How Pru's Gardens Grow: Learning (and Earning) My Green Thumb

For anyone who’s ever seen my Instagram stories or been to anywhere I’ve lived, the thought that there’s been a time that I sucked at growing plants is tough to imagine. But it’s true, I once killed even the most basic of houseplants. I also once lived in a much more unforgiving climate with a shorter growing season, so moving to the temperate climes of Northern California certainly helped.

In pulling photos for this newsletter about my lifelong gardening habit, I dove into my old Flickr account and my more recent photos on my phone and took a walk down memory lane. I am quite used to having garden envy, especially lately when I see any garden where someone clearly has more time on their hands to tend it than I do. But looking at my own past gardens, especially at the place in Mendocino where I had a half acre to play with, I had garden envy of my past self!

My grandma and great grandma on my mom’s side were where I first caught the gardening bug. I remember snapping green beans in Granny’s garden, perusing her root cellar full of canned garden treasures, and chasing fireflies on humid Iowa nights. I can still see my Grandma kneeling over neat rows of thriving veggies and hear her lamenting about the bunnies that would nibble on her plants. We had a few fruit trees and sometimes a summer veggie garden growing up, and picked wild huckleberries in the mountains of Idaho that my mom would can into delicious jam or add to homemade ice cream. But once we moved into a newer neighborhood when I was twelve, there weren’t so many fruit trees as carefully pruned landscapes and vast green lawns.

Dad was the keeper of the landscaping and faithfully mowed the lawn and tended the plants. He loved the rhododendrons that his siblings had in their yards in Portland, but try as he might, they could not thrive in the dry desert climate and usually died when he tried to plant them in Boise. He was very stubborn and kept trying, and I learned from his struggles that paying attention to your climate and what plants grow best in it (or can’t grow well in it) are important, as is persistence! Other than watering the houseplants whenever mom asked, I didn’t have to do much plant care or pay much attention to how to do it growing up. Plants need consistency, and I had other priorities, like chasing boys and getting straight As at school.

I could barely keep house plants alive in my dorm room or first college apartment, but once I had a backyard again, my roommates and I planted a small veggie garden and had fun figuring out what we could grow in the short growing season in northern Idaho. We did pretty well with tomatoes, carrots and zucchini. But somehow growing potatoes — in Idaho mind you — proved to be elusive.

A couple years after graduating from college, I lived in a van and traveled around the Northwest for a while with a rather unpleasant travel companion (my ex was definitely a narcissist) and a very high energy husky. So once we had decided to move to the Mendocino Coast (possibly the only good decision that came out of that relationship), I was excited to have more space and a yard and a garden again. And then I learned that when you live under the redwoods, there’s definitely not enough sun to grow much other than shade-loving ferns.

Living in Mendocino ignited my gardening passion, mostly because of an amazing group of local women who ran an organization called Noyo Food Forest. But also, compared to Idaho especially, the mild coastal climate and complete lack of actual winter meant an almost year-round growing season and very forgiving weather (well, getting enough heat could be a challenge, but then I discovered hoop houses). I took a gardening class from Noyo Food Forest and volunteered at their lush Learning Garden at the Fort Bragg High School, where they grow fresh veggies for the cafeteria and teach local kids how to grow food (um, can we please have this at EVERY school? Just amazing).

Soon I was reading homesteading blogs and gardening books and starting a worm composting bin. As I made friends in the area, it seemed that everyone had a garden. Dinner parties with enormous homegrown salads decorated with edible flowers became the norm, and I kept working with Noyo Food Forest, designing posters for their annual Earth Day fundraiser and helping to start a new community garden behind a coffee roaster down in Noyo Harbor. That community garden gave me some real hands-on experience in clearing a space and transforming it into a garden, preparing and building up soil over time, and the wonders of drip irrigation.

Growing a successful garden is a lot like nurturing community — it requires patience, humility, surrender and consistently showing up, even when things aren’t going how you planned. It’s also something much better done in community than alone, which is why I love helping friends with their gardens and sharing the abundance. But I am proof that it can be learned.

