spring flowers, attractive berries, excellent fall color, and sometimes fragrance. Many are native or native-adjacent. They’re deer resistant, pest resistant, and content to grow in part shade. Not the flashiest shrub but they do everything quietly and well, which is a quality worth appreciating. Beautyberry (Callicarpa) — Grown almost entirely for the fall show — clusters of iridescent purple berries that are so vivid they look fake. Bloom is unremarkable. The rest of the season is unremarkable. September and October arrive and suddenly everyone who walks past your yard stops to ask what that is. A genuinely surprising plant that earns its space by doing one thing spectacularly. “Shrubs are where your garden stops looking like a collection of things you planted and starts looking like an actual garden. They’re worth the investment and the patience.” Herbs: Useful, Forgiving, and Basically Free After Year One Herbs are one of the most satisfying things to grow because the payoff is immediate and practical. You snip something off a plant you grew, you put it in food, and it tastes noticeably better than the dried stuff in a jar that’s been in your cabinet since 2019. This is a small but real quality-of-life improvement that costs almost nothing once the plants are established. A few honest notes on the most common herbs: Basil — Annual, needs warmth, comes inside the moment the nights get cool. Pinch off the flower heads as soon as they appear or the plant puts its energy into going to seed and the leaves get bitter. Buy new starts each spring or seed them indoors. Grows happily in a pot on a sunny porch or windowsill. Mint — Grows like it’s getting paid to. Plant mint in a container or it will quietly colonize every square inch of available bed space and you will spend the next three years managing
47Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? the aftermath. In a pot it’s cheerful and productive and you can make mojitos. In the ground it’s a long-term commitment you didn’t fully understand when you made it. Rosemary — Woody perennial in warmer zones (7 and above), treated as an annual in colder zones. Full sun, excellent drainage, hates having wet feet — so the worst thing you can do is plant it in clay soil and water it frequently. Get those conditions right and it’s nearly indestructible. Smells incredible. Useful in the kitchen constantly. Chives — Perennial, comes back every year, requires almost zero attention, and produces pretty purple flowers in spring that are also edible. One of the most genuinely low-maintenance herbs you can plant. Grows in a neat clump and spreads slowly by reseeding. If you do nothing else with herbs, plant chives. Thyme — Low-growing, drought tolerant, perennial in most zones. Works as a ground cover between stepping stones. Produces tiny pink or purple flowers that bees love. Harvest regularly to keep it from getting woody. There are dozens of varieties — lemon thyme, creeping thyme, woolly thyme — and most of them are charming. Lavender — Technically an herb, spiritually a lifestyle. Perennial in zones 5-8, needs full sun and excellent drainage more than almost anything else, drought tolerant once established, and smells extraordinary. The French and Spanish varieties are showier but less cold-hardy. English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is the most reliably hardy. Cut it back by about a third after bloom to keep it from getting leggy. Does not want to be babied. “An herb garden doesn’t have to be a garden. A few pots on a sunny step, a window box by the kitchen door, a corner of a flower bed. Start small, add what you actually use, and enjoy the fact that your food tastes better now.” Vegetables: The Ones Worth Growing and the Ones That Will Humble You Vegetable gardening is its own deep rabbit hole and there are entire books dedicated to it — including, eventually, one in this series. For now, here’s an honest beginner’s guide to the vegetables that reward you and the ones that are harder than they look.
48 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Start here — genuinely forgiving: Cherry Tomatoes — Easier than full-size tomatoes, more productive per plant, and faster to ripen. ‘Sun Gold’ and ‘Sweet 100’ are nearly foolproof. They need full sun, consistent watering, and a stake or cage because they will get large and fall over without support. The main mistake is planting them before the soil is warm — wait until two weeks after your last frost date. Zucchini — So productive it has become a gardening cliché. One or two plants is enough. Two to three plants and you’ll be leaving bags of zucchini on neighbors’ porches at night because you’ve run out of ways to use them. They need space — each plant can spread four to five feet — and consistent water. Watch for powdery mildew on the leaves in humid summers; it’s cosmetically unpleasant but the plant usually keeps producing anyway. Green Beans — Direct sow after last frost, water regularly, harvest frequently to keep the plant producing. Bush beans stay compact and don’t need staking. Pole beans grow tall and need a trellis but produce for a longer season. Both are satisfying and fast — you’ll be harvesting within about two months of planting. Lettuce and Salad Greens — Cool-season crops that prefer spring and fall over summer heat. They go to seed quickly when temperatures rise, which is called bolting, and the leaves become bitter. Plant early in spring, harvest as cut-and-come-again (snip outer leaves, let the center keep growing), and replant in late summer for a fall harvest. The fastest return on investment in the vegetable garden. Cucumbers — Need warmth, need consistent moisture, need something to climb if you’re growing vining types. Very productive once they get going. Pick them regularly because overgrown cucumbers left on the vine signal the plant to stop producing. Cucumber beetles are a common pest — row cover early in the season helps. These will humble you (grow them anyway if you want, just know what you’re signing up for):
49Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Full-Size Tomatoes — Labor of love. They want full sun, deep consistent watering, regular fertilizing once fruiting begins, pruning of suckers if you’re growing indeterminate varieties, and staking that can actually handle a plant that may reach six feet. When they work they are extraordinary. When they get blossom end rot, or the deer find them, or the timing is off and the season ends before they ripen, it is a whole emotional experience. Worth it for many people. Know what you’re committing to. Peppers — Need heat — more heat than most people expect. They sulk in cool summers and produce almost nothing. In a genuinely hot, sunny spot with warm nights they’re wonderful. In a northern garden with a short season they can be frustrating. Grow them in a container that you can move to the warmest spot in your yard. Corn — Needs a lot of space, needs to be planted in blocks for pollination (not rows), and takes all season to produce exactly one or two ears per stalk. Unless you have a large garden and a specific passion for corn, the supermarket is doing a better job than you can at scale. Melons and Squash — Sprawling, space-hungry, pest-attractive, and temperamental about ripening timing. Watermelons need a long, hot season that many climates can’t provide reliably. Winter squash takes up an enormous amount of ground for a harvest that comes at the very end of the season. Not impossible, but not where to start. “Grow the vegetables you actually eat. This sounds obvious and somehow gets forgotten in the excitement of seed catalogs. A garden full of things you don’t cook is a very elaborate compost situation.” A Quick Word About Pollinators You don’t have to build a pollinator garden to be a good gardener. But if you’re already planting flowers, it costs you almost nothing to lean toward plants that do double duty — looking beautiful and feeding the bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds that make a garden feel alive.
50 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? A few things that make a meaningful difference: • Native plants are generally the most valuable for local pollinators — they’ve evolved together, and insects recognize them in ways they may not recognize cultivated varieties • Single-petaled flowers are more accessible to pollinators than heavily doubled or ruffled varieties where the pollen is buried inside layers of petals • Bloom succession matters — try to have something in flower from early spring through late fall so there’s always something available • Leaving some dried seed heads standing through winter provides habitat and food for birds • Reducing or eliminating pesticide use in the garden has a bigger impact than any individual plant choice Specific pollinator favorites worth growing: coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, salvia, monarda (bee balm), agastache, native asters, milkweed (essential for monarchs), Joe Pye weed, goldenrod (not the cause of your allergies — that’s ragweed, which blooms at the same time and gets blamed unfairly), and almost any herb allowed to flower. “A garden that feeds pollinators isn’t a sacrifice — it’s just a garden with coneflowers in it. The bees will find you. They’re very motivated.”
“The hydrangeas will bloom. You just have to let them keep their buds. Do not touch the buds.” The Plant Roll Call Every plant that makes it into your garden gets a line here. Name, type, where it went, how it did. Future-you will thank you when you’re standing in your yard in April wondering what that thing poking up through the mulch is. Plant Name Type Location Notes & Variety (A/P/S/H/V) A = Annual P = Perennial S = Shrub H = Herb V = Vegetable 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Continue in the notes pages at the back if you run out of room. Running out of room is a good problem to have.
52 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? Plants I’m Currently Obsessed With The ones you saw somewhere and can’t stop thinking about. The goal you’re working toward. The thing you’re going to try next season. Write them here so you don’t forget. Plants I desperately want but haven’t grown yet: The plant that made me fall in love with gardening (or the one that will): Something a neighbor or friend grows that I want to ask them about: Varieties I want to try next season:
53Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 5: What Do You Even Want to Grow? “Your plant obsessions are valid data. They tell you what your garden wants to be. Follow them.” Now You Know What You’re Growing. Or at least you have a better sense of the categories, the options, and what’s realistic for where you are and what you care about. The rest is just doing it — putting things in the ground, watching what happens, adjusting next season. You’ve got your zone, your light, your soil sorted, and now your plant list. The next step is the map — figuring out where everything actually goes and keeping track of it so your garden makes sense when you look at it and not just in your head. That’s Chapter 6, and it involves drawing, which is more fun than it sounds.
