As I was wandering through my December garden of tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and other items today, I realized a small answer to an age old question. The question is “When should I plant my crops?” The query is usually a little more specific than that, along the lines of “When should I plant tomatoes in my growing zone?” or “When is the best time to grow pumpkins in Houston?”. You catch my drift, though.
The complicated answer would be “Plant this after the first frost, when the moon is waxing, at 10PM on the first Saturday after the Spring Solstice”, but there is an easier way of looking at this conundrum. Plant it when you have experienced the most luck with it.
I know. We want someone else to have done the research, to have tried things before and to have taken notes for us and shared them online for free, but we live in the Land of the Free, not the Land of the Free Stuff. With our free email service, our free shipping, and free TV shows, we’ve grown complacent.
My underlying point is, we need more researchers, more experimenters, more people with scientific mindsets in the gardening community. These are leaders, not followers. These people don’t ask how. They act and take notes, whether in their head or on paper. Imagine the value of doubling or even tripling the number of gardeners growing a specific tomato variety.
In closing, I think we are a little long on “platforms for sharing” and a little short on experience nowadays. We need to get back to how our grandparents managed life.