Below I’ll share some of the resources and tips I’ve picked up over the years for organic and regenerative gardening. I’d love to hear your gardening secrets and see your plants as well! I hope your harvests are abundant and you feel empowered to grow your own food, even if you’re starting small. Learning these skills should be basic required education for all humans, especially in the era of lack of oversight of our food systems and explosive diarrhea lettuce, yikes!

🌞 Know Your Zone: Your climate determines a lot — what you can grow, when you need to start seeds and prep beds, what weather or pests you might need to prepare for, etc. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zones don’t give the full picture (especially around here, microclimates abound), but they are a great place to start especially when it comes to choosing plant varieties. Don’t be like my dad and keep killing rhododendrons trying to force them to live in the desert.

📚 Read Up: When I didn’t know where to start with gardening, I took a class and read the book they recommended: How to Grow More Vegetables by John Jeavons. I also loved Gayla Trail’s books, You Grow Girl and Grow Great Grub. And a copy of the good ol’ Sunset Western Garden Book is handy to have too. Following some garden influencers on social media is another great way to absorb knowledge. @epicgardening on IG is one of my faves.

🌱 Starting Seeds: Reading the seed packet is a great place to start with an unfamiliar plant. There are some plants that do NOT like to be transplanted, like root veggies, so for them it’s best to plant seeds directly in the ground wherever you plan to grow them, after the last chance of frost has passed. For the rest, you can get an early start with a seed starting tray with a domed clear lid in a sunny window, and a seedling heat mat. It’s a good idea to plant a few extra than you have room for — you can always share some starts with a friend if they all do well, but sometimes not all the seeds germinate or not all the plants make it.

⏰ Timing is (Kinda) Important: Usually seed packets have an estimate of how long it will take to grow from seed to harvest, but the actual time will vary a lot based on climate, weather, soil, and sheer luck. In some climates, you may need to plant things in fall or winter because it gets too hot in spring and summer. Some crops can be grown year-round in some climates (like many greens here). Pay attention to planting instructions on seed packets or gardening books, but you may have to experiment a bit, and don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t get things started in time, planting late is better than not planting at all! Keeping a garden notebook or noting times you planted in your calendar app can help with the trial and error of finding ideal planting times for your climate and the plants you’re trying to grow.

💦 Drip Irrigation Rules: Having to water a garden by hand every day can be a lovely meditation ritual, but in the summer it may require getting up super early, and it’s not the most conducive to travel. Drip irrigation to the rescue! It can be intimidating, so watch some YouTube videos and read reviews to find a good timer. You may need to adjust your watering time and amounts by season, but usually you want to water in mornings or evenings when you’re less likely to burn wet plants with the sun or lose moisture to evaporation. Get your drip set up and test it out before you start planting, it can take some troubleshooting. This is one area that hiring someone more experienced can save a lot of headache!

🪴 Start Small: I learned the hard way when I had a BIG garden that being overly ambitious can quickly lead to gardener burnout. If you’re new to gardening, start with a few easy to grow plants in pots or a single raised bed. Biting off more than you can chew (or you have time to care for) can make it easy to get overwhelmed and lose interest. And don’t be like me and come home with a new plant every time you go to the grocery store! It gets to be a bit much! Also, don’t forget to leave plenty of space around plants and to look up how big your plants will be once fully grown — don’t overdo it on plants or they may crowd each other out, another reason starting small is wise.

🪏 Soil is Life: Good water and sunlight are important of course, but gardening is not so much about growing plants as nurturing healthy soil. Whether you till your beds (or double dig, the John Jeavons way) or opt for more of a living soil no-till method, you usually need to add organic matter like compost, amendments and manure (NOT fresh manure - it needs to sit for a while or it could burn plants). A mulch like rice straw placed on top of beds after planting can help keep soil moist, suppress weeds, reduce water usage as well as breaking down into more organic matter for the soil. Never use toxic stuff like Roundup — most chemical fertilizers and pesticides are murder on soil, which should be full of life! I make sure any amendments I add are approved for organic gardening. A soil test is a great idea if you’re planting in-ground or starting a brand-new garden.

💧 Wetting Your Planties: How much water do plants need? Depends a lot on your soil and setup — container plants can dry out faster, especially if they are in fabric or terra cotta pots, but in-ground or raised beds hold water a bit longer. When spraying with a hose, you should be able to saturate the soil, but not to the point that water is running off. Many plants need to dry out a bit between waterings, and too much water can lead to root rot, so I usually stick my finger a couple inches into the soil to test. If it feels bone dry, it’s water time. If there’s still some dampness there, maybe it can wait until tomorrow.

