Is It Too Late To Start A Garden This Year?

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kitchen Garden Revival.

Is it obvious?

I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. Each week here on the Grow youw Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

It's too late to start my garden this year, right? I'm just gonna have to wait till next year. I feel like I totally missed the boat. I should have started my garden back in April, but I was too busy. Oh, I so would love to have a garden like yours, but I missed the timing. So I guess I'm just gonna have to wait till next year. These are all the comments I'm getting across the Internet and even from my neighbors. And so I thought that I would dedicate episode of the Grow youw Self podcast to the question, is it too late to start my garden this year? All right, in this episode, I have got some very, very, very good news for you. And you guys know I love to break the rules, right? So I like to kind of write my own rules. And I'm gonna teach you how you can do that in your own kitchen garden, too. I've got great news for you that it is never too late to start a garden, Believe me. Well, you gotta listen to this episode. This episode. Oh, my goodness. We are a quarter of the way to a hundred episodes. That is pretty incredible. Thank you for joining me here. I just looked the other day. We're at like, 35,000 downloads, so thank you so much for subscribing, for reviewing the podcast. If you haven't done that already, please do. And what did I want to say? Oh. This episode is brought to you by the brand new Gardenary Garden Coaching. Oh, my goodness. This has been a dream of mine for years to start the Airbnb of gardening. So the goal here is that you can go onto the Gardenary site and find a garden coach who will help you that day in your own garden, wherever you are. So you're going to be able to book a session with a garden coach that's been trained by me inside of Gardenary, and they're going to use our methods, our principles, and help you either design your garden from scratch, deal with a trouble that you're facing, create a planting plan that you want to use in your garden this season or in the seasons to come. It's all the stuff. So I'm super excited to introduce you to Gardenary coaching. You can go to gardenary.com coaching coaches to check it out or just go to the notes, the show notes on the blog, gardenary.com blog and I'm gonna be showing off a lot of our coaches. I can't wait to show you this new thing that we've been working on for so long. And it's finally here. So Gardenary coaches, get ready, get set. We're gonna coach you in the garden, and you're gonna be inspired to garden after you listen to this episode. Let's dig in together. Here we go. Alrighty. Welcome back to the Grow youw self podcast. Episode 25. What in the world is happening? How have I gotten to record 25 episodes? If you get a chance, please send me a DM on Instagram, an email, something, and tell me how many episodes you have listened to and which one is your favorite. We're gonna do a compilation episode coming up soon here of the best of so far, especially, so I can kind of figure out what you guys like to listen to, what you like to listen to. So send me a DM on Instagram or an email and let me know what you love. Today we are talking about timing, Timing in the garden. Is it too late? Are you out of time? Do you have to wait till 2021 to get a garden going? I don't think so. And I got some stats, some data, some opinions to show you what I mean. So I'm gonna start out the way I love starting out with these episodes is my book, of course. Right? I mean, if you write a book, then you gotta read from it every now and then. So today I'm gonna be reading to you quickly from chapter five. Chapter five is all about timing and planning. So this fits right at the start of the chapter. So let's dig in and go. Before we set up our plant categories, let's take a minute to get to know your climate a little bit better, though. You may have lived in your current space for a few months, years, or perhaps your whole life. You may have never noticed each month as you are about to picture your kitchen garden as a guest house for plants. Okay, Write that down. You're gonna have to. This is gonna. We're gonna come back to this point. Okay? Picture your garden as a guest house for plants. Each guest has particular needs and wants this much space to spread out this much time to stay, and it needs the temperature to be just so. Do you guys love sleeping in the cold or the hot? I gotta know. I love being warm, personally. Plant guests can be just like my children, picky. By learning your climate's temperature, rainfall, and sunlight measurements for each month, you're going to know which guest can stay each month and for how long. Consider this step like the booking calendar for your garden, deciding which plants are welcome to stay and which ones just might not be made for your guest house. Lots of gardening experts will tell you to first learn your garden zone before planting. But honestly, garden zones are much too general to inform you of what's technically possible in the unique space that you have created. I have gardened in so many different climates, and what the books say I can do in a particular zone and what I experience in my own garden are often two very different things. Plus, gardening zones specify a first and a last frost date as the most significant times of the year. Leading new gardeners is this you to believe that they can only grow between those two days? See, it's this