The Basics
So many home gardeners become frustrated with not knowing why a certain plant doesn’t do well, why another plant dies, and yet others seem to thrive. We advise our clients to take one very important step before investing the time into tilling, planting, and maintaining a first garden. That step is to have a lab analysis of your soil. This might sound a bit extreme for just growing a few vegetables in your backyard, but for the price of $45-$150, you will know exactly what substances are missing or excessive in your soil. We can then set you up with a supplier who will give you exactly what you need to spread on your future garden to ensure the best nutritional content, plant health, productivity, drought and disease resistance, and of course optimal flavor! Why waste time and money wondering if it will be worth your efforts? Making sure that the proper minerals are present and available to your plants will give you peace of mind in knowing that if there is a problem, the soil nutrition isn’t the issue. Having your soil minerals balanced before you even begin your garden, will actually help you to reduce the amount of time that you have to spend weeding because your plants will have exactly what they need to grow rapidly and eventually shade out those weeds. Many weeds actually thrive in poor soils which could cause you to spend unnecessary amounts of time pulling weeds. One important thing that we teach our clients is that weeding earlier and more frequently than it seems needed will result in an overall reduction of total hours spent weeding. How does that work? The taller a weed is, the deeper the root is. When a weed has a deeper root, there is more disturbance and damage to your plants when you pull that weed. Then more effort and time will be required for you to keep the garden weed free. Our suggestion is to use a very sharp “collinear hoe” to do most of the weeding. This tool, if used while the weeds are tiny (1/4 inch tall or less), makes the chore much easier in many ways. When the weeds are that small, you can go through the garden with a motion that isn’t much more difficult than sweeping the kitchen floor. If this is done early enough each time, you can wait up to 10 days or more before it is necessary to do this again. If you wait until the weeds are taller, the roots are stronger, and you have to make more aggressive work to chop the weeds down. When weeds are more than an inch tall, they can often recover from your hoeing work and then you are back at the same place in less than a week. Very tiny weeds die easily when hoeing is done early. Then you won’t need to hoe the soil as deeply either which can bring up more weed seeds that you will have to deal with. Hoeing while weeds are tiny actually destroys more weeds than you can see because there are always weeds that are just about to emerge from the soil surface that will be killed by your shallow hoeing. One more way of stretching the amount of time before you have to weed again is to do the hoeing in the middle of a sunny day when the sun is high. If this is done, most of the tiny weeds’ roots will be fried by the several hours of afternoon sun, never to return. Though sometime circumstances dictate differently, the worst time to weed the garden is when the weather is cool, damp, and cloudy because the weeds more or less just get transplanted a few inches and then you have to come right back in a few days.
Wide Rows
One of the most important things to plan for when plotting out your garden is to use a wide row system, which gives you more production per square foot and minimizes your total garden size. A smaller garden means less weeding. You are probably familiar with what many backyard gardeners do when planting a garden. For instance, single rows of carrots with a 2 foot walkway in between each row. This makes for more area to weed out, and a larger than necessary garden. We suggest 2 foot wide walkways and 4-5 foot wide planting beds (four rows of carrots in a 4 foot wide bed) This maximizes your use of space. A 4 foot wide bed can be easily weeded by leaning in from both sides of the row. When the plants get larger and fill in that 4 foot wide row, the plants will shade out most of the weeds under them.
Transplant Timing
As mentioned above, weeds recover easier when you do your hoeing in cool damp weather and die easily when hot and sunny. This information is used in reverse when it comes to transplanting your seedlings, such as tomato and pepper plants, into the garden. Always wait until after 3:00PM or so to move your transplants into the garden when the afternoon sun is a beginning to get lower in the sky (earlier in the day is possible if you are confident that the sky will stay overcast for the remainder of the day). Unless your soil is really wet, it will be necessary to give each plant approximately 2 cups of water immediately when being transplanted because of the roots being disturbed and losing surface contact with the soil. Far too many beginners are discouraged to find their transplants dead the next day when they transplanted in the middle of a hot sunny day.
