This JPEG could've been an app
March 2022
You know absolutely nothing about growing food but you want to try it.
There’s lots of information out there, and that’s the problem.
How much reading and deciding and planning do you need to do? What are the stakes if you decide to plant in raised beds and later change your mind? Do you have to understand agricultural zones?
In trying to overcome the impulse to overthink, overplan, and never execute, I’m trying to do something today that’ll move me closer to growing (some) food.
I think the question right now is “What should someone in Zone 8 be doing in January?”
Here’s the resource I found:
It’s really pretty and quite helpful, but it doesn’t quite get me there.
- It’s missing a lot of vegetables! What about herbs, or artichokes, or celery, or bok choi, or radishes?
- My previous overthinking has led me to decide I want to try companion planting - which of these vegetables go with each other?
- I’m growing in containers - what’s a good combination of these vegetables that would like to share a container and can be planted next month?
I’ll assemble answers to these questions from other sites, but it sure would be nice as an overwhelmed beginner to have a single guide that can take me from “idk where to start” to “here’s what i need to buy, what i’ll plant, when, and when it’ll be ready.”
On the one hand, “Zone 8 companion planting calendar for novice container gardeners” is pretty niche, but on the other hand it’s probably 200 lines of JavaScript, with 120 of those lines being lists of vegetables.
If this post gets 10M shares I will build the app. Otherwise I’m just gonna go order some kale, onion, radish, and oregano seeds and see if they all get along.”