54 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
55Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos (A Sketch Page and a Prayer) At some point — usually around the second or third season — you will stand in your yard in early spring staring at a patch of bare dirt and think: what is in there. You planted something last fall. You think it was a bulb. You think it was supposed to come back. You cannot remember where you bought it, what it was called, or approximately how large it gets. This chapter exists to prevent that specific experience, or at least to give you a fighting chance against it. A garden map — even a rough one, even a slightly embarrassing one drawn in ten minutes with a ballpoint pen — is one of the most useful documents you will ever create as a gardener. It tells future-you what past-you did, and future-you is always grateful. You do not need drafting skills. You do not need graph paper or a ruler or software. You need a general sense of your yard’s shape and the approximate locations of the things growing in it. That’s it. We’re talking functional, not beautiful. “A bad map made now is worth infinitely more than a perfect map you never make. Draw the thing. Label it. Move on.” Things every gardener has said while standing in their yard in April: • “Something was definitely planted here.” • “I think this is a flower? Or a very confident weed?” • “I wrote it down somewhere. Somewhere.” • “The label said ‘purple thing.’ That does not narrow it down.” • “This is either a peony or a very ambitious sprout. We wait.” The map prevents all of this. The map is your friend. Draw the map. Why Bothering to Map It Actually Matters Beyond the mystery dirt patch problem, a garden map does a few things that are quietly useful all season:
56 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos • It stops you from accidentally digging up something dormant. Bulbs and early perennials go completely underground in winter — if you don’t know they’re there, you’ll dig into them in March and feel terrible about it. • It helps you plan for bloom succession. When you can see what’s blooming where and when, you start to notice the gaps — the stretch in August where nothing is happening, the corner that peaks in June and then goes completely quiet. A map makes this visible before you’re standing in a finished bed wishing you’d added something. • It saves you from replanting things you already have. Without a record, there’s a real risk of buying the same plant two seasons in a row because you forgot you planted it and it hasn’t come up yet. This is more common than it sounds and results in a very crowded corner. • It makes next season easier. When you sit down in winter to think about what you want to do differently, having a map of what’s already there is the difference between a productive planning session and an hour of trying to reconstruct your own garden from memory. “Your garden is a living record of decisions you made across multiple seasons, some of which you no longer remember making. Map it. For the love of everything, map it.” How to Actually Draw the Map (Without Making It a Whole Thing) Start with the fixed stuff — the things that aren’t moving. Your house. The fence line, if you have one. Any large trees, permanent structures, pathways, or hardscape like a patio or driveway. These are your anchors. Everything else gets placed relative to them. Then add your beds. You don’t need to draw them to scale, though rough proportions help. An oddly shaped bed that’s actually twelve feet long doesn’t need to be twelve times longer than a one-foot section — just make it feel approximately right. Sketching from memory is fine. The goal is useful, not precise. Then fill in what’s planted where, as specifically as you can manage. “Hostas” is better than nothing. “Three ‘Sum and Substance’ hostas, planted spring 2024” is better still.
57Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Use whatever level of detail you have energy for, understanding that more detail now means fewer mysteries later. A few tips that make the map actually useful: • Write plant names in pencil if you’re the kind of person who moves things around — and most gardeners are, eventually • Note heights roughly (tall/medium/short) so you remember the layering logic you had in mind when you planted • Mark anything you’re not sure about with a question mark rather than leaving it blank — “? purple thing, blooms July” is still useful information • Date the map so you know which season it reflects, especially if you add to it over multiple years • If a plant dies and you replace it, update the map — the whole point is accuracy “Perfectionism is the enemy of the garden map. A map with seventeen question marks and some illegible handwriting is still a map. Draw it anyway.” Thinking About Bloom Time (So Something Is Always Happening) One of the most satisfying things a garden can do is offer something interesting in every season — not just the six weeks in late May when everything peaks at once and then collapses into a long green lull. Getting there doesn’t require a master plan on day one. But it does help to think about it, even loosely. A simple way to approach it: as you’re planning what goes where, think in three windows. A Loose Bloom Succession Framework Early season (March – May): Bulbs, early perennials, and cool-season annuals. Think tulips, daffodils, bleeding heart, creeping phlox, pansies, hellebores. These carry the garden while everything else is still waking up. Mid season (June – August): The main event. Most perennials, most annuals, most shrubs. Hydrangeas, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, zinnias, daylilies,
58 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos lavender, roses, salvia, phlox, astilbe. This window basically takes care of itself once you have a few things established. Late season (September – frost): Often the most overlooked. Asters, sedums, ornamental grasses, beautyberry, goldenrod, rudbeckia, late-blooming hydrangeas. These are the plants that make your neighbors slow down in October. You don’t have to nail all three windows in year one. Most people spend a few seasons loading up on mid-season plants before they notice the gaps at the edges and start filling in. That’s completely fine. Just keep the framework in the back of your mind when you’re shopping, and try to have at least one thing doing something interesting outside that peak midsummer window. “The goal isn’t a garden that’s perfect for six weeks. It’s a garden that’s doing something worth looking at from March through October. Add to it a little at a time and it gets there.” Companion Planting (The Short Version, Because It Can Get Complicated) Companion planting is the practice of growing certain plants near each other because they benefit one another — either by deterring pests, attracting beneficial insects, fixing nitrogen in the soil, or just growing in ways that use space efficiently. It’s a real thing with real evidence behind some of it, and also an area where gardening folklore has gotten enthusiastically out of hand. Here’s the version that’s actually useful without becoming a whole course: • Basil and tomatoes are the classic pairing. Basil may help deter aphids and whiteflies near tomatoes, and they have similar growing requirements, which makes them practical neighbors regardless of any mystical chemistry between them. • Marigolds near vegetables are worth doing. French marigolds in particular produce a root secretion that deters nematodes in the soil, and the strong scent seems to confuse some above-ground pests. They also look cheerful, which is a separate but valid benefit.
59Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos • Tall plants with short ones is just efficient use of space. Planting low-growing lettuce or herbs under taller tomatoes or peppers means you’re getting two crops from the same footprint, and the taller plants provide welcome shade to cool-season crops that would otherwise bolt in summer heat. • Avoid planting the same family in the same spot year after year. Rotating your vegetables — tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant one season, then beans or greens the next — reduces the buildup of soil-borne diseases that target specific plant families. Even just moving things around within a bed helps. Beyond these, the companion planting guides with elaborate charts and moon phases are probably more effort than the results justify. Keep it simple. The basics are real. The elaborate systems are optional. “Plant things that like the same conditions near each other and you’re already doing companion planting. Everything else is refinement.” How the Map System Works Each map page works the same way: sketch your bed in the box, and mark each plant with a number — just a circled number or a dot with a number next to it. Then fill in the plant details in the numbered tracker below the sketch. The map stays clean and readable. The tracker holds all the information. Together they’re a complete reference for that bed. If a plant moves or dies, cross it out in the tracker and renumber if needed. If you add something mid-season, it gets the next available number. Simple. No color-coding required, no spreadsheet, no app. “Number on the map. Details in the tracker. Everything in one place. Future- you can actually read this.”
60 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Garden Map Sketch the bed shape below. Place a circled number where each plant lives. Label structures, paths, or anything fixed that helps orient the map. # Plant Name & Variety Type Sun Bloom Time Date Plnted Notes/Fert Schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Bed / Area Name: Season / Year: Sun: Full Sun / Part Sun / Shade (circle one) North is: Number your plants and fill in the tracker below.
61Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Garden Map Sketch the bed shape below. Place a circled number where each plant lives. Label structures, paths, or anything fixed that helps orient the map. # Plant Name & Variety Type Sun Bloom Time Date Plnted Notes/Fert Schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Bed / Area Name: Season / Year: Sun: Full Sun / Part Sun / Shade (circle one) North is: Number your plants and fill in the tracker below.
62 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Garden Map Sketch the bed shape below. Place a circled number where each plant lives. Label structures, paths, or anything fixed that helps orient the map. # Plant Name & Variety Type Sun Bloom Time Date Plnted Notes/Fert Schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Bed / Area Name: Season / Year: Sun: Full Sun / Part Sun / Shade (circle one) North is: Number your plants and fill in the tracker below.
63Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Garden Map Sketch the bed shape below. Place a circled number where each plant lives. Label structures, paths, or anything fixed that helps orient the map. # Plant Name & Variety Type Sun Bloom Time Date Plnted Notes/Fert Schedule 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. Bed / Area Name: Season / Year: Sun: Full Sun / Part Sun / Shade (circle one) North is: Number your plants and fill in the tracker below.
64 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos “Every number on that map is a plant you put in the ground on purpose. The tracker is proof it happened. Update it. It takes two minutes.” “A number on the map and a name in the tracker. That’s all. Future-you is begging.”
65Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos Season Planning Notes The things you want to remember for next season — gaps to fill, plants to move, things you want to try. Write it here while it’s fresh, not in March when you’ve forgotten half of it. The stretch of time when nothing is blooming that I want to fix: Something in the wrong spot that needs to move: Plants I want to add next season and roughly where: Something that surprised me this season (good or bad):
66 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos
67Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 6: Mapping the Chaos “A garden that surprises you in October is the result of a decision you made in April. Write it down now.” The Map Is Not the Territory. But It Helps. Your garden will not look exactly like what you drew here, and that’s fine. Plants have opinions about where they want to grow, some things will thrive in unexpected spots, some things will quietly leave gaps you didn’t plan for, and a volunteer cosmos will appear somewhere you definitely didn’t plant it and look so good you’ll let it stay. The map is not a contract. It’s a record. Update it when things change, scribble over it when plans shift, start a new page when you run out of room. A map that shows three seasons of changes and crossed-out numbers is more honest — and more useful — than a pristine one that only shows the original vision. Next up: water. Specifically, the water your plants are getting or not getting, which is the most common reason plants look bad and also the thing gardeners feel guiltiest about forgetting. Chapter 7 is here to make peace with that.
