The Priority Matrix: An Overlooked Garden Tool

Don Goldmann, MD, Chief Scientific Officer Emeritus and Senior Fellow, IHI

Hi. I'm Don Goldmann, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in the middle of my garden with the growing season at its very height. I thought this would be a good opportunity to provide some lessons about some very simple and basic quality improvement tools.

I'm standing in front of my raised beds, which are one part of my vegetable garden. But I want you to just notice that this is not a very large garden. It's a nice big property, but the raised beds themselves are relatively limited in space. I can't plant everything I'd like to plant. In fact, some would argue that I've planted way too densely.

So how do I make the choices? I use a priority matrix to try and decide which seeds I'll purchase in a given year. What factors do I use in my own personal priority matrix? I'm thrifty. I tend not to buy the seeds that you get like 20 seeds and they're really, really expensive. I look for heirlooms, those varieties that have great flavor, that have been time-tested and used for generations. Obviously, the flavor itself is important. I don't want a dull, boxed, hothouse type of tomato. I want a really flavorful one. I'd like my vegetables to be at least somewhat resistant to pests and various diseases that afflict the vegetables.

I think about how much space they'll take. Obviously I don't want to grow the largest, most spready type of variety, so I think about that. I think about how long it'll be from seed to eating and harvesting because we have a relatively short growing season here in New England. I have to think a little bit about tolerance to heat and drought because I travel a lot. If I go away for two or three days, and it's a very hot dry spell, will my vegetables survive?

So let's talk about kale and how I use a priority matrix to select four types of kale. This one is called meadow kale. You can see that it's beginning to bolt or end its reign and go to seed. But this is a very tender and reliable kale that I really liked a lot. This was a big winner and a surprise to me. It's red Russian kale, I'd never had that before. But when you pick it young, as I did really almost a month ago, it's still yielding. But a month ago, they were tender young leaves so you could just throw into the salad without cooking them at all.

This is a pretty standard blue kale, but it's extremely reliable. It makes a great Portuguese kale with a little bit of a Portuguese sausage. This is the dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale, which has a flavor that isn't quite as strong as other kales. It's just coming into its prime now. So I'll be harvesting that.

Now that we're well into the growing season, I've had a chance to look at how these four varieties of kale have thrived, how they taste and to form some opinions for what I'm going to purchase next year. So let's take a look at this priority matrix where I've ranked the various categories of desirability on a scale of one to four. Here you see, dinosaur kale. That ranked very high on most of the criteria with the exception of not being really what I would consider an exotic heirloom. But it's very tasty. It's very tender.

It was pretty resistant to pests, it grew well in the heat. It's relatively inexpensive to purchase. So that's the winner, if you will, with a score of 23. I'm definitely going to plant that next year. But it's not quite so simple. You'll see the two other varieties scored very high as well, the dwarf blue kale and the red Russian kale.

They scored high for different reasons. The dwarf blue isn't particularly tender or tasty. It tastes okay, but it has to be cooked really thoroughly to get the bitterness out. On the other hand, it doesn't take up much space. So if I have to choose one or two more varieties to plant next year, the dwarf will be in there primarily because it's a space saver.

The red Russian will probably be there as well if I have room for three because it's uniquely tender and tasty. If you remember what I said, you can just pick it when it's young and throw it into a salad. So I'll probably plant that for its heirloom nature and for its tender, very good flavor.

The meadowlark kale, on the other hand, scored lower for a variety of reasons. It took up a lot of space. I didn't think it tasted frankly any better than the dwarf blue. It tended to go to seed or bolt with the heat. So I won't be planting the meadowlark kale. By the way, it's also relatively expensive. That one's out of my garden next year.