The Gritty Gardener Story
Welcome to the home of The Gritty Gardener! I created this space to share my experiences cultivating everything from vibrant vegetables and ornamental plants to fragrant flowers and delicious fruit trees. The goal of cultivating a gardening community where people can learn, inspire, and grow together is also exciting.
Much of what I write about will be in relation to my area, Idaho (Hardiness zone 7a). Sometimes I will share ideas and processes that work, things that don’t, and reflect on what I could have done better. Gardening, if anything, is a practice in patience. Learning when to act, or when to simply let Nature do her thing. Hopefully, I can share some of those lessons with you so you can also enjoy gardening and avoid some of the common frustrations.
I’m hoping that through my experiences I can answer your questions. We will focus on beginner gardening tips and how to get started with organic vegetable gardening. Together we will learn about news ways to garden. I would like to experiment with new methods. Grow different varieties of vegetables and flowers, and maybe you can teach me a few things along the way.
Staying Humble
I would like to emphasize that I practice humility each time I’m out working in the garden. Nature is an amazing force that has allowed me to grow some food, build lifetime memories, and enjoy the simpler things in life. ‘Stop and smell the roses’, has never been so applicable as spending time caring for the vegetables and flowers in the garden.
My time in the garden is truly special for me. I connect with my father in a way we didn’t always have time to do when he was with us. I try to make him proud and imagine he would be as excited to work in the garden as I am.
The garden gives me a place where I can go and decompress my day. Letting go of some stress and enjoy something that brings benefits to the world around me. The therapeutic benefits of gardening have greatly impacted my life for the better. I hope through sharing these experiences and knowledge you too can benefit. I’ve learnt patience while gardening that carries over into other parts of day-to-day life. Rolling with the punches a little better than I did before I started. Also, I will talk your ear off about anything gardening related!
The Gritty Gardener's Journey: How It Started
Gardening was always a part of my early life. My dad, while not always able to dedicate a lot of time in a garden, always had something growing. While growing up in Colorado, my dad had a small plot in the backyard where he would grow some vegetables. He used to spend his summers in high school working on his uncle’s farm in Missouri; corn was always something he’d attempt to grow. While very young, I still have fond memories of “helping” my dad in that small plot.
Fast forward to the late Winter and early Spring of 2020, some significant global events were occurring that made everyone uneasy. During the Spring of 2020, amidst the initial impact of COVID-19 and the enactment of government mandates, what started as ‘two weeks’ quickly stretched into months. People were wearing masks, vaccinations were being administered, and our work and social lives were in disarray.
I remember going into the grocery store and seeing bare shelves and empty veggie bins and wondering, “Is this going to last?”. Fortunately, the crisis passed, and stores eventually restocked. While the produce and foods I was accustomed to buying returned, the experience left me with an uneasy feeling. I didn’t know if this would be something that would occur again or not. There were a lot of unanswered questions, not to mention grocery prices had gone up and still haven’t recovered. There’s still a lot of uncertainty out there about our food. Where is it grown, how it’s grown, and what else might come with it when we bring it home.
The Next Step
All these things prompted me to try growing some food for myself and my family. I didn’t go huge, but I dove in and built two 8X4-foot raised beds and bought some food-safe buckets to grow some potatoes and tomatoes in. Long story short, my first year wasn’t great, but I learned a lot. First, growing your food isn’t going to save money with the methods I used. Second, it takes work, daily work. Third, it was so relaxing and seemed to help me deal with the stresses of work and life. Since social events were pretty much canceled due to COVID, the garden gave me somewhere to go and unwind, unpack, and enjoy nature.
Unfortunately, life threw me a few curve balls. Personal health issues and family tragedies put the garden on hold for a couple of years. Time wasn’t playing fair, so I had to make some choices. I would pause the garden experiment and focus on my friends, family, and my health.
I greatly missed my early mornings in the garden, drinking my morning cup of coffee or tea, and watering the veggies. Evenings weren’t spent sitting in the garden or tending to the weeds. I wasn’t on high alert scouring the garden for pests to wreck my little green piece of heaven. It was tough, but in the end, I decided I wasn’t done with the dream of the garden; it was just on hold while I took care of other business.
Fast Forward to Fall 2023
During the summer of 2023, things had settled down a little. Life was playing nicer and inspiring me to look at the garden again. Next Spring I would expand the garden, add some raised beds, and start to make it more than just a side project. I wasn’t completely isolated from the garden over these few years. I was still reading, watching YouTube videos, and learning everything I could about growing veggies and having a happy garden.
My first step was relocating the original two raised beds to a more suitable spot, making way for planned expansion. These beds needed to be moved so I could plant my garlic in half of one of the beds. I also needed to deal with the grass and planned to put in tree mulch between the beds. In the end, I added 6 new beds, a cattle panel tomato trellis, 2 raised beds for my new fruit trees (more on this later), and an area for some bucket peppers and tomatoes.
Spring 2024
To be honest, this ended up being a lot of work for me, a middle-aged gardener. I was still navigating some health issues. I ended up moving about 4 cubic yards (about 6,000 lbs) of compost and soil from my driveway to the backyard, along with about 2 cubic yards of wood mulch. Building the beds wasn’t too bad, but in my enthusiasm, I decided to put in drip irrigation as well.
All in all, it was tiring work. Most weekends, I’d spend 8-10 hours each day working in the garden. After work, I’d spend a couple of hours doing smaller jobs and working on the irrigation—an ongoing project that lasted a month before things were satisfactory. I probably could have spent less time if I had planned things a little better, but in the end, I had no regrets.
The new beds were built and positioned, and the compost and soil were moved to fill them. The trellis was constructed and secured, and the raised beds for the fruit trees were also built. In addition to the work outside in the garden, I also had hundreds of seedlings starting in the garage waiting for the last frost of the year. The last frost was around May 2nd, and I started putting the seedlings out to harden about a week later. By May 15th, I had all the seedlings in the ground and was in full swing.
Fall 2024
Planning for the next season is always fun. I have big ideas, but I need to be realistic. Time, money, and long-term maintenance all need to be considered. Based on the things I’ve learned and the ideas I have to make the garden a little bigger and a little better, I decided I would add four new 4X3-foot beds, along with a couple of trellises for growing squash and cucumbers vertically. I will also be putting in wood mulch in the remainder of the garden area.
Another addition is a dedicated raised flower bed, where I plan to grow a few perennials along with some annuals. Focusing on keeping a balance within the garden: produce some good, wholesome food, while benefiting the local environment and pollinators. By planting native flowering plants here, pollinators in the area will have a great source of food and be in the area of my flowing vegetables. This will also add some color and vibrancy to the garden.
Spring 2025
The journey of learning and growing food for myself and my family, while providing an area safe from pesticides for native pollinators, has been incredibly rewarding. I want to share this passion and excitement with you and hope my stories and experiences will help you along the way. I sincerely wish you the best and hope you too will find as much joy and peace within your little green piece of heaven.
From here, I finalized my plan for the garden and the plants I wanted to grow this year. I was looking forward to getting the seedlings in the ground and sowing the remainder of the vegetables. A few minor issues occurred, and I had to pivot a few things to accommodate these changes. No matter how meticulously a gardener plans, Nature will throw curveballs, requiring adaptation. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, is credited with saying, “The only constant is change,”. This holds true for so many things, but it truly resonates with the garden.
Planning ahead is important, but adapting to what Nature provides is also key. Being patient and adaptable while still maintaining grace are probably the best simple and practical pieces of advice I can offer.
Find more great images of the garden at: Garden Photos