68 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
69Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering Chapter 7: Watering (Too Much, Too Little, and the Week You Completely Forgot) Watering is the part of gardening that sounds the simplest — it’s just water, you’ve been handling water your entire life — and turns out to be the thing most people get at least a little wrong most of the time. Not catastrophically wrong, usually. Just wrong enough that plants look vaguely stressed, blooms come in smaller than expected, or something wilts dramatically on a hot afternoon and you spend twenty minutes feeling like you failed it personally. The truth is that watering is less about following a schedule and more about paying attention. The same plant might need water every day in August and only once a week in a cool, cloudy May. Your clay soil holds moisture for days; your sandy soil loses it overnight. A plant in a container dries out in hours; the same plant in the ground might be fine for a week. There is no universal answer, which is mildly annoying but also means you can stop feeling guilty about not following a perfect schedule you made up. What you can do is learn to read your plants and your soil, develop a rough rhythm that fits your life, and know what to look for when something seems off. That’s the whole chapter. Every gardener has lived this exact sequence: • Day 1: “I should water tomorrow.” • Day 3: “They probably still look fine.” • Day 5: “OH NO.” Followed immediately by guilt-watering, aggressive overcompensation, and staring intensely at leaves hoping for forgiveness. We’ve all been there. This is normal. This is gardening. “Most watering guilt is misplaced. Plants are more resilient than the internet makes them seem, and a missed day is rarely the thing that kills them. Usually it’s a missed week. Sometimes it’s the overwatering. We’ll get to that.”
70 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering The Only Watering Tool You Actually Need Before we get into schedules and symptoms, there’s one technique worth knowing that’s free, always available, and more accurate than any moisture meter you’ll find at the garden center: Stick your finger an inch or two into the soil. If it feels dry at that depth, water. If it still feels moist, wait. That’s it. That’s the finger test, and it’s the most reliable watering guidance there is because it’s based on what’s actually happening in your specific soil on this specific day, rather than a general schedule based on conditions that may or may not match yours. The top of the soil will dry out faster than the root zone below it, so going by surface appearance alone can mislead you — something can look dry on top and still be plenty moist an inch down, especially in clay soil. The finger test bypasses that. It tells you what the roots are actually experiencing. For containers, you can also lift the pot. A dry pot is noticeably lighter than a watered one. After a week or two of checking this, you’ll start to recognize the weight difference without thinking about it. “The finger test has a one hundred percent success rate of telling you whether the soil is dry. It requires no batteries, no calibration, and no app. Just use it.” Overwatering vs. Underwatering: How to Tell the Difference Here is the maddening thing about overwatering and underwatering: the plants look almost identical when they’re suffering from either one. Wilting, yellowing, drooping, generally looking terrible — both problems produce the same visual distress signals, which means the instinct to water a sad-looking plant is sometimes exactly right and sometimes makes the problem significantly worse. The key is to look at the whole picture rather than just the plant.
71Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering Wilting in the heat of the afternoon What’s happening: This is often normal, even in well-watered plants. Many plants wilt slightly when temperatures peak and then recover on their own by evening as temperatures drop. Check the soil — if it’s moist and the plant perks up by nightfall, it was just heat stress, not a watering problem. What to do: Nothing, if the plant recovers by evening. Water if the soil is dry and it doesn’t recover. Wilting in the morning, before heat sets in What’s happening: This is actually a watering problem. A plant that’s wilted first thing in the morning has been struggling overnight and the soil is genuinely dry. Morning wilt is a real distress signal. What to do: Water thoroughly, down to the root zone, not just the surface. Yellowing leaves, starting from the bottom What’s happening: Could be either — but if the soil has been consistently moist or wet and the lowest leaves are yellowing and dropping, overwatering is the more likely culprit. Roots that stay wet for too long can’t absorb oxygen and start to rot, which shows up as yellowing foliage. What to do: Let the soil dry out more between waterings. Check drainage. If you suspect root rot, the plant may need to be repotted or the surrounding soil improved. Crispy, brown leaf edges What’s happening: Usually underwatering, especially if the soil is dry and it’s been hot. Can also be caused by wind, low humidity, or fertilizer burn — but dry soil plus crispy edges is a straightforward signal. What to do: Water deeply and consistently. Add mulch to slow moisture loss between waterings. Soft, mushy stem base What’s happening: Overwatering, almost certainly, combined with poor drainage.
72 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering This is rot and it’s serious. A mushy base means the plant has been sitting wet long enough for the tissue to break down. What to do: If caught early, improve drainage immediately and let the soil dry significantly. More often than not, a plant with a mushy base is not going to recover. Note what caused it and don’t repeat the conditions. Leaves that are pale, limp, and not perking up What’s happening: Consistent overwatering that’s been going on long enough to damage the root system. The roots can’t take up water properly anymore, so the plant looks underwatered even when the soil is wet. What to do: This is the tricky one. The soil needs to dry out, but the plant looks like it needs water. Trust the soil, not the plant. Let it dry, improve drainage, and give it time. “When in doubt about whether to water: check the soil, not the plant. The plant’s appearance is a lagging indicator. The soil is the real story.” Deep Watering vs. Shallow Watering: Why It Matters How you water matters almost as much as how often. A light sprinkle that wets the top inch of soil encourages roots to stay shallow — hovering near the surface chasing moisture — which makes plants less drought tolerant and more stressed during dry periods. A thorough, deep watering that soaks down six to eight inches encourages roots to grow downward, which is where they want to be and where they’re protected from surface heat and drying. Deep watering less frequently is almost always better than light watering every day. Give the soil time to dry out a bit between waterings — this is what encourages roots to go looking for moisture deeper in the soil, building a stronger root system in the process. The exception is containers, which dry out faster and may genuinely need water daily in peak summer.
73Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering When you water, go slow enough that the water actually soaks in rather than running off the surface. A soaker hose, a watering wand on a gentle setting, or just holding the hose at soil level for longer than feels necessary are all better than a brief blast from overhead. Watering the foliage rather than the soil is also less efficient and can contribute to fungal issues on plants that are prone to them — tomatoes especially don’t love getting their leaves consistently wet. A Rough Watering Guide by Plant Type Newly planted anything: water daily for the first 1-2 weeks while roots establish, then taper off to normal frequency. Established in-ground perennials and shrubs: once or twice a week in dry weather, less in cool or cloudy periods. Many are fine with just rainfall once established. Vegetables: consistently moist but not wet. Tomatoes especially want even moisture — inconsistent watering causes blossom end rot and cracking. Annuals in beds: two to three times a week in summer heat, more in containers. Containers: check daily in summer. Water when the top inch is dry. In peak heat, some containers need water every single day. Drought-tolerant plants (lavender, sedum, coneflower, black-eyed Susan): once established, they’re largely fine on rainfall alone. Overwatering kills them faster than drought does. Mulch Is Doing Half Your Watering Work Mulch helps here too, for the same reasons covered in Chapter 4 — it slows evaporation and keeps soil temperature stable, which means less watering overall. That’s potentially half the watering trips, which adds up significantly across a whole season.
74 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering If you’re finding that you need to water constantly to keep up with your garden, and you don’t have mulch down yet, that’s the first thing to fix before you adjust anything else. Mulch first, then reassess the watering frequency. The answer may largely take care of itself. “Mulch doesn’t replace watering. It just means you need to do it less often, which is the next best thing.” Watering Tools and Systems: What’s Actually Worth Having You don’t need much. Most gardens get by on a hose and a decent nozzle or wand. But a few tools make the work easier and the watering more effective: • A watering wand — the long-handled extension that lets you reach the base of plants without bending — is probably the most useful watering tool for a garden bed. It puts the water where it belongs (at the soil, not the foliage) and saves your back in the process. Worth every dollar. • A soaker hose runs along the soil and weeps water slowly along its length, soaking the root zone without wetting foliage or wasting water to evaporation. Set it up once in a bed and it does its job all season. Not glamorous, very effective. • A watering can for containers and small beds. Get one that’s a size you’ll actually carry when it’s full — a huge can sounds efficient until you realize you’re not going to fill and carry it because it’s too heavy. A two-gallon can is usually the sweet spot. • A hose timer is genuinely useful if your schedule is unpredictable or you travel. Set it, connect it to your soaker hose or sprinkler, and your garden gets water whether or not you remember. Not a substitute for actually checking on your plants, but a useful safety net. • A rain gauge is a cheap and underrated tool. It sits in your garden and tells you exactly how much rain you’ve actually received, which is almost always different from what it felt like. An inch of rain is often enough to skip supplemental watering for in-ground plants. Knowing when that’s happened takes the guesswork out.
75Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering What you probably don’t need: an expensive moisture meter (finger test), an elaborate irrigation system for a small garden (soaker hose and timer), or a specialized watering nozzle with seventeen settings (adjustable wand with two settings handles it). “Water the roots, not the leaves. Go slow, go deep, go less often. That’s the whole system.” When You Forget to Water (Because You Will) A day or two without water in mild weather: most established plants are completely fine. Don’t panic, don’t overcompensate by drowning them when you get back to it. A week without water in a heat wave: check everything. Water deeply. Prioritize containers and anything newly planted — those are the most vulnerable. Established perennials, shrubs, and drought-tolerant plants have likely been uncomfortable but probably survived. Annuals may be crispy at the edges and sulking, but most will recover with consistent water going forward. Two weeks without water in summer: some things will not have made it. Accept it, water what’s left, and make a note about what survived — those are your low-maintenance plants and they deserve a place of honor in next year’s garden. The gardeners whose plants survive their busy weeks and forgotten vacations are not the ones with perfect schedules. They’re the ones who chose forgiving plants, mulched their beds well, and planted things suited to their actual conditions. That’s the real watering strategy. “The best watering system is a garden designed to need less of it. Right plant, right place, good mulch. Everything else is maintenance.”
