We’re picking up a series launched last year that examines life from the process of gardening. In essence, the garden process has five key stages:
- Plan
- Prepare
- Plant
- Process
- Preserve
Each stage calls for various resources and considerations. This article will examine the first stage, the plan.
When it comes to gardening, a plan will greatly aid one’s efforts toward a productive harvest–that’s intuitive. However, it’s also important to state the obvious here, namely that anyone can grow veggies by throwing seed in the ground. But it is by a plan that the likelihood of success most gardeners are going for is greatly increased and enjoyed!
Most of life is really this way. Our very own Benjamin Franklin quipped, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” His point is obvious, a haphazard approach to life, i.e. not first sitting down and “counting the costs,” usually doesn’t set us up for the success we desire.
We understand this in building a house as we hire the architect to draw up plans. A blueprint guides all parties involved in the construction. Without those blueprints, the electrician, the plumber, the HVAC, and all others involved in the process will be running over each other trying to do their job. We would never approach a house build this way, because we understand the chaos that would ensue. Makes you wonder why we’re so “busy” all the time?
Back to the garden. The planning process of the garden is simple, and incorporates as a general rule the following aspects:
- Consider last year’s harvest, and make a list of desired vegetables to plant for the coming year.
- Look up your local last frost date.
- Based upon the last frost date, write the dates for your desired seeds to start, transplants, and direct sow.
- Based upon your garden bed layout (make this if you don’t have one and label each garden bed), determine which plants need to be rotated this coming year to different beds (this will be based upon the plant family).
- Now that you know what plants need to be moved, plan which plants you will plant in each of your garden beds. In essence, you’re planning to plant before you plant.
- At this point, organize and take inventory of seed stock. Discard old seeds.
- Determine which seeds you will start and which you will purchase as transplants from your local garden store.
- Organize and take inventory of seed starting soil and equipment.
At this point, you’re on your way to a bounty of vegetables, herbs, and the like to enjoy and share with others.
Application to Everyday Life…
- The best made plans are not guarantees for success.
- How many folks have planned as good as the rest only to find that variables weren’t considered or something outside of the “plan” occurred and led to a disastrous result?
- The bottom line, plans help with probabilities, but they are not promises.
- Plans are not presumption.
- James warns in his epistle, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” -James 4:13-15
- The bottom line, presumption is counting your chickens before they hatch. On the other hand, planning is a result of a yielded life that walks in collaboration with the Holy Spirit (Phil. 2:12-13).
- God’s works all things together for good.
- Even in the midst of failed plans, God will use it for good to those who love Him, i.e. are followers of Christ (Rom. 8:28).
- The bottom line, both failure and success lead us to God, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.
“The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.”
Proverbs 16:9
— March 1, 2022