issue right here. This is a side note. I didn't write this. This is why people get this idea that it's too late. In truth, the only information the frost date reveals is when the cool season ends and the warm season begins. There's so much more to the kitchen garden than zones and frost dates. This is why over the years, I developed my kitchen garden seasons system. The best way to know what's possible in your unique garden is to know your garden seasons. And the best way to know your seasons is to understand the general weather for each month of the year. This exercise is so much more detailed than a zone number and will be more specific and helpful to your unique location. And then I kind of give you some homework to do, so we'll skip that part. Not every month falls exactly into the same season all month long. Some months can be split between two seasons. But unless you live in the Arctic or on the equator, every town or city, no matter the climate, has an arc to its seasons. There's the coolest period Then the warmest period, and then usually two periods in between those more extreme seasons. For instance, in Houston. So we'll call this a warm climate, okay? Some of you guys may call it a hot climate. We'll call it warm. There's a long, cool season, the coldest time, if you can call it that, then a warm season, then a hot season, and then another warm season, repeat. And in Chicago, there's a long, cold season, very, very cold, a cool season, a warm season, and then another cool and repeat. Most other climates have the same arc. Coldest, warmer, warmest, back to warmer, and then back to coldest. Here's the ticket. You ready? It's the two in between seasons that most gardeners miss. In fact, the gardening resources I first studied led me to believe I could only garden in what in that warmest season of the year. So while the majority of growing can certainly happen during that period, there is lots of growing that can happen on either side of it, too, especially those in between seasons. In Houston's case, the two warm seasons, and in Chicago's case, the two cool seasons. More growing seasons means more time to grow. And I like the sound of that, don't you? All right, all right. Hopefully. I mean, I could just stop right there. Right? I mean, I think I'm done just joking. So you can see from this little bit of my book that, yeah, I don't believe that you're stuck to only grow during the period between your two frost dates. Marketing. So the marketing calendar for, like, products. This goes back to my hangup with the garden industry being centered around products. They're going to heavily, heavily market garden products to you in the spring. Starting January, February, March, they're going to try to sell all their inventory by May, and then they're going to kind of back off. We experience this all the time when we're trying to place orders for clients in the middle of the summer and everything is sold out. It's like they just assume that the world's going to stop gardening in July because they stopped running commercials for it. But listen, it is never too late to start in the garden because of the arc of the seasons, because there are things that can always be growing in the garden, even if it's covered in snow. I mean, it's not technically growing at that point, but it's sitting there ready to grow whenever the temperatures rise. And so in this episode, I want to really encourage you to start a garden right now. If you've not started a Garden yet for 2020, you gotta do it this month. And if you have started a garden but you had a dream of an expansion, I wanna encourage you to do it now. Don't wait. So I'm gonna tell you why and give you the step by steps on how to make your garden happen then this season and not next year. Okay. If you listen to the Girl who Planted Gardens episode, I forget the number. I'll check and put it in the show notes. I tell you the story of our family's garden and how we started different gardens at different times and the different places we live. Well, part of that story is that way back in 2000, gosh, 10, maybe 11, 2011, the summer of 2011, we started our first garden, Backyard garden in Nashville, Tennessee. We attempted a row garden. And the day that we built it was July 4th. Jason was finally off of work and could help me. I had three kids at home, under three. Obviously they're at home. Where else would they be under three with me every day? So not a ton of ability to do a lot. Anyway, he. He helped me dig the row, started our garden, and that was our first season. Now, we had a lot of fails, so we planted all kinds of things. We tried tomatoes, we tried carrots. At that point, we tried potatoes, beans, zinnias, sunflowers. Ooh, what else? I wanna say we did some radishes, peppers. We tried a lot. We tried some things from seeds, some things from plants. We were literally just experimenting, and we knew we were pressing our luck because it was so late in the summer. Well, if you go back and listen to that episod, you hear how we learned our lesson. So because we jumped in and started that season, we did not have the most productive year, particularly because we were not paying attention to the types of plants that we should have been putting in. We just kind of obliviously went in and planted things that really should have gone in in May. I'm going to show you how not to do that in this episode. But nonetheless, we still had some great success. We had loads of beans, tons of basil, lots of zinnias, and even potatoes. Our corn, different story, but in tomatoes as well. But we did have some