76 Grow, Damn It! | Watering Log Watering Log Two pages. Not because you need to log every watering forever, but because tracking it for even a few weeks early in the season helps you figure out your rhythm — what needs water when, what seems to do fine on its own, what’s always wilting no matter what you do. Fill it in loosely. Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S
77Grow, Damn It! | Watering Log Watering Log Two pages. Not because you need to log every watering forever, but because tracking it for even a few weeks early in the season helps you figure out your rhythm — what needs water when, what seems to do fine on its own, what’s always wilting no matter what you do. Fill it in loosely. Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S Plant Location Date Watered ( when you did it!) Notes M T W T F S S M T W T F S S
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Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson My Plant Looks Weird: A Quick Reference When something looks off and you need a fast answer. Write your own observations in the notes as you figure out what works for your garden. My own notes on what worked and what didn’t with wating this season: What You’re Seeing Most Likely Cause First Thing to Try Wilting in afternoon heat, recovers by evening Normal heat stress Nothing - check again in the morning Wilting in the morning Underwatering Water deeply, at the root zone Yellow leaves, lower first, soil is wet Overwatering / poor drainage Let it dry out; check drainage Crispy brown leaf edges, soil is dry Underwatering or wind/heat Deep water; add mulch Pale, limp all over; soil is wet Root rot from overwatering Dry out; improve drainage; may not recover Mushy stem at the base Rot from overwatering Very difficult to save — improve drainage going forward Leaves curling inward Heat/drought stress or underwatering Finger test - water if dry Leaves dropping suddenly Extreme stress - temp change, root disturbance, or drought Check watering; avoid moving the plant if possible No blooms, lots of lush leaves Too much nitrogen fertilizer or not enough sun Cut back fertilizer; assess sun exposure Stunted growth, pale color overall Poor soil nutrition or compaction Add compost; consider a mild fertilizer
80 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering “Plants communicate through their leaves. The more seasons you spend paying attention, the faster you get at reading what they’re saying.” “Basil wilts dramatically. Basil recovers dramatically. Do not take it personally.”
81Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 7: Watering You’ve Got This. Probably. Water is not complicated. It just requires paying attention more than following rules, which is true of most things in gardening. Check the soil. Water deeply when it’s dry. Mulch to slow evaporation. Don’t panic when you miss a day. Do panic slightly if you’ve missed two weeks in August — but even then, start by watering, not by catastrophizing. The plants that didn’t survive a dry spell weren’t failures. They were information. Note what they were, note where they were planted, and either find something tougher for that spot or set up a system that makes it easier to keep up with watering there. Next up is the chapter you’ve been both looking forward to and slightly dreading: tiny villains. Pests, weeds, mysterious damage, things eating your things. Chapter 8 has the lineup.
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83Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Chapter 8: Tiny Villains (Weeds, Pests & Mysterious Plant Drama) Something is eating your plants. You don’t know what it is. You didn’t see it happen. You just walked outside one morning and found the evidence — ragged holes in leaves, flowers chewed down to stubs, entire seedlings that were there yesterday and aren’t today. It feels personal. It is not personal. But it’s also not nothing, and it’s worth knowing who the usual suspects are and what to do about them. Weeds are a separate category of villain — less dramatic, more persistent, and honestly more demoralizing over time than any individual pest. A pest eats a plant. A weed moves into the neighborhood, establishes deep roots, sets approximately forty thousand seeds, and makes itself completely at home while you’re dealing with everything else. This chapter covers both. The approach is the same for all of them: identify, manage, and lower your expectations about total eradication. You are not going to eliminate every aphid. You are not going to pull every weed permanently. You are going to manage a situation that is ongoing, which sounds like bad news but is really just the actual nature of gardening. Every gardener is managing this. You’re not behind. Signs you are now in an ongoing negotiation with your garden: You have referred to a specific squirrel by a name that is not flattering You have gone outside at night with a flashlight looking for slugs You have Googled “what is eating my [plant]?” at 11pm You have taken a photo of plant damage and posted it somewhere asking for identification You have felt genuine personal betrayal by an insect You have said “not on my watch” to a weed You have considered the deer situation personal If you checked more than two, welcome to experienced gardening. This is what it looks like from the inside. “The goal is not a pest-free garden. The goal is a garden where the plants are winning most of the time. Those are different goals and only one of them is achievable.”
84 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains The Usual Suspects: Common Garden Pests These are the ones you’re most likely to encounter. Knowing who you’re dealing with matters because the solutions are different — what works on aphids does nothing for grubs, and what works on slugs is irrelevant to deer. Identify first, then act. Aphids Crime: Clustering on new growth and flower buds, sucking plant sap, causing distorted leaves and sticky residue. Often found in large numbers very quickly because they reproduce at a genuinely alarming rate. Evidence at the scene: Clusters of tiny soft-bodied insects — green, black, white, or pink depending on species — usually on the undersides of leaves or at stem tips. Sticky residue (called honeydew) on leaves below them, sometimes with a black sooty mold growing on it. Sentence: A strong spray of water knocks them off and disrupts the colony — do this early in the day so foliage dries before evening. Neem oil or insecticidal soap are effective for persistent infestations. Ladybugs and lacewings eat them enthusiastically, so if you see those around, let them work. Avoid broad-spectrum pesticides that kill the beneficial insects doing your pest control for free. Slugs and Snails Crime: Chewing large irregular holes in leaves, especially at night. They favor hostas, lettuce, and anything else with soft, moist foliage. They are especially active after rain and in humid conditions. Evidence at the scene: The holes are ragged and often go all the way through the leaf. The giveaway is the shiny slime trail they leave behind, visible in early morning before it dries. If you go out at night with a flashlight, you will find them in the act, which is satisfying in a grim way. Sentence: Diatomaceous earth sprinkled around vulnerable plants creates an uncomfortable barrier they won’t cross — reapply after rain. Iron phosphate slug bait (sold as Sluggo and similar brands) is effective and safe around pets and wildlife. Beer traps work and are somewhat entertaining. Handpicking at night is effective if you’re comfortable with it and have a headlamp.
85Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Japanese Beetles Crime: Skeletonizing leaves — eating the tissue between the veins and leaving a lacy, brown shell behind. They work in groups, are active during the day, and are absolutely brazen about it. Evidence at the scene: The lacy, skeletonized leaves are unmistakable. The beetles themselves are iridescent green and copper, about half an inch long, and will sit right there on your plant in broad daylight as if they own it. Sentence: Handpick and drop into soapy water in the morning when they’re sluggish. Neem oil applied in the evening deters them. Japanese beetle traps work but should be placed away from your garden because they attract beetles from the neighborhood — placing them near your plants just concentrates the problem. Milky spore or beneficial nematodes in the soil target the grub stage and reduce next year’s population. Aphids’ Cousin: Spider Mites Crime: Not actually insects — they’re arachnids, and tiny ones. They suck plant cells, causing a stippled, dusty-looking bronzing on leaves. Worst in hot, dry conditions when plants are already stressed. Evidence at the scene: Leaves look dull, almost dusty or bronzed rather than vibrant green. Fine webbing on the undersides of leaves and between stems is the definitive sign. Hold a white piece of paper under a leaf and tap it — if tiny dots fall and move, those are mites. Sentence: Humidity and water are their enemies — mist the undersides of leaves and increase air circulation. Neem oil or insecticidal soap applied to leaf undersides works. Avoid over-fertilizing with nitrogen, which produces the lush soft growth mites prefer. Predatory mites, available from garden suppliers, are a biological control worth knowing about for persistent infestations. Fungus Gnats Crime: The larvae live in moist soil and feed on roots, causing seedlings and young plants to look stunted and poorly. The adults are just annoying — tiny flying things around your plants that serve mostly as evidence that the soil is staying too wet.
86 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Evidence at the scene: Adults look like tiny fruit flies hovering around the soil surface. The larvae are in the top inch or two of soil — small, clear-bodied with black heads. Confirm by letting the soil surface dry completely and seeing if the adult population drops. Sentence: Let the soil dry more between waterings — fungus gnat larvae need consistently moist soil to survive, and drying it out breaks the cycle. Sticky yellow traps catch adults. Beneficial nematodes or Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) applied to the soil kills larvae. The real solution is not overwatering, which is always how this starts. Deer Crime: Eating everything. Whole plants. Flowers you’ve been waiting all season to see. Rose buds the night before they open. Deer have impeccable timing for maximum emotional impact. Evidence at the scene: Clean, high browsing damage — plants clipped or stripped from the top down rather than from the ground up (rabbits work ground level; deer work higher). Hoof prints. The specific feeling of walking outside to find your hostas reduced to stems. Sentence: Deer-resistant plants are your long-term strategy — they still get sampled but are less likely to be destroyed. Deer repellent sprays work but need consistent reapplication, especially after rain. Physical barriers (fencing) are the only fully reliable solution and need to be at least eight feet tall because deer jump. Motion-activated sprinklers are effective and deeply satisfying to watch work. Rabbits Crime: Ground-level clipping of plants, seedlings, and anything tender. They particularly love newly planted things and vegetables. They are extremely cute and completely without remorse. Evidence at the scene: Clean cuts close to the ground, as if snipped with scissors. Damage at ground level rather than higher up. Rabbit droppings nearby, small and round.
87Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Sentence: Chicken wire around vulnerable plants and beds is the most reliable barrier — bury the bottom edge a few inches to prevent digging under. Plant rabbit-resistant varieties where possible (lavender, catmint, salvia, and most thorny plants are less appealing). Repellent sprays help but need reapplication. Motion-activated lights or sprinklers. Squirrels Crime: Digging up and eating bulbs — tulips especially, which they apparently consider a delicacy — stealing unripe tomatoes, uprooting newly planted seedlings apparently just to see what happens, and burying nuts in your carefully prepared garden bed with an enthusiasm that is deeply insulting given how long you spent amending that soil. Evidence at the scene: Bulbs that simply never come up despite the fact that you definitely planted them in October. Hollowed-out tomatoes. Small digging holes appearing overnight throughout your beds. The specific grief of a spring garden that should have tulips and does not. Sentence: Squirrels are genuinely difficult to deter because they are clever, persistent, and have nothing else to do all day. For bulbs: plant daffodils and alliums, which they won’t touch because they’re toxic (to squirrels — daffodils are poisonous, alliums just smell offensive), and intersperse them with your tulips. Lay chicken wire flat over the planting area right after you plant bulbs — bulbs grow up through it fine, but squirrels can’t dig through it. Hot pepper mixed into the soil around bulbs works as a temporary deterrent. For vegetables: row cover, netting, or a cage around anything they’re targeting. Motion-activated sprinklers. And eventually, a kind of philosophical acceptance that you are sharing your yard with an animal that has made clear it does not respect boundaries. “You will not eliminate every pest. You will manage them. Healthy plants in good soil are more resilient to pest damage than stressed plants in bad soil — which is another reason the earlier chapters matter.”
