garden planning: what should i grow, and when?
Ok, so i’m totally new at this whole garden thing in practice, but i’m currently neck-deep in the search for a new house to live in, and my one big condition is that i have to have room in the yard for a garden. This is sorta phase one of the plan: actually get some dirt ;). The next part, which i’m sorta starting now, is figuring out what i should grow.
We’re moving May 1st, so counting a few days to actually dig up an area of grass in the backyard and maybe bring in some extra topsoil, i should be able to plant things in about the 2nd week of May. From what i’ve heard previously, there are some things that need to grow through the whole growing season right up to the fall, and then there are some things that produce early and that can be replaced by later things at the end of the summer to grow through the winter. For instance, i think i need to plant my quinoa right away at the start of may, and it’ll need to grow right up until the frost in the fall, but i can plant beets in august and leave them in the ground over winter. We have quite a mild winter here in vancouver, with the air temperature rarely going below freezing and usually not staying there for long. normal winter weather is 5C and rain.
So my task is to figure out how big the garden might be, and estimate some area so i can figure out what to put there. i’m hoping i can get at least 10ft x 10ft, but i may be able to go bigger if my roommates and i get a whole house to ourselves and no on-site landlords to argue with or share space with. I definitely want to have some quinoa, some squash, and some kind of root vegetable (perhaps sweet potatoes?). oh, and some kale or chard or mustard…something like that. Tomatoes and peppers sound interesting, but also sound more challenging. i think i want easy stuff the first time round.
I guess some things to keep in mind are that this is the first year of this garden, and i don’t know what the soil will be like. I’m inexperienced, but keen. I don’t yet know how sunny the yard will be, but i’ll probably have the whole yard to choose from so i can pick a sunny spot. What i’m really interested in is suggestions on what can be planted earlier and what later, so that i know what to get started on right away and which things will be gone in july or august to leave room for something else. I’d also like a few things like squash and turnips that i can keep over the winter.
The next step after this is some websites or books to check out for gardening skills. Like i sorta know how to compost, but i really have no idea how to work that into a garden. are there any good sites i should read? I’m looking for any and all suggestions i guess. thanks in advance :)
Ride hard, ride free
March 27th, 2008 at 02:19 am
I think you need to get started in the garden before you will know what is realistic to try. I would be surprised if you could dig up a garden in a week, but then again I don’t know what your garden is going to look like. At least partly, consider planning for a fall or 2009 spring planting and spend the time between now and then preparing your garden.
That doesn’t mean you can try planting some things now!
Starting a new garden is a huge amount of work, especially if you are starting with grass. Grass always has a lot of weeds hidden in it that take a long time and a lot of work to get rid of. Digging up grass can always be a problem, because it’s impossible to do without leaving pieces of roots in the ground which will grow into new weeds. If you do try digging up some grass, be sure to try and remove as many roots as possible.
Never use a garden tiller to dig up a lawn for a garden, you will create a weed problem that will take years to solve! A tiller will just grind up all your weeds into small pieces, which will in turn become new weeds.
To properly kill grass it will need to be covered with mulch or plastic for about 6 months, preferably through the winter.
A very popular method for doing this is ‘lasagna gardening’ with a layer of cardboard or newspapers, covered with a mulch of some kind like grass clippings, leaves or wood chips. This will then decompose as it kills the weeds, and with a bit of luck and good timing you may just be able to leave it in place and plant your garden on top of or through it. I often just use plastic, for example ‘landscaping cloth’ that is marked with colored grids, because it’s cheap and easy. This will take some experimenting to get right, so don’t get discouraged too quickly.
Like you said, you may need to amend the soil with something if it is in very bad shape, but don’t necessarily give this a high priority. There isn’t much you can add to quickly improve the soil quality, mostly it’s something you have to do over time. Soil amendments are sometimes very expensive, and often not necessary. You also don’t want to upset the natural balances in your garden by adding a lot of foreign material to it too quickly. Maybe you can look into getting a soil test done, this can help you figure out what’s necessary to add.
As an alternative to amending the soil consider planting something that fixes nitrogen like peas or beans.
As far as what to plant, the most important thing is to choose things you want to eat, so the plants you mention are good places to start. Just spend some time researching growing tips and instructions for them.
