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Happy lettuce...and friends
Successful farming, ranching and gardening relies upon so many things, but the inconvenience of not being able to control the weather remains one of the greatest obstacles to a good year.
Luckily, there are many ways to overcome this inconvenience.
The two most popular strategies include ignoring the weather and trying to adapt to it and both are similar to investing in stocks.
Those who ignore the weather plant a variety of things at once, at a variety of depths. If it rains too early, the top seeds will sprout and die, but the deeper ones will thrive. If it is too cold, the radishes and peppers will love it, but the tomatoes won’t. This diversified gardening is like a mutual fund, wherein the gardener hedges their risk across many good invesetments and tries to plants something that likes any potential weather phenomena.
Those who try to adapt ahead of time rely upon complex computer forecasts, and then plant accordingly. If the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center says it will be a warm autumn and winter, the gardener might plant a fall crop and hope for the best. If they say it will be a cold summer, maybe they’ll plant that extra bed of fava beans. They check out the soil temperature before planting and are as likely to find out about the severe weather from the Weather Service as they are by looking above them at the sky.
These sorts of gardeners have their regional average precipitation and temepratures memorized, but they still have to prepare for catastrophy.
Sometimes, it will hail. Sometimes it will snow in July. Sometimes frogs, fire, and other pestilence will rain down upon the crops because someone invoked the fury of the gods. In those times, the gardener who thought ahead could care less.
How do you prepare?
#1: Don’t use fertilizers. Making plants grow bigger than they ought to makes them less able to withstand hail, heat, cold or other stresses. Hail bounces off our corn! Fertilizers are to plants what McDonalds is to people: it’ll make ‘em big, meaty and die an early death when more healthy plants keep trucking. Plants need the same diet as you do – low in protein, high in sugar, high in minerals and vitamins. The way you do this is feed them water (if they’re dry) for photosynthesis of sugar and till the soil.
#2: Don’t use herbicide. Everyone loves a bodygaurd or other servants. Your plants do too. Those big weeds shelter them from the hot sun, pull up water from way down deep for them to drink and otherwise shepherd them until you’re ready to eat them. Don’t kill your friends – it’s a good rule for life, and for the garden. Plant with your crops friends that will help them and be tasty and you're doing one better. Friends need to stick together and help each other - a garden full of friends is a happy place indeed!
#3: Don’t use pesticide. Pesticides also kill your friends. Though you do kill some animals that eat your food, chances are that (a) if you leave the weeds growinig, they’ll prefer to eat the weeds over your food, and (b) you kill more friends than enemies. Many insects and arachnids will protect your plants and serve them.
#4: Till frequently in the aisles. Tilling in the aisles is so good for plants! It clips their roots so they send out new tiny ones (that are better able to eat because they have more mouths per inch), loosens the soil so those small roots can eat easier and promotes the microorganisms (the fungi, bacteria, viruses and retroviruses) your plants rely upon not only for their safety, but also for better nutrition: these critters poop out plant food, defend your plants against predators and constitute a large part of your plant’s immune system (just like they do for you – most of your immune system is also microorganisms).
#5: Don’t invoke the fury of the gods. All the above won’t definately protect your crops, but if most of what you have left to fear is god-fury, you’re doing a good job. The best way to prepare against whatever other fury the gods send is to provide food and shelter to all the plants, animals, microorganisms and fungi in your fields - chances are, there's some creature there that can help you in that unknown crisis. "The more biodiversity in your fields, the greater your yields."
You and your plants share so much in common, treat them as you’d like to be treated and they’ll feed you better for it. Research from Charles Darwin and subsequent scientists indicates that similarities extend even beyond diet and physical needs: plants have nervous systems, experience emotion and can even communicate within and beyond their species (interested readers would love to read “Power of Movement in Plants” by Charles and Francis Darwin).
So, though they may not understand you when you talk to them or play them music, they will be all the happier for the care you do give them in protecting them against the weather.
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