88 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Organic vs. Conventional Controls: No Judgment There is a real and sometimes heated debate in gardening communities about organic versus conventional pest control. Here’s the honest, non-preachy version: Organic controls — neem oil, insecticidal soap, diatomaceous earth, beneficial insects, physical barriers — work well for most common pest problems when applied consistently and at the right time. They tend to be safer for the broader garden ecosystem, including the beneficial insects doing pest control work for you. They also sometimes require more patience and repetition than a chemical solution. Conventional pesticides work faster and are sometimes the appropriate tool — for a serious infestation that’s threatening significant plant loss, or a pest that doesn’t respond to organic methods. The tradeoff is that broad-spectrum pesticides kill beneficial insects along with the target pest, which can actually make pest problems worse in the long run by eliminating the natural predators keeping other populations in check. A reasonable approach: start with the least disruptive intervention and escalate if needed. Try the water spray, try the soap, try the barrier. If those aren’t working and the plant is genuinely at risk, reach for something stronger. Your garden, your call. “The pesticide that kills the aphids also kills the ladybug larvae that were about to eat them. Know what you’re trading.” Weeds: The Long Game Weeds are just plants growing where you don’t want them. That’s the whole definition. Some of them are native wildflowers that would be charming in a meadow and are infuriating in your perennial bed. Some of them are invasive species that have no natural controls in your region and will take over if you give them any ground at all. All of them are competing with your plants for water, nutrients, and light. The fundamentally discouraging thing about weeds is that the soil is full of seeds, and every time you disturb the soil — planting, digging, turning compost in — you bring more seeds to the surface where they have light and warmth to germinate. You will never run out of weeds. You can only manage how many get established.
89Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Annual weeds germinate, grow, set seed, and die in one season. The key with annual weeds is to get them before they set seed — a single plant can produce thousands of seeds, and each one is next year’s problem. Pull them young, before flowering, and you break the cycle for that patch. Crabgrass, chickweed, purslane, and hairy bittercress are common annual weeds. Perennial weeds come back from the roots year after year, often getting more established each season. They’re harder to manage because pulling the top growth doesn’t remove the root — dandelions, bindweed, ground ivy, and thistle all regrow from root fragments. With perennial weeds, consistent removal over time is more effective than any single aggressive treatment. Invasive weeds are the ones that spread aggressively by root, runner, or seed and can take over large areas if left unchecked. Japanese knotweed, kudzu, garlic mustard, and English ivy in certain regions fall into this category. These often require more aggressive management and in severe cases, professional help. Know your local invasives — your cooperative extension office can tell you which ones are the problem in your area. The single most effective weed management strategy, applied consistently, is mulch. A two to three inch layer of mulch blocks light from reaching weed seeds in the soil and prevents most annual weeds from germinating at all. Weeds that do make it through are weaker and easier to pull because they’ve been growing without full light. Weed before you mulch, mulch after you plant, and the ongoing weed pressure drops dramatically. Beyond mulch: weed when the soil is moist (roots pull more completely), weed young (before flowering and seed set), and don’t let perfect be the enemy of done. Pulling a third of the weeds in a bed on Tuesday is better than waiting until you have time to do all of them on a day that doesn’t exist. “A weed pulled before it flowers is worth a hundred pulled after. The seed set is the whole problem. Get them early.” WANTED Garden Offenders
90 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains Common Plant Diseases (The Quick Version) Pests eat your plants. Diseases are what happens when fungi, bacteria, or viruses get established in plant tissue and start causing damage from the inside. Most common garden diseases are fungal, which means they love warm, humid conditions and poor air circulation. Here are the ones you’re most likely to run into: Powdery Mildew White or gray powdery coating on leaves, usually late summer. Common on: zucchini, cucumbers, phlox, bee balm, roses. Cause: warm days, cool nights, poor air circulation. Fix: remove badly affected leaves; improve spacing for airflow; neem oil or baking soda spray as a preventive; some plants get it every year and keep producing anyway — assess whether it’s actually hurting the plant or just looks bad. Black Spot (Roses) Black circular spots on leaves, yellow halos, leaf drop. Cause: fungal; loves wet foliage and poor air circulation. Fix: water at the base (never overhead); remove fallen leaves; choose disease-resistant rose varieties; fungicide as a preventive in high-pressure seasons. Knock Out roses are bred for resistance. Blight (Tomatoes and Potatoes) Early blight: brown spots with yellow halos, starts on lower leaves. Late blight: dark water-soaked lesions, spreads fast in cool wet weather. Fix: remove affected foliage immediately; avoid overhead watering; rotate crops each season; some fungicide helps as a preventive. Late blight can kill a plant fast — act immediately if you see it. Root Rot Yellowing, wilting despite moist soil, mushy stem base. Cause: overwatering and/or poor drainage; soil stays too wet for too long and roots suffocate and begin to decay. Fix: improve drainage; let soil dry between waterings; remove and dispose of badly affected plants. Prevention is the real fix.
91Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains The best disease prevention in a garden is the same three things repeated across this whole book: healthy soil, appropriate watering, and plants suited to their conditions. Stressed plants in poor conditions get sick the way stressed people do — their defenses are already stretched. Give them what they need and disease pressure drops. “Most plant diseases are less about bad luck and more about conditions. Wet foliage at night, poor air circulation, compacted soil — fix the conditions and the disease pressure usually follows.”
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson The Villain Tracker Track what’s showing up in your garden, where, and what you tried. This record is genuinely useful — next season you’ll know in advance what’s coming and when, and you can act before it gets established rather than after. Additional Observations: Pest When First Noticed Where I Saw It Signs / Damage What I Tried Helped? ( Y / N / ? )
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson MOST WANTED: My Personal Garden Villains The specific pests, weeds, or diseases that have made themselves at home in your particular yard. Name them. Track them. It helps more than it should. What I’m doing differently next year to get ahead of it: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: WANTED: Charge: First Spotted: Evidence: What I tried: Results: Location: Every garden has villains. You’re the hero. WANTED Garden Offenders
94 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains “Every garden has its recurring villain. The gardeners who manage it best are the ones who know it’s coming and prepare. You know it’s coming now. Prepare.” “They will do it again. Chicken wire. Every year. This is the way.”
95Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 8: Tiny Villains It’s Not a War. It’s a Negotiation. The framing of gardening as a battle against pests and weeds sets up an expectation of total victory that’s never going to happen, and makes you feel like you’re failing when you’re actually just gardening. Every garden has pests. Every garden has weeds. The ones that look effortless from the street are being managed by someone who’s figured out their particular situation and made peace with what they can’t control. The goal is a garden where the plants are doing well enough that the pests and weeds are a manageable nuisance rather than the whole story. Healthy soil, appropriate plants, consistent attention — this is the foundation that makes everything else easier, including this. Chapter 9 is about keeping things alive through all four seasons — what to do in spring when everything wakes up, how to survive summer, what actually needs to happen in fall, and what you can honestly skip. It’s more forgiving than you think.
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97Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive Through the Seasons (Spring Energy, Summer Survival Mode, Fall Cleanup, Winter Denial) Gardening is not a single activity. It’s four different activities that happen to share a location, and each season asks something different from you — different tasks, different energy levels, different expectations for what the garden should look like and what it actually needs. Spring is the high-energy season, the one that lures you back in every year with warm afternoons and the smell of thawed dirt and the absolute conviction that this year you’re going to be organized about it. Summer is the maintenance season, which sounds manageable until July arrives and it’s ninety degrees before nine in the morning and just getting outside to water feels like a commitment. Fall is underrated — genuinely one of the best times to be in a garden — but it also has a checklist that a lot of people skip because they’re tired from summer. And winter is when you sit inside and think about what you’re going to do differently next year, which is a gardening activity even if it doesn’t look like one. This chapter goes through all four. The goal isn’t a perfect seasonal routine — it’s knowing what actually matters in each window and what you can skip without the garden falling apart. How gardeners actually experience the seasons: • Spring: “EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.” • Summer: “WHY IS IT SO HOT AND ALSO WHERE ARE THE APHIDS COMING FROM.” • Fall: “I should really clean this up.” (does not clean it up) • Winter: “Next year I’ll be organized.” (orders seventeen seed packets at midnight) Every year. Every gardener. The cycle continues and we participate willingly. “Every season has a short list of things that really matter and a longer list of things that are nice to do if you have time. This chapter is about the short list.”
