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Growing Mondays: The best way of learning is by doing
Experience is more important than knowledge
Jo Hunter Adams
September 15, 2025
Hi! I'm Jo, writing from Heart & Soil homestead, a 1-acre homestead in the Far South of Cape Town, South Africa. Every week I share inspiration and education for your growing journey. Thanks so much for reading!
Welcome to Growing Mondays, where I talk about growing- vegetables, fruits, animals and, well, people. This week I talk about the value of just doing and observing, and learning. Experience— all the nuance of ourselves as individuals, family, community, the weather— has been much more valuable than knowledge in helping us grow and make ever-improving use of our farm.
Our farm during a tour yesterday (Photo credit: Jill Mackay) I am using all Jill’s photos from yesterday in today’s newsletter!
Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you.
As so many people visited this past weekend, I feel, more than usual, that I am because you are. As our survival rests in community, it is both terrifying and wonderful to lean into our utter fragility, and also into our connectedness.
Today I wanted to talk about experience growing. The crazy tiny nitty gritty we have to remember to get better in both our yields and in the way those yields are used.
Counterintuitively, NOT being too concerned with yields can be a very good teacher. If you are concerned and measure the fate of every single seed or seedling, you will struggle to improve. If, instead, you look at the overall trends of your eating (and selling, if you sell), you can improve.
(Photo credit: Jill Mackay)
Each seedling has a time and resource cost. Yet gradually developing enough margin to experiment has taught me so much about what we can grow when, and where.
For example, I have typically struggled to grow a second Napa Cabbage crop each year, because Napa cabbage is inherently prone to bolting in spring. Napa Cabbage is one of the most important things we grow, because we make so much kimchi. So this year, I experimented with location and timing of multiple crops.
What I discovered surprised me. While our second crop has already bolted in our outside beds, we are still harvesting from our tunnel beds, and there’s no sign of bolting. While I thought heat and light triggered bolting, experience is teaching me that this process is much more complex. Consistent watering and more consistent temperatures in the tunnel environment seem to tell the cabbages that they do not have to go to seed just yet.
I take that complexity and nuance into our next season, and it builds into an ever-more-complex web of connections and knowledge.
So here’s to experimentation, and not getting too ossified in our knowledge or approach. There’s always much more to learn. In fact, telling me about your experiences really helps me learn and grow. We all grow collectively.
(Photo credit: Jill Mackay)
Workshops
The workshop is marked as R350 on our booking app, but it is open to people who cannot afford to pay. We want everyone to be able to start veg from seed, so don't be shy to book a spot and pay whatever you can. As many of you know, we buy seedlings in from Landorf (not organic) and also start seedlings ourselves. When I start seedlings here, they are always organically grown, and often from saved seed. This workshop is a concrete step in the direction of seedling starting, and also supporting our community in getting seedlings started. The more collective experience we have as a community, the more normal it’ll be to start and save seed. If you have a company group or a group of family or friends that you’d like to learn composting, growing, chicken rearing, sourdough baking, cheesemaking or some other topic, let me know. It could be a fun way to connect with colleagues, friends and family. |
Chameleon tree/quince tree
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