success and we learned our lesson. So fast forward the next spring, you know, now we kind of had this confidence that we had built from moving forward and trying it out. And so the next spring, we actually built raised beds. Or I say we, Jason built raised beds. You can get that whole story on that episode. But basically, we had a lot more success that second summer. And then we found ourselves the following summer in Houston, Texas. So different location entirely. And basically brought the knowledge that we had gained and the experience we gained in Nashville and brought that over to Houston. So those two years, those two seasons, those two summers in Nashville were incredibly important in terms of the future of myself, of rooted garden, of where I am today. It all started with that, that crazy July 4th experiment. So I tell you this story, hopefully not to bore you, but to basically encourage you, that the time to start is always the moment when you have the idea, even if you're not ready. The more you get to know me, you'll realize I do this with pretty much everything, but especially in the garden. Just last week I had some potatoes. I knew I wanted to plant potatoes in my garden. We had great success with them last year, but I planted potatoes last April, end of April. That's really the better time to plant them here in the Chicago area. And I don't know why, but I just put off getting them and getting them ready, et cetera. And before I knew it, it was the start of June and I was putting potatoes in the ground. Now I know good and well I am way too late to be putting potatoes in the ground. They should have gone in at least a month or more earlier. But here's the deal. I can either not plant any potatoes, right, and just say, oh, too late. I'll wait until 20, 21, or, and I definitely won't get any potatoes, or I can plant potatoes late, albeit late, and. And see what happens. So I may end up getting potatoes. I may end up getting 2, 3, 4 off of a plant. We'll see. I'm going to give them the best conditions I can and baby them and help them along and see what I can get. And then let's say we get to September, August, September, and I'm ready to dig the potatoes and I don't get any. Well, that's the same result I was going to get anyway, right, if I didn't go for it. So I might as well experiment and try. There's really very little to be lost. What did it cost me? A couple dollars to get some seed potatoes. And I'll get to watch and see and learn. So I'm going to get to learn to see how can they weather the hot weather, when do they pop up? Do they grow at a different rate when they're planted? You know, basically at the very beginning of the summertime. So all that to say, I want you to take on that same kind of perspective, which is one, I could not do it at all. And Wait till next year, and the result will be zero. Zero learning, zero experience, zero experimenting. But also zero failures, obviously. Except for the fact that, you know, unless you count failing as not trying. So you have that option, or the second option is try, and you may end up completely failing, but you're gonna have so much experience inside of that 60, 90, 120 days that you go for it. So I hope you will choose option number two, and I'm gonna show you how to make that happen right now. Okay, Like I said in the book, you want to imagine your yard, your garden space, like an Airbn. So you wanna be thinking, okay, I am looking for plants that want to live in my space. Just like, you know, someone creates an Airbnb, and let's say they make it super hip, and they make it, you know, like lots of windows and there's like a hammock, and, you know, they live out in the woods and, you know, they're trying to attract a certain person to come visit there. And depending on where they set up that Airbnb, if it's on the beach or in the mountains, they're looking for a person that likes that kind of air, kind of setting, et cetera. While you're thinking that, too, anytime you're setting up your garden, whether it be in the middle of the summer, in the middle of the fall, the winter, whenever it is, you're thinking, okay, what plants enjoy this kind of hotel or this kind of home? And that's what you're going to focus upon. So it's pretty neat to think that plants are all kind of set up from the very beginning with particular needs. And all different kinds of plants have all different kinds of needs. The general four categories I like to consider when I'm thinking about a plant is the sun need, the space need, the time need, and the temperature need. So how much sun do they need? Do they need 4 hours of sun a day? 6 hours? 8 hours more? 10 hours? Who knows? How much sun does that particular plant need? And then generally, how much space does that plant need? Do they need a few inches? Do they need a whole square foot? Do they need several square feet? How much time is it going to take for this plant to finish and grow to the point where I can harvest from it? So is it going to take 30 days, 45 days, 70 days, 90 days, you know, a year? And then what kind of temperatures does this plant thrive in? Does it like it when it's cool? Does it like it when it's hot? Does it like it somewhere in between, those are the four questions you want to be asking about the plants that you're ready to grow. So let's say you're interested. You're going to start a garden in July. So everyone listening that doesn't have a garden set up yet, this is your moment. Okay? So you're gonna be thinking about, okay, what are the things that, like the temperature that I'm currently living in and