Courtesy Mike Judson

What’s the best way to ensure gardening success? Pay your garden a visit every day!

You’ve prepared your soil, purchased healthy seedlings or appropriate seed varieties and followed all the recommended dates for planting in our area. Now all you need to do is plant your garden and wait for Mother Nature to provide you with a bountiful harvest of fruits and vegetables, right? Not quite.

Like raising children, gardening requires commitment. It requires you to be present so you can notice what’s going on because, just as with kids, things can change quickly. That’s why I like to pay my garden a visit every day. Here’s what I look for when I’m there.

What to look for in your garden

Produce that is ready to pick. Picking fruits and vegetables at the right time is essential if you want to get the most from your garden. Some crops like potatoes, onions, cabbage and carrots you can let go for weeks after they are ready to eat. But don’t try that with corn, peas, melons, cucumbers or a host of other favorites because they’ll quickly become inedible.

Weeds! The best time to pick a weed is when it first sprouts. Not only are they easy to eliminate, but pulling them when they’re small prevents them from producing more weed seeds. Pull a few every day and you’ll never have to face the marathon weeding sessions that all gardeners despise.

Courtesy Mike Judson

Watering issues. I use drip watering lines that are connected to my sprinkler system, so it comes on and turns off automatically — except when it doesn’t. Power outages, lines that pop off from their couplings or debris in the water that plugs emitters and filters are all possible issues that can devastate a garden if not caught early. I also use my garden visits to determine if seasonal adjustments are needed for cooler or hotter weather.

Bugs and other pests. Many crops can be saved if pests are noticed early. Aphids are famous for multiplying rapidly when left unchecked. And squash bugs, cabbage butterflies, tomato hornworms, grasshoppers and a host of other undesirables can all be avoided or at least minimized if caught in time. Even deer damage can be reduced, but only when you notice the signs that they’ve been sneaking in for a midnight snack.

Plants not thriving. There is always a reason why a plant struggles. And, like a doctor diagnosing a patient, the gardener who can recognize the symptoms early will have the best chance of identifying the problem and curing the “patient.” Miss the signals your plants are giving off by a day or two and it may be too late to do anything about it.

Flowers needing to be dead-headed and plants that need pinching or thinning. Many flowers and some vegetables benefit from an extra bit of care. For example, removing spent flower heads will often encourage more blooms. Vegetables like peppers and tomatoes can benefit from some strategic pruning, and carrots often grow better with early thinning.

Vining plants that need training. I grow most of my vining plants like peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes and some melons on trellises to save space. This requires vigilance because the vines grow rapidly and can become unruly in a matter of days. When this happens, vines can become rigid and hard to weave onto the trellis without breaking branches off.

Courtesy Mike Judson

Opportunities for succession planting. With planning and vigilance, multiple crops can be harvested from the same plot of ground in the same season. Being in my garden every day lets me know when one crop is ready to come out and another can be immediately planted in its place.

The most important reason I visit my garden daily

There’s another reason why I am in my garden every day, and it’s the most important one of all — I just like being there. Studies have shown that gardening is one of the best and most reliable ways to boost mental and physical health, but it doesn’t take research to figure that out. Just get out there and get busy, and before long you’ll likely be calling your garden your “happy place” like mine is for me.