98 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive Spring The Season of Optimism and Slightly Impractical Plant Purchases Spring is when gardening feels the way it looks in catalogues. Everything is possible. The soil is workable again, the plants are waking up, and you have not yet made the August mistakes. Enjoy this feeling. It’s real and it’s earned and it’s also somewhat fleeting, but that doesn’t make it less good. Spring is also when most of the year’s setup work happens — the stuff that pays dividends all season if you do it, and causes problems all season if you don’t. Here’s what actually matters: What to Do in Spring Wait for the soil to dry out before working it. This is the one spring task people are most impatient about and it matters more than almost any other. Working wet soil compacts it, destroys the structure you’ve been building, and creates clods that dry into concrete. Push a handful together — if it crumbles when you release it, the soil is ready. If it holds a wet ball shape, wait another week. Cut back last year’s dead growth. Perennials that were left standing through winter (which is fine — the seed heads feed birds and the hollow stems shelter insects) can be cut to the ground now, a few inches above the soil, before new growth emerges from the base. Do this before you see green growth pushing up, not after — it’s much easier and you’re less likely to accidentally damage new shoots. Add compost. Spread two to three inches over your beds and work it in lightly. Spring is the ideal time because you’re doing it before plants fill in and make the beds harder to access. This is the single most impactful thing you can do for your garden every year and it takes maybe an hour. Divide overcrowded perennials. When clumps of perennials get too big — crowded, blooming less vigorously, dying out in the center — they need dividing. Dig up the whole clump, split it into sections with a sharp spade or fork, replant the healthiest sections, and give away or compost the rest. Early spring when plants are just emerging is the best time. Hostas, daylilies, coneflowers, and black-eyed Susans all benefit from dividing every three to four years.
99Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive Mulch after planting, not before. Wait until you’ve done your planting and the soil has warmed a bit, then apply mulch. Mulching too early in spring can insulate cold soil and slow the warming process your plants need to wake up. Plant after your last frost date — not before. Check the frost date you wrote down in Chapter 2. Warm-season plants (tomatoes, peppers, basil, most annuals) go in after that date, not before, regardless of how nice it looks outside on a sunny April afternoon. A late frost will take them out and you will be sad. Plant spring bulbs last fall, enjoy them now. If you’re seeing tulips and daffodils coming up, great — you (or someone before you) did that right. If you want them next spring, order or buy bulbs in September and plant them in fall. This is the timeline and there are no shortcuts. “Spring energy is finite. Use it on the things that matter — compost, cleanup, planting at the right time — and don’t spend it all on impulse purchases that need a plan you haven’t made yet.” What You Can Skip in Spring • Fertilizing everything immediately — newly planted things don’t need fertilizer right away and established perennials in amended soil often don’t need it at all • Pruning spring-blooming shrubs now — lilacs, forsythia, and other spring bloomers flower on old wood, meaning you’ll cut off this year’s flowers if you prune in spring. Wait until right after they bloom • Panicking about slow starters — some perennials emerge very late (butterfly weed, for example, doesn’t show until it’s practically summer). Mark them so you don’t dig them up and wait • Spraying preventive pesticides before you’ve seen a problem — treat what’s actually there, not what might show up Summer The Season of Survival Mode and Extraordinary Zucchini Summer is when the garden is fullest and most demanding and also when
100 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive life is busiest, because the universe has a sense of humor. Watering becomes a real job. Things grow fast — including the weeds. Heat stress shows up on the plants that got too much afternoon sun or not enough water. And somewhere around the third week of July, the initial spring enthusiasm has been fully replaced by a more seasoned “I’m doing my best” energy, which is also valid. The good news: if you did the spring setup work, summer is mostly maintenance. The bad news: maintenance still has to happen, just more frequently. What to Do in Summer Water deeply and consistently. This is summer’s main job. The specifics are in Chapter 7, but the short version: check the soil, water when it’s dry an inch down, go slow and deep rather than fast and shallow. Containers need daily attention in peak heat. Deadhead to extend bloom time. Deadheading means removing spent flowers before they go to seed. When a plant sets seed, it considers its job done and slows flower production. Remove the finished blooms and it keeps trying. For annuals like zinnias, petunias, and marigolds, deadheading is the difference between a plant that blooms all summer and one that peaks and fades. Pinch or snip just below the spent flower head back to a leaf node or side bud. Cut back straggly plants mid-season. Petunias, catmint, salvia, and some other annuals and perennials get leggy and stop blooming by midsummer. Cut them back by about a third — it feels drastic and looks terrible for a week — and they’ll come back with fresh growth and new blooms for the rest of the season. This is called the midsummer haircut and it works every time. Fertilize heavy feeders. Tomatoes, peppers, and container plants appreciate a boost once they’re actively growing and setting fruit. Use a balanced or slightly phosphorus- heavy fertilizer according to the package directions. Don’t overdo it — the plants will tell you with lush green growth and no fruit if you’ve gone too heavy on nitrogen. Keep up with weeds before they seed. Summer weeds grow fast in the heat. A weeding session every one to two weeks prevents them from getting established and seeding — which is the problem that compounds on itself. Twenty minutes of weeding now is worth two hours in August.
101Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive Harvest vegetables regularly. Zucchini left on the vine gets enormous and signals the plant to slow production. Beans, cucumbers, and peppers work the same way — the more you pick, the more the plant produces. Check every two to three days once things start coming in. “Summer gardening is thirty percent inspiration and seventy percent showing up with a watering can. The showing up is the whole thing.” What You Can Skip in Summer • Fertilizing drought-stressed plants — feed plants that are growing well, not plants that are struggling; stressed plants can’t use the nutrients and fertilizer can make things worse • Pulling up plants that look rough in the heat — many plants wilt dramatically in the afternoon and recover by evening; check in the morning before making any decisions • Worrying about powdery mildew on zucchini and cucumbers in August — it’s cosmetically unpleasant but the plant usually keeps producing; remove badly affected leaves and move on • A perfect garden — it doesn’t exist in August and anyone whose garden looks perfect in August is either a professional or not telling you everything Fall The Underrated Season (Please Do Not Skip This One) Fall gets skipped by a lot of gardeners who are tired from summer and mentally already done with the garden. This is understandable and also a missed opportunity, because fall is genuinely one of the best seasons to be outside in a garden — the heat breaks, the pests mostly disappear, the light is extraordinary, and the work you do now pays off dramatically the following spring. It’s also the best time to plant certain things, which surprises a lot of people who think of fall as a wind-down rather than a planting season. What to Do in Fall Plant spring bulbs. Tulips, daffodils, alliums, hyacinths, crocuses — all of these go in the ground in fall for spring bloom. Plant them after the first frost has cooled the
102 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive soil but before the ground freezes solid. Depth is usually two to three times the bulb’s diameter; the package will tell you. This is also when to put chicken wire down if you have squirrels, because now you know. Plant trees, shrubs, and perennials. Fall is actually the best time to plant most woody plants and perennials — the air is cooler but the soil is still warm, which means roots can establish before winter without the plant having to simultaneously support hot-season top growth. Fall-planted shrubs and trees typically establish faster and perform better the following year than spring-planted ones. Cut back perennials selectively. Some perennials benefit from being cut back in fall; others are better left standing. Cut back: hostas (the foliage collapses anyway), peonies (cut to a few inches to reduce disease overwintering), iris (fan-shaped cut after hard frost). Leave standing: coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, ornamental grasses, and any plant with attractive seed heads — these feed birds through winter and provide winter interest. Clean up diseased material. Foliage from plants that had fungal issues (black spot on roses, blight on tomatoes) should be removed and disposed of rather than composted — disease spores overwinter in plant debris and reinfect next year’s plants. Healthy plant debris can be composted or left as mulch. Mulch tender plants after the ground freezes. A layer of mulch over marginally hardy perennials and the root zones of tender shrubs after the ground has frozen provides insulation against freeze-thaw cycles that heave roots out of the soil. Apply after freezing, not before — you want the ground frozen first so you’re protecting against temperature fluctuations, not insulating warmth that delays dormancy. Fertilize the lawn, not the garden. Fall is prime lawn fertilizer time, not garden time. Garden beds in amended soil don’t need fall fertilizing — let the plants go dormant naturally. Pushing new growth in fall with fertilizer just creates tender growth that gets hammered by the first hard frost. Bring in frost-tender container plants. Tropical plants, tender perennials like cannas and dahlias, and anything that won’t survive your zone’s winter needs to come inside before hard frost. Check for pests before bringing them in — you don’t want to
103Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive introduce anything to your indoor plants. A few days in a sheltered outdoor spot (like a garage) lets them adjust before moving fully inside. “Fall is not the end of gardening. It’s the beginning of next year’s garden. The work you do in October shows up as better results in May. That’s a genuinely good return.” What You Can Skip in Fall • Cutting back ornamental grasses — wait until late winter or early spring; the dried plumes are beautiful and provide winter structure • Turning your compost pile obsessively — it’s slowing down for winter anyway; leave it and it’ll be ready in spring • Deadheading everything — let seed heads stand for the birds; it looks intentional and it is • A thorough fall cleanup if you’re exhausted — a partial cleanup is fine; the garden will survive some messiness and you can finish in spring Winter The Season of Seed Catalogs and Unrealistic Plans Winter is when the garden rests and when gardeners conspire. There’s very little to do outside — check on any plants you’re overwintering, make sure mulch hasn’t blown away from vulnerable spots, water container plants that are spending the season in a garage or basement if the soil gets completely dry. That’s about it for outdoor tasks. What winter is for, actually, is thinking. Looking at photos from the season and noticing what worked and what didn’t. Reading the seed catalogs that arrive in January with their implausible photography and making a list of things you want to try. Planning changes to the beds based on what you learned. Ordering seeds early before things sell out. Deciding that next year you’re definitely growing dahlias even though you said that last year too. Winter is also when this journal earns its keep. Flip back through what you wrote, look at the maps and trackers, notice the patterns. What thrived? What struggled? What died and honestly shouldn’t be replanted in the same spot? What surprised you in a good way? The notes you made in May and July are having their payoff right now.