the sun and the space and the time that I have to give it? You're gonna prioritize the plants that thrive in that setting. And when you do that, it is gonna set you up for success no matter what time of the year you set up your garden. So let's take a couple of examples. Okay, so let's say I wanted to grow a Tomato, and it's July 1st. This is when we're listening. Okay? So I know that tomatoes in general like at least eight hours of sunshine, depending on the variety. But in general, they all thrive with more than eight, eight or more hours of sun. I know that tomatoes need at least 1, 1 1/2 square feet of space. I know that most tomatoes, if I buy the plant, will be ready to harvest in about 60 days. And then I know that they like temperatures that range from about 65 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. All right? So wherever I'm living, I can look around and say, do I have a little spot that can afford a tomato plant? All these things. Do I have a spot that can give a tomato eight hours of sunlight, more than one and a half square feet of space, at least 60 days to give me some tomatoes? And are my temperatures below 85 degrees or, you know, right around there, not super, super hot. So if I'm in Houston on July 1, I'm not going to put a tomato in the ground because it's too hot, because the high temperatures there are over 95. If I'm in Chicago, I'm going to consider it, because if I get a tomato and it's going to finish in 60 to 65 days, I can add 60 to 65 days to July 1st. And I'm at just about September 1st or September. September 15th, maybe even to the end of September. And having lived here at least one or two falls, I know that it's still in the 70s and 80s in September. So I've got a match. I've got an Airbnb, a plant, BNB match, right? So I know that I can put a tomato in the Chicago area. It's going to have the right time Space, sunlight, and the right temperature. Now, let's take another example. Let's say I'm going to grow. I want to grow some okra. So when I look at okra, I know that it likes at least eight hours of sun, too, maybe 10 hours. I know that okra is going to take up minimum one square foot, maybe two. Okra likes to finish up in, say, 90 days, maybe even more. And that it likes super hot temperatures. So it likes temperatures that are over 90, 95 degrees. It's meant to thrive in those temperatures. So in my Chicago garden, I will not be planting okra. At this point, if I wanted to grow okra here, which I'm not sure I want to, if I did, I would have to get okra in the ground very early here in order for it to grow to its full maturity. Because about 90 days from now, from July 1, is going to put me into October. And I know very well that the temperatures start to drop quickly and that the sunlight does as well. So okra is going to. If I really, really wanted to grow it, that's something that I should have started in, say, May or June. It doesn't mean it's too late to start a garden entirely. It just means it's not the time to start an okra garden. But if I live in Houston and I'm in July 1st, it is a perfect time to plant okra, because I know I've got a good 60 to 90 more days where the temperatures are over 90 degrees. I've got loads of sunshine because we're closer to the equator there, so we've got at least 12 hours of sunlight every single day. And I've got the time, too. So I know that from now July all the way to October, even into November, we got plenty of time for the temps to mature the okra. So I'm going to say yes to okra in Houston and no to okra in Chicago, and then vice versa for the tomatoes. So you're going to run this question all the way through whatever things you want to put into your garden at any month in the year, for wherever you live. So I can do this today. I can do this same question and answer in August, in September and October, for anything that I want to grow, it works every single time. And the great thing about this system is there's always gonna be something that works and something that doesn't. And it means that you can always have a garden. You can always start a garden. It's never too late. It just matters what you put into that garden. That matters. So if you come to me in August, the middle of August in the Chicago area, and you say, I'm too late to start a garden, right, I'm gonna ask you back, well, that depends. What do you wanna grow in your garden? And so if you then say to me, well, I want to grow tomatoes in my garden, then I'm going to say, yeah, you are too late to grow tomatoes in the Chicago area, because 60 days from now, 65 days from now, we're going to get cold weather. So, yes, too late to have a tomato garden here in the Chicago area. But if you say, well, I want to have a carrot garden or a radish garden or a lettuce garden, then I'm going to say, nice timing. You're right on time. Because those plants have the right sun, space, time and temperature. Needs to be grown from August to September to October in a cooler climate. You get it. Isn't this cool? It's such a better way to look at the garden. You know, marketing can really screw us up sometimes, don't you think? I mean, they make us think that, like, we need to get a diamond every Valentine's Day, or that we have to get a card for every. I don't know, like, for. I'm trying to think of something lame like St. Patrick's Day or something. I mean, that's not a lame holiday, but you know what I mean? Like, it makes you feel like you have to do things at certain times or they just don't count. Like, the time to show your dad that you like him is on Father's Day. And then you