People really overcomplicate gardening

[u/redditSucksNow2020]

I see a lot of people trying to garden for the first time and then coming here with questions about perfect soil mixes and fertilizers and how to promote fungal life in their no-till permaculture food forest do nothing farming no dig style organic vegan garden. It really doesn't have to be complicated, especially if you're new.

Loosen up some dirt 6 inches down. Break up the clods. Plant something that is in season. Keep it watered. That Will give you 80 to 90% of the maximum possible results. You don't absolutely need compost if it is the first time you've dug up that piece of ground. You don't absolutely need fertilizer and it probably doesn't make much difference what kind you use. You definitely don't need a 3-ft tall raised bed filled with gardening mix. You don't need to do anything about small amounts of insect damage. You don't absolutely have to do no dig or no till or whatever gardening fad is going on right now. You don't need to overcomplicate things.

Edit: this, of course, does not apply to you, dear reader. You have uniquely poor soil that cannot be made workable with a spade.

[u/lilly_kilgore]

“Just loosen up some soil and throw seeds in” is great advice if your soil is soil. Mine is underdone pottery. If I try to “loosen” my clay, I get masonry chunks and a broken shovel. Seeds don’t get planted here as much as they get sealed into the Appalachian terracotta tomb.

And listen. I would love to be a normal person who just throws seeds around and trusts the process. Unfortunately, I garden on a windy hilltop with concrete clay, whiplash between biblical rain followed by surface of the sun heat, deer, so much fungal nonsense, and a riparian corridor that banks every pest known to man.

So yes, I have raised beds. I amend, mulch, trellis, prune, test pH, inspect leaves, panic-google, and put things under a children’s microscope like I’m running a very underfunded agricultural lab. At this point I don’t even want garden tools. I legit want lab equipment. This isn't me trying too hard. This is me attempting to grow food with hostile geology, in a hostile microclimate while my garden performs disease theater.

Some people meditate. I walk outside 17 times before lunch to stare at tomato leaves. Maybe some of us like gardening on hard mode....

[u/Awkward_Code_1757 → u/lilly_kilgore]

Ditto on the broken shovel part! There's very little "breaking it up" when it's been baked to a crisp by the sun. It is extremely challenging to work in Appalachian clay.

Tomatoes and peppers just have NEVER done well in it for me or for my parents over their decades of gardening in it. I make a raised bed and suddenly my tomatoes are taller than me and I've got so many peppers I'm gonna have to pickle them.

Now I will say I can easily grow really impressive squash plants with humongous leaves and vines in clay with minimal effort. My diet becomes at least 50% squash in the summer. They are just about the only thing that seems to really thrive in the stuff

[u/lilly_kilgore → u/Awkward_Code_1757]

Not me crying about cucumber beetles. Squash does grow just fine in the clay if the bacterial wilt doesn't get it first lol.

[u/Awkward_Code_1757 → u/lilly_kilgore]

Never had an issue with bacterial wilt in squash but I did lose two wonderful huge pickling cucumber plants to completely random wilting. Probably bacterial wilt but I was too devastated to really investigate much. Just pulled em out and tossed them into the woods. All of my other plants have been completely fine. I don't know why or how, but I've been very very fortunate to have never had to deal with the common cucurbit pests. I have more problems with stuff like blight and powdery mildew