104 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive “The best gardeners aren’t better at gardening in July. They’re better at paying attention in November and making smarter decisions in March. The thinking is half the work.” Useful Winter Garden Tasks • Order seeds early — popular varieties sell out by February • Clean and sharpen tools before storing for the season — sharp tools are safer and easier to use • Review your Chapter 6 maps and update anything that changed in the second half of the season • Research plants you want to try and check that they’re right for your zone before you order • Browse next year’s bulb catalogs for fall planting — the good ones sell out by August • Check on any tender plants overwintering in the garage or basement and water if the soil is bone dry
Seasonal Notes Last frost / first planting: What I planted and when: What came back from last year: What didn’t come back: Spring wins: What I’d do differently next spring: Spring - What I Did What’s blooming: Pest or weed situation: Watering notes: What I deadheaded/cut back: Early Summer - (June) What I Did What’s thriving: What struggled or gave up: The gap in bloom I noticed & need to fix: Harvest notes: What I wish I’d done earlier in the season: Midsummer - (July - August) - What I Did Bulbs I planted and where: Plants I moved or divided: What I cut back: Standouts - what looked great when everything was done: Fall - What I Did Seeds or plants I ordered for next season: Changes I’m planning for next year: Things to remember for next season: Winter - What I Did Last frost in spring: My planting zone: My Frost Dates First frost in fall: Safe to plant warm-season crops: 2 weeks after last spring frost. Time to bring in tender plants: before first fall frost. NOTE TO SELFNOTE TO SELF Buy MoreBuy More SeedsSeeds
106 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive “Every season teaches you something the books can’t. Write it down while you still remember it.” “There is no gardener who has grown tomatoes once and stopped. It’s not how tomatoes work.”
107Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 9: Keeping Things Alive You Made It Through a Whole Year. Or you will. Or you’re somewhere in the middle of it right now, which is also fine — seasons don’t wait for you to feel ready and neither does gardening. The point of going through all four seasons is not that you’ll execute each one perfectly. It’s that you’ll know what’s coming, know what matters, and be a little less caught off guard each time. The second year is easier than the first. The third year is easier than the second. At some point it stops feeling like something you’re figuring out and starts feeling like something you know how to do, even when it’s messy. Chapter 10 is the tools chapter — a quick pass through what you actually need, what’s worth buying, and what you can stop feeling guilty about not owning. Then Chapter 11 is the good one: wins, losses, everything you’re taking into next season.
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109Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies We Tell Ourselves at the Hardware Store (You Need Four Things. You Will Buy Fourteen.) There is a specific feeling that happens in the garden tools aisle of a hardware store or the back section of a garden center. Everything looks useful. Everything looks like it might be the thing that makes gardening easier, faster, more satisfying, more organized. The ergonomic handles. The tool sets in coordinating colors. The little gadget next to the register that you can’t quite identify but seems like it might solve a problem you have. You do not need most of it. You genuinely need about four things to maintain a home garden, and everything else is optional at best and clutter at worst. This is not a thrilling conclusion but it is an accurate one, and it will save you storage space and a moderate amount of money over time. That said — some tools are genuinely worth the investment, some gadgets that seem gimmicky actually earn their place, and some things you might already own are doing a perfectly good job and don’t need to be replaced. This chapter sorts through all of it with the goal of helping you spend money only on what actually helps. We’ll also talk about taking care of what you have, because a good trowel that gets cleaned and sharpened will outlast three cheap ones that don’t. Things gardeners tell themselves at the hardware store: • “I need this. I’ve definitely needed this.” • “This would solve the problem I’ve been having.” (no specific problem identified) • “The ergonomic handle makes it different from the three I already have.” • “It was on sale. Buying it was financially responsible.” • “Future me will absolutely use this.” Future -you is standing in the garage right now looking at all the things present-you was confident about. Future-you would like fewer gadgets and better gloves. “Buying a new trowel is not the same as going out and gardening. It feels productive. It is not gardening. Go outside.”
110 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies The Four Things You Actually Need Stripped of everything optional, here is the real minimum viable garden tool kit: Trowel — Non-negotiable The hand-held digging tool. You use this for planting, transplanting, digging out weeds, and generally moving small amounts of soil around. Get a metal one with a comfortable handle — not the flimsy plastic ones that snap the first time you hit a rock. A decent trowel costs ten to fifteen dollars and lasts years if you wash it off and don’t leave it in the rain. This is the most-used tool in the garden and worth buying once and buying right. Garden fork or spade — Essential for any real digging For turning soil, dividing perennials, incorporating compost, and any digging deeper than a few inches. A border fork (the smaller version) is more versatile for most home gardeners than a full-sized digging fork — easier to maneuver in established beds without disturbing nearby plants. A flat spade is better for edging beds and cutting through sod. If you have to pick one: fork for a garden with existing plants, spade if you’re doing a lot of new bed creation. Watering can or hose with an adjustable wand — Obviously You already know you need this. The wand with an adjustable head — the long-handled extension that lets you reach the base of plants — is more useful than a standard nozzle for garden beds. A watering can in a size you’ll actually carry when it’s full, for containers and tight spaces. You probably already have one of these. It’s probably fine. Gloves — Worth getting right Cheap thin gloves tear immediately and offer no protection. Very thick rubber gloves make it impossible to feel what you’re doing. The sweet spot is a fitted glove with a nitrile or rubber coating on the palm and fingers and a breathable fabric back. These let you feel the soil and handle plants without destroying your hands or your manicure. Get two pairs so one can dry while you’re using the other. Wash them. They last much longer if you wash them. “Four tools. That’s the list. Everything from here on is either a quality-of-life upgrade or a justifiable purchase for a specific task. Know the difference before you buy.” Genuinely Useful Upgrades (Worth Buying When You’re Ready) Once you have the basics, these are the tools that earn their place — the ones experienced gardeners reach for consistently and that make specific tasks meaningfully easier.
111Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies Hori hori knife — Surprisingly versatile A Japanese garden knife with a serrated edge on one side and a smooth edge on the other, with depth markings on the blade. Used for planting bulbs, dividing perennials, cutting through roots, digging out weeds with a taproot, and about fifteen other things. Once gardeners have one they use it constantly and can’t explain why they waited. The depth markings alone are worth it for planting bulbs at the right depth without guessing. Long-handled cultivator or hoe — Back-saver For weeding and loosening soil in established beds without kneeling down. A stirrup hoe (also called a hula hoe or action hoe) that cuts on both the push and pull stroke is the most efficient design for weeding. Gets through a lot of ground quickly when the soil is moist. If you have any quantity of beds to maintain, this earns its space immediately. Bypass hand pruners — Worth having by your second season For cutting back perennials, deadheading, trimming shrubs, and any cut up to about three-quarters of an inch in diameter. Bypass pruners (two curved blades that pass each other like scissors) make a cleaner cut than anvil pruners (one blade pressing against a flat surface) and are better for plant health. Keep them sharp — a sharp pruner cuts cleanly and requires far less force. Fiskars and Felco both make solid options at different price points. Kneeling pad or garden kneeler — Your future knees will thank you Not glamorous, completely worth it. Kneeling directly on soil and gravel is uncomfortable quickly and hard on your knees over a season. A simple foam kneeling pad costs almost nothing and lives in the garden. A garden kneeler with handles on both sides lets you push yourself back up to standing, which becomes increasingly relevant as seasons go on. Wheelbarrow or garden cart — When you have a real garden For moving compost, mulch, soil, large pots, and anything heavy across a yard. A two-wheeled garden cart is more stable than a traditional single-wheeled wheelbarrow and easier to use on uneven ground. Not essential in year one for a small garden, worth acquiring once you’re moving meaningful quantities of material. Soil blocker or bulb planter — Specific but genuinely useful A bulb planter — the cylinder that pulls a clean plug of soil — makes planting large quantities of bulbs significantly faster and more consistent in depth. Worth having in fall if you’re planting more than a few dozen bulbs. A soil blocker is for seed starting; skip it unless you’re getting seriously into growing from seed.
112 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies “The hori hori knife is the tool gardeners recommend most often to people who don’t have one yet. If you’re going to buy one upgrade, that’s the one.” Gadgets: The Honest Assessment The gardening industry produces an impressive number of gadgets every year. Some solve real problems. Some solve problems you don’t actually have. Some create the satisfying feeling of doing something about your garden without requiring you to go outside and interact with it directly. Here’s an honest pass through the most common ones: Soil moisture meter Verdict: Skip it. Use your finger. These meters are inconsistent, the cheap ones are unreliable, and the information they provide is identical to the finger test. The finger test is free. pH meter or soil test kit Verdict: Situationally useful. If something is persistently wrong and you can’t figure out why, a soil test is worth doing. For most home gardens in good amended soil, not necessary. Your cooperative extension office often tests for free or a small fee and gives better results than a home kit. Self-watering globes / spikes Verdict: Useful for vacations, not a replacement for real watering. Those glass globes and ceramic spikes that slowly release water into the soil are genuinely helpful for keeping containers alive during a one or two week absence. They don’t hold enough water for longer than that and aren’t a substitute for a proper watering routine the rest of the time. Hose timer Verdict: Actually useful, especially for containers. Set it and connect it to a soaker hose or drip system and your garden gets water on a schedule whether or not you remember. Not a substitute for checking on your plants, but a good safety net. Worth it if your schedule is unpredictable.
113Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies Garden kneeler with tool storage Verdict: Surprisingly practical. The combo kneeler-and-seat with pockets for tools is genuinely useful for anyone who spends real time in the garden. You kneel on it, flip it over and sit on it, and your tools are right there. Less silly than it looks in the catalog. Plant labels and markers Verdict: Yes. More than you think you need. Label everything you plant. Metal or copper markers last longer than plastic ones which fade and crack. A grease pencil or paint pen on a smooth river stone costs nothing. The specific label matters less than the habit of labeling. You will forget what things are. Label them. Garden planning apps Verdict: If you’ll use them, great. If you won’t, skip them. There are good ones — Planter, GrowVeg, and others — that help with spacing, companion planting, and tracking. But a sketch in this journal with a pencil does the same job for most people. Don’t let the app become the thing you maintain instead of the actual garden. “The best gardening tool is the one you actually use. Not the most expensive, not the most ergonomic, not the one with the best reviews. The one that’s in your hand when you go outside.” Taking Care of What You Have Good tools last decades if you take basic care of them. Bad tools fall apart regardless. Here’s the minimum maintenance that makes a real difference: • Wash off soil after every use. Soil left on metal blades holds moisture against the metal and accelerates rust. A quick rinse and wipe takes thirty seconds and extends the life of a tool significantly. This is the one habit worth building.
