• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Growing Organic Food in Your Backyard

Grow Better Food!
  • Home
  • Start Here
  • Seed Starting
  • Hoop House
    • Grow Tomatoes in a Hoop House
    • Grow Cucumbers in a Hoop House
    • How to Grow Carrots in Winter
    • Winter Sowing Made Better
  • Sponsor
  • Search
  • Subscribe

Testing Garden Strategies

by Bill Brikiatis

Updated: November 16, 2020

Have you ever heard the expression: “all politics is local?” Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill coined the phrase. It means that a politician’s success is directly tied to the ability to understand and influence the issues of their LOCAL constituents.

What does this have to do with growing food?

Well … In the same way that all politics are local, all gardening is local, too. By this I mean that you need to understand the influence and issues of your backyard … or maybe even specifically a small patch of your backyard.

In other words, strategies that work exceptionally well for your next door neighbor may NOT be what’s right for your garden.

That doesn’t mean that what works for your neighbor or the Extension Service master gardener or the famous gardening book author isn’t a good idea for you. But we shouldn’t just use them across the garden without knowing if they actually help or hurt.

That’s even true for ideas that you learn from this blog.

Let’s take a sec to get the legal words out of the way. This article may contain affiliate links. That means if you click and buy from my partners, I will make a tiny amount of money at no cost to you. This in no way affects my recommendations.

Testing Garden Strategies
Strategies that work exceptionally well for your next door neighbor may NOT be what’s right for your garden.

Of course, there are times when there’s enough evidence go all out and make a change across your garden. Still, more often than not, the key to truly learning what’s right in your situation is proper testing of a small sample of your plot.

Proper Testing

A badly designed test can be worse than no test at all. This is because a bad test increases the chances that you are getting bad information.

You can’t test more than one improvement in the same location at the same time.

— Suburban Hobby Farmer

To help you test better, here are four guidelines for testing strategies in your garden.

1. Test only good ideas. Take your best guess on what will improve the situation before you decide what to test. Carol Deppe in her book The Resilient Gardener has a good example of this rule.

She develops good ideas for adding soil amendments by first having her soil tested. But she doesn’t just use the soil testing lab’s recommendations. She tests them first in a small portion of her garden to make sure the recommendations are actually helping.

2. Test only one idea. You can’t test more than one improvement in the same location at the same time. If you do, you won’t know what’s responsible for the result.

This rule is difficult for me to keep because I have a lot of ideas but limited space. But if you are going to learn what is going to help, you have to maintain the purity of the test.

3. Maintain a control. Usually, you should test on two plants of the same variety, side-by-side. That means, for example, two Brandywine tomato plants from the same batch of seeds in the same location.

You should try the new idea on one plant and NOT the new idea on the other. To the best of your ability, you should keep all other variables equal.

4. Document your results. A garden diary is a great way to document your results. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred back to my diary when I never thought that I would.

You may think that you can remember, but you can’t. Short of a diary, write the results down someplace.

What to test

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Can I water less and get the same result?
2. Does Neptune’s Harvest improve tomato production?
3. Which is best for cucumbers: straw or oak leave mulch?
4. Can I get the same result if I grow lettuce in a more shady location (not full sun)?
5. Do I have to mound up soil for potatoes?

You get the idea. Now it’s your turn to figure out what you most would like to know about your garden. I challenge you to test one idea this growing season.

Related articles you might enjoy:

  1. Top Five Vegetable Gardening Books
  2. Learning from Carol Deppe, The Resilient Gardener
  3. Book Review: Eliot Coleman’s Four-Season Harvest

Suburban Hobby Farmer is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Pin
Share
Tweet

Filed Under: 3. Expert -- Somewhat Difficult to Complete Tagged With: Planning

Primary Sidebar

Meet the Blogger

Bill Brikiatis

Hello! I’m Bill Brikiatis. I started this website in 2010 to help you get better at growing organic food in your backyard.

I’ve been growing fruits and vegetables for nearly all my life. And I'm over 60.

That’s not to say that I don’t make mistakes. I make plenty, then I write about them so both you and I get better at growing great things to eat.

You can read more about me and Suburban Hobby Farmer on my about page.

Most Popular on SHF

  1. How to Get Free Seeds from the U.S. Government. It's Easy If You Know How
  2. How to Use Chicken Manure Pellets in the Vegetable Garden
  3. Which Seed Starting Mix is Best? I Tested Them
  4. What Are the Benefits of Pruning Tomato Plants?
  5. I've Used a Rain Barrel Downspout Diverter for 10 years. Here's What I Know.
  6. Grow Millions of Cucumbers in a Hoop House
  7. I Shopped for Hoop House Kits. A Review of the One I Bought.
  8. Do Tumbling Compost Bins Work?
  9. Can you plant potatoes in the fall? Absolutely!
  10. What are the Best Potting Benches for Vegetable Growers?

Search This Site for Articles

Growing Tomatoes

Growing Tomatoes

Learn Everything I Know About Growing Tomatoes

Extending the Growing Season

  1. A Hoop House is a Tomato Growing Machine
  2. Coldframe Kits Make It Easy to Extend the Growing Season
  3. Grow a Million Cucumbers in a Hoop House
  4. I Shopped for Hoop House Kits. A Review of the Three I Considered
  5. Growing Salad Greens in Winter. Here's How to Do It
  6. Better Tomatoes with Walls O Water
  7. How to Grow Carrots in Winter
  8. Winter Sowing Made Better

Improving Soil

  1. How to Use Chicken Manure Pellets
  2. Three Important Soil Building Techniques
  3. Grasscycling and Composting Grass Clippings
  4. What is "Deep Litter" in a Chicken Coop?
  5. Why Grow Cover Crop and Which Ones?
  6. Mulching Raised Garden Beds
  7. Five Gardening Ideas from Building Soils Naturally
  8. Should You Use Neptune's Harvest Liquid Fertilizer?
  9. How to Use Aquarium Fish Water to Fertilize Plants
  10. Using Chop & Drop to Improve Your Soil
  11. How to Improve Your Soil
  12. What is OMRI? Why Should Organic Gardners Care?
  13. Winter Ground Covers for Vegetable Gardens

Collecting Water with Rain Barrels & Downspout Diverters

  1. My Automatic Downspout Diverter
  2. Rain Barrel Downspout Diverters
  3. Fixing an Overflowing Rain Barrel
  4. Oatey Mystic Rainwater Collection System / Downspout Diverter

Composting Articles

  1. Do Tumbling Compost Bins Work?
  2. How to Compost Faster
  3. Worm Composting Not So Easy
  4. Worm Composting Not So Easy, Part II
  5. Worm Composting Not So Easy, Part II
  6. Free, 77-page Worm Composting Guide
  7. Grasscycling and Composting Grass Clippings
  8. The Best Worm Food
  9. Making Compost in a Chicken Coop

Footer

My Recommendations

  • Start Here
  • Subscribe
  • Things I Like

SHF Info

  • Advertising Info
  • Affiliate Policy
  • Article Sponsorship
  • Privacy

Blogger

  • About
  • Contact

© Suburban Hobby Farmer 2020