In a short over-the-hedge conversation with my neighbor, she was complaining that our local garden center didn’t have any tomato seedlings left except for three sad looking plants. Imagine that! Here we were talking about tomato plants and vegetable gardens, what varieties we liked best, which ones made the best sauce and which ones produced the most.
It turns out this kind of conversation is taking place across fences and hedges all over the country as more and more people are staying close to home and making vegetable gardens in their backyards. Some people, of course, are seasoned growers, but many are new to this enjoyable task. Besides the fun of watching seeds germinate, grow, flower and produce vegetables and fruits, you have the added benefit of harvesting your own vegetables as you need them and enjoying the fresh taste of a perfectly ripe tomato that can only be had with a backyard garden.
So, here’s some advice to new gardeners about growing your own food successfully — and wouldn’t it be great for this activity to last even after COVID-19 retreats?
As with all efforts to grow things, whether it be trees, flowers or vegetables, the soil is where you start. Healthy soil contains millions of beneficial micro-organisms that help grow plants. If you haven’t been spraying pesticides on your property, you are already way ahead. And if this is the case, growing in raised beds (enclosed in untreated wood frames) or directly in the ground, only requires mixing your own soil with some nutrient rich compost and top soil.
If you have a chemically treated property, maybe this is the year to switch to organic methods. Ask your landscaper to aerate your lawn to provide oxygen and over-seed often. They can also apply compost as a top dressing or spray a liquid called compost tea which contains microbes designed to energize the soil and help everything grow thick and lush. A new garden in a yard that has been treated with pesticides requires just a little more work. You’ll have to buy more bags of topsoil and compost and should plant your vegetables in raised beds.
Next is making your own compost. We have had a compost bin in our yard for decades and it provides our vegetable garden, flower beds, shrubs and lawn with essential nutrients and important microorganisms. Composting is a little like following a recipe. You put carbon-rich brown materials (leaves, dried weeds and dried grass clippings) and nitrogen-rich green materials (vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds and egg shells from the kitchen and recently pulled weeds) into an enclosed space and let nature take over.
Lots of people talk about the ideal ratio of brown to green material, but it is debatable. However, make sure you are not just putting “wet” green materials into the heap as it will take much longer to compost and may smell. I avoid this by gathering up leaves in the fall and putting some of them in a reserve pile near or behind the compost to use during the summer for my “brown” material. I always cover newly deposited green materials with a little brown, even if the brown is a little soil or compost from the bottom of the bin. Think about all those leaves that were placed in black plastic bags and trucked off to the landfill. How we deprive the earth of its natural cycles that were so brilliantly designed by nature!
I think the best compost bins are three sided, with the front open for loading and unloading, made from cement blocks turned on their side, wire fencing, pallets or any other material that contains the contents and lets air in. Turning the materials over once in a while is useful, as is adding a handful of soil or compost accelerator. This website is useful – homecompostingmadeeasy.com.
Now, what to plant? I always go with my favorite vegetables and those I need for my recipes. Field crops like potatoes, pumpkins and the like require lots of space, so I avoid them. I do, however, try to get the most out of my limited space by succession planting, growing vegetables in the same space according to the seasons. I plant early spring crops like radishes, arugula, peas and lots of greens and then after harvesting them in May and June, replant the same space with summer crops, such as tomatoes, beans, onions, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers and squash. In the fall I plant my cool crops again to harvest until the first frost.
A word about tomatoes: there are two types of tomato plants, determinate tomatoes and indeterminate tomatoes. Determinate tomatoes are varieties that grow to a certain height and then stop growing when the fruit sets. Indeterminate tomatoes will just keep growing and producing fruit until the first frost. So, of course, you have to leave much more space for the indeterminate varieties. So much to learn about tomatoes!
Whatever greens are still doing well in November, I transplant into a cold frame for fresh greens all winter long. We keep the cold frame just warm enough by the heat of a single incandescent light bulb on the coldest days and nights.
Finding an experienced gardener in your neighborhood for some tips is always helpful and you may get some plants as well. Seed and plant catalogs are the downfall of the addicted vegetable gardener and their eyes are usually bigger than their garden plots.