don't really have to worry about it the rest of the year. It's funny, but I think marketing can really mess with our heads more than we realize. And I've definitely noticed this as a garden coach and consultant and a teacher. And honestly, even watching when the phone rings for my company, Rooted Garden, and for my products and courses for Gardenary, I can tell when the marketing basically is pushing the general public to think it's time to start a garden, because we'll get way more calls in the spring and March and April and May than we will say in, I don't know, October, November, when in the. The reality in Houston, November is actually one of the most wonderful times to start a garden because there's so many things you can put into the garden that will thrive during the cooler parts of the year. So all that to say just, you know, don't be fooled by the marketing and just because Say things are sold out or no one's talking about gardening anymore in terms of their commercials. That does not mean that it is too late to. Okay, last thing I want to say about the plants is that even if you plant them at the wrong, you're not lining things up with those four items in terms of sun and space and time and temperatures. You're going to be surprised that some plants are just resilient. I cannot tell you how many times I have planted something or shared something on Instagram or, you know, on one of my spaces, and the critics will come in and say, oh, it's too late for that, or that doesn't grow during that season, or it's going to bolt or whatever. And then I end up having some success with it. Now, is it like stellar success? Like, could I feed the world on my harvest? No. But it is really fun to see, to kind of push the limits and to see what's possible. I find so often that when I try something that's kind of on the edge a little bit, that is my potatoes, I get to learn. You know, I kind of get to see how strong these plants really are and honestly get to just marvel at nature and the wonder of how plants literally are dying to live. I love to say that plants are dying to live. They want to live, they want to keep themselves alive, and they want to reproduce. Like, that is literally in their DNA. And it's just so fun to watch. So you'll see, even if you plant things at not the optimal time, you will literally get to watch this plant. Even if you don't get the perfect production, you're going to learn so much about the plant, about its resilience. You may get some production, and then the most important part, I think, is you're going to get to learn and watch the plant and its cycle, its life cycle. So all that to say, even if the numbers don't line up perfectly for you in terms of sun, space, time, and temperature, and you just want to try something like my potatoes, just go for it. Like, there's no police that are going to come get you for planting stuff at the wrong time. And it's just fun to get to experiment, to get to see what's possible, and to treat the garden more like a place of learning and experience, rather than a place where we have to get everything right or we're just a failure. So put that away from you. Just see it as a school, a classroom, where you get to experiment and have fun. All right. The next thing I want to talk about is kind of in light of that actually is what drives us to. To hold off. So the marketing for sure does tells us that it's too late to start a garden, but there's some other things. And I teach a class about garden goals, and one of the things I talk about is how oftentimes people will say they don't have time for a garden. And usually I know for myself, the things I quote unquote, don't have time for are things that are either boring to me, overwhelming to me, or just not interesting to me. So in this class, I teach about how, like, I would. Or overwhelming to me. Did I say that? So, so, like, I would love to do hip hop, but that seems super overwhelming. I try, I like, try to get my kids literally today to teach me a TikTok dance and I just, I can't. They're just like laughing at me or if I think it's not important. So, like, I know I need to do my laundry, but I just can't find time for it. And clearly, you know, it just isn't as important as should be or it's just boring to me, you know, So I. It'd be great to learn how to do the Rubik's Cube, but that just, just doesn't interest me. And so if you are feeling like, oh, you know, yeah, yeah, the garden thing, I should do it. Which I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you're not that person. But if it is that it's boring to you, I highly recommend watching Biggest Little Farm. So this is what I recommend in my class. Biggest Little Farm will absolutely open your eyes to the wonder of the garden. If it feels, that's. If it's boring, if it feels unimportant to you, I highly recommend watching some documentaries. So I love. Or reading, reading books about the importance of gardening. So you guys, if you've been listening for a while, you know, my first book was Animal, Vegetable Miracle. That book totally opened my eyes to the importance of the garden and the importance of eating local. So if you haven't read that book, it's great. Food Incorporated was the first documentary I watched that opened my eyes to the way food was produced in the US and oh my goodness. So just doing something like that to kind of open your eyes to see how important it is to have a garden in your life. And then if it's overwhelming, which is generally the reason why people procrastinate or put stuff off until quote unquote next year, then you got to