🌻 Garden Wisdom: Tips for Growing a Lush, Soulful Garden

🌻 Garden Wisdom: Tips for Growing a Lush, Soulful Garden

Herb & Soul — with love from the garden path

There’s something deeply sacred about tending a garden. It’s not just about food or flowers, it’s about remembering. Remembering to slow down, to observe, to listen. Lately, I’ve had a bunch of questions about planting, spacing, and keeping things from turning into a chaotic jungle (been there 😅). So I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years, from the land, from my mistakes, and from the plants themselves.

Whether you're planting your first herb patch, have a small space or stretching out rows of tomatoes, here's a little soul-fed wisdom to help you grow strong this season.

🌱 Give Them Room to Breathe

It’s easy to underestimate how big plants get when they’re full-grown. That tiny tomato seedling? She's about to turn into a wild summer beast. Here, we use the square foot method to insure we have enough space for full potential!

• Tomatoes: one square foot per plant. Support them with cages or stakes so they can grow up, not out. Pruning will be your best friend! Just like cucumbers, tomatoes produce suckers. Keep them pruned to one stem and the energy will focus on growing up and maximizing the harvest. One root system, one plant!
• Peppers: Also need space to grow! They can take up a whole square foot like Tomatoes!
• Cucumbers & Squash: Trellises are your best friend. Training them to climb up not only saves space but keeps fruit off the ground. Preventing mildew and rot.
• Zucchini: Take up a whole lot of room. Trust me, give her space to sprawl.

👉 If you plant too close, things get crowded, airflow suffers, and diseases move in. Think ahead: plant for the future size, not the baby start.

🌿 Diversity Planting: Mimic Nature

Nature doesn’t do straight rows or one-plant patches. It’s wild and layered and that’s exactly how your garden wants to grow.

• Avoid monoculture: Don’t plant big blocks of one crop, pest will find them faster! Mix things up.
• Pair herbs, flowers & veggies: It helps deter pests, attract pollinators, and support healthy soil.
• Different heights & roots: Tall, short, shallow, deep — this keeps the garden balanced and vibrant.

🌾 Diversity creates resilience. The more variety in your garden, the more life it will hold! Bees, butterflies, ladybugs, and all.

🌼 Companion Planting: Garden Besties

Some plants just vibe better together, like a garden version of soul sisters.

• Tomatoes + Basil: Boosts flavor and keeps bugs away.
• Cucumbers + Nasturtiums: Attract beneficials and deter pests.
• Carrots + Onions: Protect each other from invaders.
• Marigolds + Everything: Keep them around — they repel pests and invite pollinators.
• Three Sisters: Beans, squash and corn grow very well together, and this method has been used by Indigenous Peoples for YEARS!
• Flowers: Flowers in your garden will boost pollinator productivity, which equals bigger, better crops!

🫶 Companions help each other thrive, just like we do!

Some plants DO NOT grow well together! Do your own research!

🌿 Mint: The Garden Diva

Mint is magical in all her many varieties! For teas, steams, and medicine she does it all… but she does not know how to stay in her lane 😂

• Always plant mint in containers, even if you sink them into the soil. (watch for escaping roots!)
• She’ll come back every year like clockwork and bring friends.
• Same goes for lemon balm and some oreganos, watch those spreaders!

🌸 Perennials That Keep on Giving

Some herbs and plants don’t need replanting every year — they return on their own, often bigger and better with each season. These are some of my favorite perennial allies:

• Lemon Balm - Container
• Mint – CONTAINER!!!!! (I can’t stress this enough, lol)
• Sage
• Chives
• Thyme
• Lavender
• Oregano
• Berries
• Echinacea (most flowers if you let them go to seed)

🌿 Mark where you plant them! They may go quiet in winter, but they’ll rise again when the earth warms.

🪴 Container Growing: Small Spaces, Big Magic

You don’t need acres of land to grow good things. Whether you’ve got a balcony, a porch, or just a sunny corner, container gardening is a powerful way to grow food and medicine, with control and flexibility.

• Great for herbs like basil, thyme, lemon balm, mint (especially mint!!), and parsley.
• Vegetables like cherry tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, and radishes all do well in pots.
• Berries! Strawberries do well in containers! Runners can be rooted and clipped to produce new plants! Blueberries do well too, you might have to up size containers as they grow. Raspberries spread like mint, no joke, so if you plant any, I STRONGLY suggest keeping them contained or on top of cutting and thinning… learned this the hard way..
• Potatoes You can even grow these in cardboard boxes!
• Grow up! Trellises can turn a container into a vertical garden, perfect for cucumbers, vine tomatoes, beans, or even compact squash varieties.

🌞 Tip: Use larger pots than you think you’ll need. Plants don’t like cramped roots, and bigger containers hold moisture better. This is backwards from house plants, I know. These guys WANT to produce fruit and go to seed, you wanna give them the space they need!

(5 gallon = 1 square foot!)

💧 Keep an eye on watering — containers dry out quicker than garden beds, especially in hot weather. Add mulch on top to help hold moisture in.

And don’t be afraid to mix it up: plant basil and marigolds in the same pot as a tomato, or tuck chamomile in with your leafy greens. Containers are little worlds, make them beautiful!

🌞 Other Tips from the Dirt Witch Herself

• Rotate crops yearly to keep pests guessing and your soil healthy.
• Diversion Plants plant some things OUTSIDE of the garden to trick pests. Also, as a first sign of potential invaders!
• Mulch to hold moisture and smother weeds (plus it just looks good).
• Talk to your plants — your energy matters. Gardens feel love. Give Thanks for all their hard work.
• Make offerings — a song, a sprinkle of herbs, a moment of gratitude. The land always listens.

🌸 Final Thought

Gardening isn’t just about food or flowers, it’s a relationship. With the Earth. With time. With yourself. Every seed is a lesson, every bloom a blessing.

May your garden grow wild and full, just like your spirit.

With love, light & herbz,🌿

Ray ☀
Herbalist 🌿Healer 🌿Medicine Woman