Process Essay

How to Plant and Grow a Garden… In Montana

            With such a short growing season in our climatically challenged state, growing a garden often times can be a difficult task. In this guide, I am going to demonstrate the simple steps and processes one can take in order to achieve success and watch their garden thrive. Having a successful garden can give an individual motivation as well as happiness and what in one's life is more important than individual happiness? Well, maybe love and family but besides that, a healthy, green, and wonderful spot where just your hard work is being displayed. By following this guide, one will be able to grow plants in our tough conditions with a success rate that breaks through the roof.

Step One:

            Of the most important steps in planting a Montana garden, the first and foremost is finding the correct location to place the garden. Many factors can affect how your plants will grow including wind, shade, sunlight, amount of water, intruders, etc. These factors can give rise to either positive or negative impacts. By finding a location where you can limit these factors to only having a positive impact will create a more healthy and productive garden. Whether it be building raised beds or simply tilling up the soil, using a location with minimal wind yet allowing for maximum sunlight will improve the plant quality. Without wind, stress levels of the plants are able to stay low and full maturity is able to be reached. With the constant stress of wind, plants will get knocked over as well as lose water to increased rates of evaporation. Also, picking a location with full sunlight will greatly impact the extent to which the garden grows. We all know that plants need sunlight which plays a key role in the process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is how plants make food and with more sunlight there is more food being made equaling bigger and more productive yields. Overall, when finding a location, choose a place where the full garden will be out of the wind yet in the full sunlight. 

This garden is planted in the shelter of trees but maintains the ability to have full access to sunlight. It also has a fence which keeps out intruders!

Step Two:

            After you have chosen a top notch location for your garden, it’s time to prepare the ground for where the plants will live and grow for the duration of their lives. Although all plants have their own preferred soil type (for example, potatoes prefer a pH of 6.5 or less), an overall nutritional and well balanced soil will yield a wealthy crop. If you plan on building raised beds, make sure they are tall enough to allow for the plants roots to dive and spread. These should be a minimum of two feet tall. When it comes to the soil, your best option is to take a trip to your local nursery and buy premium bags of soil and compost to fill them. For every three large bags of soil, one should add one large bag of compost. Compost will act as a fertilizer and aid in plant development. By having a rich amount of soil and compost, the plants will always have a source of nutrients from which to grow from. If you are planning on tilling your soil to create your garden, follow the minimum of two feet down so your plants roots have the chance to dive and spread. If your soil is extremely black and loose, there is no need to add any compost for the soil is already rich with nutrients. But, if your soil is a light brown and more dense if not stuck together, add a good amount of compost to the area. Light brown and thick soil is generally poor in nutrients. To be effective, add at least six inches of compost to the soil and then till the two soils together (this should darken the color).

                           Healthy Soil                                                           Poor Soil

Step Three:

            When a location has been chosen and the soil is prepared, it is now time for you to pick the type of garden in which you will plant! This is the fun part for one can choose such a wide variety of things to grow. Although there are so man y different types of plants to grow, we need to understand that not everything will grow in our wild state. One must understand that out growing season in generally about three months long and can consist of extremely high and extremely low temperatures. To back up this point, one doesn’t want to plant something that has a maturity phase of four months long and is very sensitive to cold weather. Don’t worry though, there are a huge number of plants that are hardy and have short growing seasons. These include radishes, marigolds, raspberries, and so much more!

            When picking the types of plants you want to grow in your garden, it is very helpful to follow a plant compatibility guide. These can be found on the internet or in special gardening books. By following a plant compatibility guide, one is making sure what they plants together won't create negative impacts. For example, carrots will grow extremely good when paired next to lettuce, spinach, or beans while potatoes will grow extremely bad when paired next to tomatoes. This is based on different types of chemicals released by the roots and the nutrients the plants absorb. No one wants their plants having negative affects towards one another, so follow a plant compatibility guide.

Step Four:

            By picking the correct location, creating good soil, and identifying plants that will grow good with one another as well as good in Montana, it is now time to complete the process with feeding the plants. All plants require three things in order to grow successfully: sunlight, nutrients, and water. If the correct location is chosen, the plants should receive sunlight. If  healthy soil is used, the plants should receive nutrients. But what about the water? When planting a garden one should always understand that they are either going to have to water it on the daily or have it be part of a sprinkler system.  To improve plant growth, hand watering is always more productive based on the plants getting  a more accurate amount of water that they need. Although sprinkler systems are helpful, they do tend to either overwater or underwater. When one hand waters, the process is more precise.

            If after some time your plants enter a phase where they seem to be going downhill (either they are not growing at a proper rate or discoloration occurs), there is always option to give the plants extra nutrients. By going to your local nursery one can ask what it wrong and what would help the plants out. Often times, this may be a simply fix by only adding some extra nutrients or changing amounts of water. Whatever it is, almost 99 percent of the time the problem can be cured.

            Though it may be difficult in our extreme climate state, it is very possible to plant and grow a garden in the state of Montana. By following this simple guide, you can make the possibility of success a definite one.