If you're like me, your garden is a magical, meditative place. A retreat that allows you to quietly commune with Nature. A Witch who spends time digging in the soil upon which she lives gets to know the local spirits and energy of her home better than one who doesn't. The food that is grown in a Kitchen Witch's garden is especially magical because it is imbued with her energy and positive intent from the moment she places the tiny seed in the ground. Even before if she's carefully saved the seed from the fruit of the previous year's labors!
The gardening Witch is also more in tuned with the cycles of the seasons, which makes the Wheel of the Year celebrations even more meaningful. Now, it this time of dying light, I am pulling out the last dead bits of weeds, cutting back the dried up stalks, trimming away dead branches and, finally, covering the entire lot with a thick blanket of mulch; tucking in my dear plant friends for their long winter's sleep.
Mulch is a wonderful thing and it does so much. It protects tender roots from freezing weather throughout the winter and it softens the earth to allow those tender roots to spread out when the ground thaws again. Meanwhile, it stops weed seeds dropped in the fall from sprouting in the spring so I can spend the first fine days planting instead of weeding! I am planning to get all this handled the weekend after Thanksgiving with the waning moon in Leo. This is a good time to destroy pests and weeds and prepare the soil for planting. (Check out Gardening by the Moon for more information about this) This might not be the best time for everyone as you definitely want to make sure your garden is tucked in before the frost hits. However, it's not as earth-shattering as planting tender seedlings before the final frost in the spring!
If you haven't got a garden yet, now is the perfect time to start one. You can plant daffodil, tulip and crocus bulbs right in your lawn, or make a nice comfy garden bed for them. If you would rather wait till spring and plant seeds, get your bed started now. It's super easy and not the least bit painful if you use Lasagna Gardening techniques (of which I am very fond). A little work now will save you quite a bit in the springtime.
If you haven't got a yard, gardening isn't quite the same but a container garden on a patio or even in front of a sunny window can provide much of the same benefits of a traditional garden and can provide a welcome taste of summer in the dead of winter. I am personally not terribly skilled at keeping indoor plants alive, but I set up an http://amzn.to/2c0s319 AeroGarden] every winter (I get new seed packs for Midwinter every year) to keep the fresh herbs coming till spring.
Originally posted on 11/2010
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First Harvest Reflections
A Simple Kitchen Witches Herb Garden
Gardening By The Moon
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