get some garden coaching. So that's why we exist. That's why I'm here. There are courses. So my kitchen garden academy will give you this step by step. I have a short workshop called the Kickstart workshop, and then you can get one on one garden coaching. So that is literally, literally the heart of my business model is to remove the overwhelm. So gardening inside of a community with a coach and a teacher, that really is the way to remove the overwhelm is to have someone literally guide you and help you through every single step of the way. So we'll put links to those things, but basically got to diagnose your procrastination. Is it because you're overwhelmed? Are you bored or are you just thinking? It's not important. And I find generally, if I can kind of address what is at the heart of me waiting, then I can go, okay, I'm just gonna go ahead and try it. So if that's what's happening to you, figure out the thing that's keeping you back and then just kick it in the tail and go for it. All right, so what I want you to do is pretend like you are a pioneer this summer. I want you to pretend like you're. Like it took you way longer than you thought to get to your new land, and you just got. It's the middle of July or the beginning of July. What would you do if you just landed? You've got to settle this land, and you've got to survive summer and the fall and the winter coming up. Are you going to wait to start growing something next year? No, you're not. You're just going to jump in, you're going to hurry up, you're going to plant whatever you have available, and you're going to try to get as much out of the land as you possibly can, learn all that you can, and be ready for next year, spring. So everyone listening? If you want to start a garden or expand a garden, I want you to pretend you're a pioneer this July, and I want you to put some seeds in the ground this month. So if you are in a warm climate, so if you're in a place like Houston, Texas, Florida, Arizona, basically the southern part, you know, somewhere closer to the equator, you can really grow your rounds. So in Houston, we never shut the gardens down. We have just a few days where there's a threat of frost, and we are literally growing all the time. So in Houston, I can honestly say it is never too late to start a garden because you can garden every day. If you're in a moderate climate where you do have, say, you know, your frost dates, cover, say, you know, three, four months of the year, then you can garden under cover well into those frost dates. So you can really probably only close the garden down maybe for about two months out of the year. So that's if you're in a moderate climate. And then I would say that would be like when I was living in Nashville, and then a cold climate would be like where I am in Chicago, we are actually under frost dates all the way from the beginning of October all the way to the middle of May. So in that case, we do have the garden shut down. Unless you've got a greenhouse or cold frames, we are shut down for about three or four months. But that doesn't mean we don't have things underneath those covers or even underneath the snow that are settling in and growing, even when it's not necessarily growing, but they're sitting there ready to grow when the snow melts. So things like garlic and young carrots and cover crops are all there ready for you as soon as you can pull off the covers and plant, which here in the Chicago area, I was planting in February, so if I had not set up my garden earlier, I would have missed a huge window. So here is how you are gonna make it happen. All right, you ready for your plan? Number one, you gotta understand your current season and the temperatures coming your way over the next three months. All right, so just take some time and chart the temperatures that are coming your way in the next three months. If you haven't bought my book yet, you gotta do so of course, Kitchen Garden Revival will help you go through this process. So you're gonna chart your what's coming up for the next three months, and then you're gonna do the Airbnb test and figure out which plants are going to grow well over the next three months in your garden then. So they're going to meet that need for sun, space, time, and temperature. Then I want you to check with local suppliers first. So farmer's market local nurseries, see what seeds and plants they have for you that will work in those three months. Okay. And buy from them first. Then you can order online. And you want to basically buy those things as quickly as you possibly can, build your garden as quickly as you can. So doesn't have to be perfect. Done is better than perfect, and that's going to be the goal. My last recommendation for getting set up and going is to grow the shorter season things First. So things that are going to be ready to harvest within 45 to 60 days. So you guys know I always recommend starting with leaves, so lettuces, spinach, all kinds of greens for the, the salad, for like sauteed greens, herbs, etc. And then simple things like beans or peas, anything that's going to be finishing up within 50 to 60 days. So you can look, if you're at a seed store or local nursery, check the back of the seed packages and see how many days to maturity. They'll literally say on there how many days until maturity. And that means how many days until you get to harvest. So you want to really be focusing on the things, especially for this current season, that are going to grow up and finish up faster. So we're looking for short and small plants, or generally the more medium sized