Diversify
Because every year will vary in what it produces for you, it is important to have a good variety of plants in your vegetable garden. Don’t plant only a couple of your favorites. Some years will be bad for one type of plant or great for another (for example, cool, damp summers are great for broccoli and bad for melons) To ensure that you have enough to get you through to next year, plan to incorporate an extra variety or maybe a new item or two. We advise our clients to estimate their needs for the year and plant approximately 40% more to allow for damages and loss due to insects, plant diseases, and rabbits etc.
Rabbits
Many gardeners that I have met are saddened when the walk out to the garden one morning to find all their peas or lettuce chewed off right down to the dirt. All that work for nothing isn’t a good feeling. No matter where you live, you most likely have rabbits around. If you do not have a proper fence around your garden, you are guaranteed to eventually have some serious rabbit damage. To save yourself the loss of food and headaches, set up your fence the autumn before you plant your first garden. You can use our contact page to inquire of what type of fence your circumstances might dictate.
Mice
Mice may or may not be as big a problem as rabbits, but some years can be worse than others. We suggest choosing some method of at least keeping the rodent population to a minimum. You will never be able to keep all of the mice out of a garden as much as you might try. Mice can do serious damage to carrots, beets, squash, melons, peppers, and strawberries. Whether you use traps, poison, or cats, moderate control is a good insurance policy.
Deer
Even a backyard garden in the city is not immune to the occasional deer. All it takes to cause serious setbacks in your production is one lonely deer in the garden on one night. They can clean you out of your peas, green beans, lettuce, cabbage, grapes, apples, and many more of your vegetables. I have even had one situation where a deer was using it’s hoof to try and break open a watermelon. One way to minimize deer traffic is to keep the garden close to the house. A lot of human activity will help deter their presence. We can also set you up with an inexpensive fence that works well. Having your family dog allowed to roam the area around your garden is a very good idea as well.
Insects
You will have insect damage to what you grow. There is no way around that fact. Even if you use a lot of strong pesticides, there will still be losses. This is just a normal part of gardening. That is why we always factor in for this when planning how much of each plant to raise. There are many great spray Insecticides for Organic Gardening
Diseases
If your soil has been tested you will minimize the need for fungal or bacterial disease control. But for the few plants that might need it (blight on tomatoes etc.) We suggest this product
Grass
As mentioned in the beginning portion of this article, planning a year or so in advance where your garden will go will save you a lot of hard work. One condition that most gardeners will have to face with a first year garden is the grass that is already growing in that area. Whether your future garden is in your backyard or in a field, there is probably a lot of grass growing there that will want to regrow even after it has been tilled up. If you were to try to plant a garden immediately after tilling up an area that was previously sod, you will have to spend an incredible amount of effort hoeing to suppress the regrowth of the grass. Unless you use synthetic herbicides, it is a big time saver to plant what is called a “smother crop” in your future garden to compete with and choke out the grass to make things easier on yourself. We have had success with using buckwheat, clover, sudan grass, and oil seed radish for this purpose.
Water
How much water is enough or too much? This will take some experience on your part to monitor what will be necessary. If you have average garden soil, a good rule of thumb is approximately 1 inch of rainfall or irrigation per week. That amount will usually be enough unless there is really hot weather. You can set out a rain gauge in the garden while your sprinkler is running to avoid guesswork.
Conditions
Some things such as broccoli can handle a lot of water and heavy, sticky, poorly drained, clay soil, while that same amount of water and soil conditions could drown a blueberry bush. Watermelons and strawberries prefer sandy, well drained soil, while things such as cabbage and beets can handle more clay and damp conditions. If your garden is not flat and level, or has varying soil conditions, plan accordingly for each vegetable variety before planting.
The above is definitely not an exhaustive list of needed tasks for a successful garden, but this should give you a good head start on reducing your grocery bill. Please contact us if there is any area that we may be of assistance to you. We are available to come to your location to get you started with a great garden.
Stay tuned for next weeks blog: The $700 Hail Resistant Glass Greenhouse