Landscaping with a Green Thumb: The Vegetable Garden
With produce prices spiraling ever higher, it's a great time to consider planting your own vegetable and herb garden. If you have a sunny spot in your yard, or even just a sunny deck, you can grow your own organic produce, and always have fresh ingredients on hand for your family dinners.
Creating the Beds
You can grow an amazing variety of things in a relatively small space, with a bit of planning. Intensive planting in raised beds can be highly productive and requires less work than a large, tilled garden. That's because plants grown close together will require less weeding, and watering is simpler, as well.
There are many kits available for raised beds, but you can easily make your own with just a few tools. A good size for each bed is 6'L x 4'W x 10"H. Natural cedar is rot-resistant, and boards made from recycled plastic will last even longer. Do not use pressure-treated wood, creosote-treated wood, or landscaping ties, because toxic chemicals will leach into your soil. You can use cement blocks, though they will raise the soil pH over time.
Choose a level spot that gets sun at least five or six hours per day. For convenience's sake, the closer the beds are to a water source and your kitchen door, the better. Avoid locating your garden near trees and shrubs, whose roots could steal moisture and nutrients from your vegetables.
You should position your rectangular boxes in a north-to-south orientation, for balanced sun exposure. Leave enough room around them for a path—three feet wide is ideal. You will be working mostly from the path, because walking on the raised beds will compact the soil. Use a knee-friendly mulch such as shredded bark on the path, and you won't have to weed or mow it.
Inside each box, lay down a several layers of newspaper to prevent the roots of existing grass and weeds from invading your new soil—the newspaper will break down over time. Then fill each box with good, organic topsoil. Add some well-aged manure and/or compost on top. Allow the soil to settle for a week and add more, if needed. Now it's ready for planting!
If your growing space is limited to a sunny deck, you can grow vegetables and herbs in containers. Containers can be plain or fancy—many people just use galvanized or plastic tubs. You may need to punch several holes in the bottom (or put at least several inches of gravel below the soil) to ensure good drainage. Note that the containers will be heavy once they're filled with soil, so position them where you want them before filling them. It's also a good idea to raise the containers up slightly to allow good air circulation and drainage, and to prevent damage to your deck. Look for products such as pot feet, pot pads, and heavy-duty dollies and stands at your local garden supply center. Self-watering containers—containers that store water and keep soil moist for as long as a week—make growing vegetables nearly effortless.
If you don't have a compost pile already, now is the time to start one. Compost will work magic in your vegetable garden, enabling healthy, productive plants.
Choosing Your Crops
Before you can choose which crops to plant, you need to know your local frost dates, as well as the kinds and varieties of vegetables that grow well in your area. Once you know how soon you can plant and how long your growing season is, think about which vegetables taste best fresh from the garden. Tomatoes, peas, lettuce, young carrots, and green beans are just a few you might want to try. Mature onions, potatoes, and winter squash keep well and are relatively cheap in the supermarket, so you may as well concentrate on growing other, more perishable types of vegetables. Cold-resistant vegetables, such as spinach, lettuce, and many kinds of peas, can be planted early and late in the season, giving you successive crops. Warm-weather crops like tomatoes, melons, and eggplant must wait for consistent temperatures and warmer soil.
Once you've decided what you'd like to grow, draw a small scale model of your raised beds, and decide where the vegetables will go. Remember that intensive gardening calls for interplanting—planting different types of vegetables, herbs, and even flowers in the same bed—which helps to keep insect and disease problems under control. It has long been known that certain plants grow better when planted next to one another (for example, basil and tomatoes); you can easily research "companion planting" for the crops you have in mind. The distance recommended on a seed packet for plants in rows is the distance from the center of one plant to the center of the next. This close spacing is an efficient use of space that shades the soil and leaves less area to weed and mulch. Avoid shading short, sun-loving plants by planting taller plants on the north side of the garden. On the other hand, loose-leaf lettuces and other sun-sensitive plants will appreciate a bit of shade during the hotter months.
If your budget is tight, take the economical approach and start your plants from seeds. You can get a head start on the growing season by planting seeds indoors in flats or peat pellets, if you have enough room and light. The instructions on the seed packets will help you determine how soon to get the seeds going. Plant more seeds than you will need, to adjust for loss. If you're willing to spend some money, buy seedlings from your local nursery or garden center. You can find a wide variety of ready-to-plant vegetable and herb seedlings.
Watering and Fertilizing
As a general rule, a vegetable garden requires about one inch of water per week. Put a small tin can in the soil near your plants to serve as a rain gauge. If rainfall is scant, you will have to water your garden deeply once a week. A thorough watering is much better for the plants than a light daily watering, because it encourages good root development. It's best to water early in the day, to avoid problems with fungal diseases. A light mulch of shredded leaves, pine straw, or grass clippings will help the soil retain moisture.
Rain barrels are an ancient concept that is enjoying a revival in earth-friendly gardens. You can purchase a 50 or 100 gallon rain barrel and direct your gutter downspout into it. One inch of rainfall on a 1,000 square foot roof will produce 500 gallons of water! Plus, all of this free water is untreated—no chlorine, fluoride, or other chemicals—and you are providing relief to your sewer or septic system. Note that your barrel should be childproof and inaccessible to mosquitoes. It must have a spigot at the bottom of the barrel, to which you can connect a hose. It should also have an overflow valve so that excess water can be diverted once the rain barrel is full. You can minimize leaves and debris in the water by placing a screen at the top of your downspout.
The best fertilizers for an organic vegetable garden are well-aged animal manure (from non-meat-eating animals like cows, horses, or chickens), and compost or compost tea. Apply manures early in the season, before planting; use compost as a side dressing and compost tea as a liquid fertilizer throughout the season. Don't use chemical fertilizers—they harm both soil structure and microbiotic life.
Pest Problems
At the first sign of pests, you may be tempted to start spraying some noxious chemical, but there are effective organic sprays for dealing with pests, many of which you can make yourself. You can find recipes for soap spray, salt spray, buttermilk and flour spray, garlic spray, and tobacco spray. You can also purchase organic treatments from a number of online stores and some garden centers. Don't compromise your vegetables and soil with toxins. Remember, those vegetables are destined for your dinner table!
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The Ornamental Garden
The Organic Lawn
Composting