plants are the better ones to kind of squeeze in mid season. And that is what you got to do. So I don't want to hear anybody ever again say that it's too late to start a garden, because it's, it's never too late. It's just you have to get the timing right for the particular things you wanna grow in your garden. I like to say that it's always a good time to set up your garden and then based on what time of year it is, you can decide what to put in your garden. But it is never, never, ever too late to set up the garden. When you do that, you are setting yourself up for success. That means whatever season is coming your way, whatever weather changes, you have the base there ready to go and you can adjust as needed. But just kind of flying blind or not having containers or raised beds or your kitchen garden area set up for you, that is the hardest part, honestly, is just to get things set up in the first place. And so if you put that off, then who knows, honestly, because you have no idea what's going to be happening this time next year or next, next spring that might prevent you from doing it once again. So I highly recommend to all of you, please commit, if you haven't yet to set up your garden right now, set up your garden this month. And then you can decide using my method, what plants you're gonna put in there. Given your current season, make the most of this season. Don't let it pass without getting your garden set up. Okay? Okay. I'm gonna close with a little, a little memoir. So if you listen to that girl who planted gardens or if you didn't. So basically this was the timeline. I set up my Garden. Jason and I set up our garden in the summer of 2011. That was a big fail. We started in July. Not a big fail, but we learned a lot of lessons. It wasn't, like, Instagramable, let's just say that. And then in 2012, based on the lessons we learned, we set up our first raised bed. Then we moved to Houston in 13 and set up up our full raised bed and had tons of success that fall. So I had that success all through 2013, 2014, and it was in 2015 that I started Rooted Garden. So I was thinking as I prepared this podcast, what if that July 4th, we decided, you know what? We're just gonna wait. We'll wait till next year. It's too late. I mean, we got babies. We're stressed. You're postdoccing. You're barely off work. We're in a rental home. It's super hot here. We don't have the ideal conditions. We don't have a lot of money to do this. Well, we've never done this before. We have no idea what we're doing. And clearly, like, our neighbor, she's killing it. She's got tons of stuff growing already. This is just kind of embarrassing. Let's just wait till next year. We'll start next summer, and we'll do it right. What if we had done that? Well, I love thinking about that because I think, okay, well, if the next year, we had waited by that point. Elaine, my youngest, was a toddler, so it was even harder that first summer I was pregnant. But then she wasn't a toddler. I take that back. She was, like, 4 or 5 months old. She was super hard to deal with. That would have been a much harder season to start a garden with. And we had not yet learned. We would have not yet learned the lesson of the need for a raised bed. We learned the lesson for the need for a raised bed by starting with a row garden. And anyway, I tracked it back, and I thought, well, what if we waited till 14? We would have started with a row garden. Then when we moved to Houston, we wouldn't have yet had any success with a raised bed. So would we have even tried a raised bed? What if we had been too overwhelmed and frustrated with our experience in Nashville and we just called it quits altogether? Who knows what would have happened? What I do know is by going for it that first July, by just digging in and making it happen in some form or fashion, and it got us going. I love it. One of my favorite coaches says, you don't have to get it perfect. You just gotta get it going. And that first summer got us going. And the rest, goodness is history. I mean, that is why I'm here talking to you today. So I can really literally attribute so much of my passion for the garden, my love for the garden, and my gardening success to the fact that when we had the desire, we did not worry so much about the timing and the fact that it wasn't perfect and we just went for it. So I hope this encourages you to go for it too. Please don't wait another year. It is not too late to start a garden. It's never too late to start a garden. Get that garden set up and then determine what you're gonna plant in it based on the timing. But never, ever, ever wait to start a garden. Cause you don't think the timing is is right. I'm here to support you and I cannot wait to see the garden that you start or expand or make awesome this summer. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I love you for it and I'll see you next week. All right. I hope you are now so excited to know that it is never too late to start a garden. Don't forget that today's podcast is brought to you by Gardenary Garden Coaching. Hello. We are here to remove the overwhelm, the questions, the frustrations. So if you're ready to start your garden in July, it is never too late. And we are here to help. So you can check us out all the coaches that are there to to help you in your garden@gardenary.com thank you guys so much for joining me today on the Grow youw Self podcast. I cannot wait to garden with you all year long. Because you know what? We're gonna be gardening all year long because it's never too late to start a garden. I'll see you next.