🍓 Grow What You Eat: That exotic vegetable you’ve never heard of might sound fun, but what if you don’t like it once you finally harvest it? The best things to plant are things you love to eat, and can handle eating an abundance of. Yes, zucchini may have a million uses, but you really only need one or two plants unless you’re feeding an army (or the neighborhood, which honestly can happen with just a couple plants sometimes too).

🐝 Pollinators Are Friends: When planning your garden and scouring seed catalogs in the winter, try to pick things that will be blooming at different times, and scatter some flowers around your garden to attract pollinators. Bees and butterflies are not only a good sign, they are necessary for a bountiful harvest. And they need our protection, which is why using synthetic bullshit like Roundup that kills them is a huge NO!

🫙 No Garden Space? As an apartment dweller who got quite used to houses with yards, I feel you on not having space to garden. But a potted basil plant on a sunny windowsill, or growing sprouts in a jar with a screened lid totally count as a garden! My apartment balcony is positively stuffed with plants, but thankfully I also have garden space at Josh’s house. When I didn’t have enough sun for gardening in the redwoods, I helped start a community garden. Maybe you have a lazy friend with yard space but no gardening willpower? Where there’s a will to grow, there’s a way!

💡Let There Be Light: Most annuals (plants that grow their entire lifecycle in one year / season) need a LOT of direct sunlight to produce a decent harvest. Read up on the plants you want to grow to make sure your beds get enough hours of sunlight at the right times. Some things like greens and peas can do well in partial shade, or need some sun protection in the heat, but tomatoes and squash need a lot of sunlight. Some perennials and flowers prefer indirect light (like my orchids that love my north facing window), and you can usually get away with a good full-spectrum grow light for indoor growing or spots like my patio that gets maybe an hour of direct sun for half the year. Paying attention to the direction the sun moves during the growing season and how you arrange your bed so taller plants aren’t shading shorter ones is also important.

🐛 Dealing with Pests: The best pest control is prevention and simply growing healthy plants (and planting a few extra in case the bugs get one). You can often deter pests from tender veggies by planting strongly aromatic plants like garlic or cilantro near them. Marigolds are a great companion plant because they repel insects. There are organic pest deterrents that have things like garlic or hot pepper in them to keep pests away as well, and sometimes you may want to cover a bed with some netting once things like strawberries and tomatoes start getting ripe. Beer traps work great for slugs, as does hunting them at night with a headlamp. Prevention should always be the focus over pesticides, because those kill everything indiscriminately, even the beneficial pollinators!

🍲 Using the Harvest: A gardening hobby will quickly turn into a cooking and food preservation hobby, just to warn you! What a delicious hobby to have. My mom gave me all her old canning supplies so I’ve been making amazing marmalade with the citrus from Josh’s trees. A dehydrator comes in very handy for drying herbs like oregano and rosemary, citrus rounds, or zucchini or kale chips. And many veggies and fruits freeze well, especially peas and berries. I got super into fermentation when I lived in Mendo, and the book Wild Fermentation was a good starting point for that. Friends don’t let friends get fruit guilt (which is how my canning habit started).

🫜 Practice Makes Progress: A gardener should never expect perfection, and an abundant garden does not have to look like a magazine. I have perfected what I call the “lazy gardening method” of just kinda doing what I can when I have time, and not paying too much attention to planting times. Gardening has been great for overcoming my perfectionism, and I’ve learned to work with nature instead of against it. If your first attempts are not successful, just keep planting and keep trying! Check out what your neighbors or local community gardens are growing and get inspiration from other gardeners. Ask around at your local Farmers Market for the best varieties for your area. Staying curious and being open to trial and error will get you far in growing your green thumb!

I could keep going on forever of course, but I think this is enough to hopefully get you inspired to get growing. Now is a great time to start planting for fall! I’d love to hear about what you’re growing and eating and what you’ve learned from your gardening pursuits. And if you need a little encouragement, Book a Call with me! I can offer more than just marketing support if you need a gardening pep talk.

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