114 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies • Dry before storing. Wet tools in a closed garage or shed rust faster. Hang them up or lean them in a dry spot. Hanging is better because tools leaning against a wall have a way of falling over at the worst possible moment. • Oil metal surfaces occasionally. A light coat of linseed oil or WD-40 on metal blades at the end of the season prevents rust over winter. Takes five minutes, makes a meaningful difference. • Oil wooden handles. Dry wooden handles crack and splinter. A rub of linseed oil once or twice a season keeps them from drying out and extends their life considerably. • Sharpen blades. A sharp trowel, hori hori, and pruners all cut more cleanly and require less effort. A basic sharpening stone or file does the job. Pruners especially benefit from being sharpened — dull pruners crush stems rather than cutting them cleanly, which is worse for the plant and harder on your hand. • Store pruners open slightly. Storing bypass pruners in the closed position puts continuous tension on the spring. Open them slightly before hanging them up and the spring lasts longer. “Clean it, dry it, oil it occasionally. That’s the whole tool care system. A trowel that costs twelve dollars and gets maintained properly will outlast a forty- dollar one that gets left in the rain.”
Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson My Tool Inventory What you actually own, what condition it’s in, and what you might need to add, replace, or finally throw away because it never worked properly anyway. Tool / Item Condition Keep / Replace / Donate Tools I want to add and why: Tools I bought and never use (be honest): The Short List: Tools That Actually Earned Their Place After a season or more of gardening, these are the tools you’d buy again without hesitation. Fill this in as you figure out what actually gets used. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Why: Why: Why: Why: Why: Why: Why: Why:
116 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies “The Gadget Regret Log is not a record of failure. It is a record of optimism, which is actually a pretty good quality in a gardener. Just also be skeptical of things sold near the register.” “Good gloves are worth it. Your hands are worth it. Stop buying the three-pack.”
117Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 10: Tools, Gadgets & The Lies Go Outside. The Tools Will Still Be Here. The real gardening happens outside with whatever you have in your hand. A stick in the dirt works for planting seeds. Your hands work for pulling weeds. The most sophisticated tool collection in the world doesn’t do anything until you pick something up and go outside to use it. Buy the things that make you more likely to spend time in the garden. Skip the things that are more interesting to think about than to actually use. And when in doubt, go outside first and figure out what you actually need once you’re out there. The gap between what you think you need and what you actually reach for is often significant. Chapter 11 is the good one — wins, losses, the fails graveyard, garden daydreams, notes for future-you. Everything you want to look back on from a full season. That’s next.
118 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson
119Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You Chapter 11: The Wins, The Losses & The Things That Surprised You (A Celebration of Surviving Another Season) You made it. Or you’re making it. Or you’re somewhere in the middle of your first season and flipping ahead to see what the end looks like, which is completely valid and the answer is: it looks like this. A record of what happened, what you learned, and what you’re taking into next year. Here’s what nobody tells you when you start gardening: the failures are just as useful as the successes. More useful, sometimes. A plant that thrived tells you it liked your conditions. A plant that died — if you pay attention to why — tells you something specific about your soil, your light, your watering habits, or just what not to plant in that particular spot again. Both are information. Both make you a better gardener next season. This chapter is the one where you get to look back. Not with a critical eye, not tallying up what went wrong, but with genuine curiosity about what happened in your yard this year and what it means for next year. The reflection prompts are here to help with that. Fill in as much or as little as you want. There are no wrong answers. There is no grading. Start with the wins. Always start with the wins. “A garden that had failures is a garden that was actually gardened. The ones that never fail are the ones that were never really tried. Yours counts.”
120 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You “Every box checked is a season of learning. Even the unchecked ones are information.” Weirdly Specific Gardening Achievements Check the ones you’ve earned this season. All of them count. Did not kill the basil immediately Successfully identified a weed BEFORE it became enormous Remembered where something was planted Harvested something before the bugs did Watered consistently for at least five days in a row Did not impulse-buy every plant at the garden center (got close though) Accepted that nature cannot be fully controlled Remained mostly emotionally stable during tomato season Put the chicken wire over the tulip bulbs Found something blooming that you forgot you planted Let something go instead of trying to save it Went outside just to look at the garden for a minute
121Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson Garden Wins The things that worked. The things that made you proud. The things that made you stop and actually look at your garden for a minute. Big wins, small wins, unexpected wins — they all go here. The plant I’m most proud of this season: The moment I felt like a real gardener: Something that bloomed better than I expected: The thing I grew that made me happiest to look at: A win that surprised me — something I didn’t expect to work: Something I grew that I actually used (ate, cut for a vase, gave away): The plant that came back this year when I wasn’t sure it would: Things I Did That I’m Proud Of Separate from results. These are the efforts — the times you showed up, tried something new, kept going when it was hard, or made a decision that felt right even if the outcome was uncertain. I’m proud that I: I tried something I’d never done before: I kept going even when: A decision I made that turned out to be right: Everypl a n ti n t h a t l i s t i s p r o of youd id s o m e t h i n g r i g h t . H ol d o n t o t h a t . ”
122 Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson The Fails Graveyard Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 1. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 2. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 3. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 4. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 5. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 6. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 7. RIP Cause of Death (probably): What I Learned: Would I plant again? Yes / No / Maybe in a different spot (circle one) Name of the Departed 8. RIP RIP to the plants that didn’t make it. Record them here — not as evidence of failure, but as a record of what you tried, what you learned, and whether it’s worth trying again. Some things die and you note the conditions and move on. Both are legitimate outcomes. This season’s casualties:
123Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You What I Actually Learned This Season Not what you think you should have learned. What you actually learned — about your yard, about specific plants, about your own gardening habits and tendencies. The knowledge that lives in your hands now that didn’t at the start of the season. The most useful thing I learned about my yard: The thing I learned about a specific plant that I’ll remember: Things I learned about my own gardening habits (good or bad): A mistake I made that I now know how to avoid: Something a neighbor, friend, or random person on the internet told me that actually turned out to be true: The thing I know now that I wish I’d known in April:
124 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You Doing Again — Things I’m keeping exactly as they were: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Doing Differently. Doing Again. Two lists. The things worth repeating and the things worth changing. Both are equally useful for next season. Doing Differently — Things I’m changing or improving: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
125Grow, Damn It! | A Gardening Journal for Real Life | By JL Anderson Garden Daydreams The vision. The thing you’re working toward. The garden you’re building across seasons, one plant at a time. Write it here — ambitious, specific, impractical, whatever it is. This is where future gardens begin. If my garden looked exactly the way I wanted it to, it would: The plant I’m absolutely growing next season no matter what: Something I want to add that I’ve been putting off: A corner or spot I want to completely reimagine: The garden goal I’m giving myself for next season:
126 Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You Notes for Future Me Direct communication from present-you to future-you, who will stand in this yard next spring having forgotten some percentage of what happened this year. Tell them what they need to know. Here’s what you need to know: Also: One more thing:
127Grow, Damn It! | Chapter 11: The Wins, Losses & Things That Surprised You “Future-you is going to be grateful you wrote this down. Present-you should feel good about that.” See You Next Season. That’s the whole book. The zone lookup and the soil test and the garden center and the dirt and the plants and the map and the water and the villains and the seasons and now this — the looking back and the looking forward. You started somewhere. You’re somewhere further along now. The gap between those two places is a season of gardening, which is also a season of paying attention and making decisions and learning things that can’t be learned from a book — only from being outside with your hands in the dirt, watching what happens. Your garden is going to be different next year. Better in some ways, different in others, still surprising you. That’s what gardens do. That’s the whole point. Come back to this journal. Update the maps. Fill in the graveyard. Write things down for future-you. The record you’re building here is one of the more useful things you’ll do as a gardener, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Now go check on your plants. Something out there is probably doing something interesting. Grow, damn it. You’re doing it.
128 Free Printables Your free full-color printable pack is waiting for you. Scan the QR code or visit the link below to download: Includes full-color printable versions of: The Fails Graveyard Garden Wins Garden Daydreams Plants I Absolutely Did Not Need The Seasonal Garden Tracker and More! Print as many as you need, in full color, on whatever paper makes you happy. https://grow-damn-it.kit.com/2340e06ee0
129 Hey. Can You Do Me a Favor? It involves approximately three minutes of your time and costs nothing. Leave a review on Amazon. I know. I know. You’ve been asked to leave reviews for things before. The dentist. The Uber driver. The blender you bought. And now a gardening journal written by someone who once killed a succulent and has a husband who refers to her plants as “the next victim.” But here’s the thing: reviews are how other overwhelmed, optimistic, slightly chaotic gardeners find this book. Real people, standing in garden center aisles with no plan, wondering if there’s something out there that gets it. Your review is what tells them: yes. There is. It’s this one. You don’t have to be eloquent. You don’t have to write a paragraph. You can literally just say “it made me feel better about my dead plants” and that would be perfect and true and genuinely helpful. Seriously though. Go check on your plants. They’ve been thinking about you. — JL Anderson What I’m not asking you to do: Write an essay Pretend the mint situation didn’t happen Give five stars if you don’t mean it What I am asking: Scan the code below Say something honest Go water your plants https://www.amazon. com/review/create- review/?asin=B0H5W3THNR
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