Sweet potatoes might be a bit of a challenge because they don’t usually do well in northern climates. Be sure to choose a variety that’s known to do well in the north and give it a try.
Quinoa might also be a bit of a challenge. Many gardeners report failures with this. I will be trying it for my second time this year, the first time it just got lost in weeds. There’s no reason you shouldn’t try it too.
As far as websites to check out, I might suggest, um, mine! I made some posts on composting a few years ago:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=25
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=26
A lot of my earlier posts were beginning gardening posts, you might look at this post where I summarized and provided links to some of them:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=101
There are also a lot of blogs focusing on beginning gardening tips, all with a slightly different perspective. The best thing probably is to use Google to search for some, or look in blogrolls on people’s blogs. To get started, you might have a look at this one:
http://www.veggiegardeningtips.com/
The gardening world is full of contradictions and individual opinions, and the best thing is to read about something in a couple of different places and then come to your own conclusions on the best way to do it in your own garden. Don’t be afraid to experiment!
I have a few gardening books, but I find what’s on the Internet to be much more useful.
March 27th, 2008 at 06:53 am
Dan Jason of Salt Spring Seeds also has a lot of good general gardening information online, and his books are also well written (especially from the political standpoint). I did a review of one of his books here:
http://www.patnsteph.net/weblog/?p=29
Since he is local to you, and you may buy a lot of your seeds from him, he is probably a very good source of information for you.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:03 am
if you need compost, you can get it free from the city of delta during the month of may (you’d need your own vehicle).
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/engsvcs/solidwaste/grownatural/citycompost.htm
March 27th, 2008 at 13:13 pm
ok, sounds like maybe i should plan for trying something in the fall then. If i dig up some grass, put down some cardboard and grass clippings over the dirt for a few months, and build a nice composting setup, then i could be in good shape to do something useful with the ground by september?
March 27th, 2008 at 14:34 pm
Why can’t you rip the sod up, add manure, till the soil and put plants in it immediately? When the grass pops up, just pull it out. I can understand using plastic if you have a big area, but 10′ x 10′ isn’t hard to weed by hand.
As for plants, if you start from seed, then germinate them in some cups and transplant when they’re big enough. Or go buy plants from a garden store. I remember finding basil and others at farmers markets for cheap during the spring in Vancouver.
March 27th, 2008 at 14:53 pm
For squash I would recommend zuccini. They grow like snot and produce like mad. One year I grew so many I understood first hand why recipes for zuccini cake exist.
For root vegetables you might try just plain old potatoes. There’s a neat technique that I think you know about where you stack old tires filled with dirt around the plants as they grow.
March 27th, 2008 at 15:59 pm
i think i might try and combine methods….like do a lasagna compost thing on the bottom with some cardboard and grass clippings, and then apparently the city of vancouver has some excellent compost available, so just get a couple bike-loads of compost from them and stick it on top.
then i construct a home-made spinning compost bin and start collecting vegetable scraps from the neighbours and turning it into dirt within a few weeks.
March 28th, 2008 at 00:57 am
Compost would be a lot better than manure. Manure makes your plants grow fast, but that’s not necessarily healthy for them and can sometimes kill them. Fresh manure can cause a lot of disease problems in your plants. Manure should be properly composted or well aged (2 years or so) before using. If you use factory farm manure you also risk a lot of contamination of your garden, including hormones, antibiotics as well as Ecoli and other microorganisms (which can all survive composting).
Getting compost from the city until you make your own sounds like a great idea! Compost from the city sometimes has trash in it, like bits of plastic, metal or glass, but you can usually just pick these out.
Also, if put down cardboard and mulch you don’t need to dig up the grass first. It might help to cut back long grass first. 6 months without sunlight is enough to kill most plants, which then just rot in place. Covering the ground in May and planting in September might be a little soon, but you can try. If you are not going to leave the ground cover in place and plant through it (which is sometimes possible — sometimes you can just use the end of a shovel to make a trench to plant your seeds in), I suggest pulling it back a week or two before planting so that anything alive under it will start growing again. This makes it easier to find weeds and pull them out before you start planting.
Gardening is really all about learning by trying, and I always like to have lots of things going on in my garden at the same time for just this reason. If you have the space, I suggest trying different things in different places. Since no one else has exactly your climate, plant diseases or gardening preferences, you can’t learn everything by reading books or the Internet, you have to figure out a lot of things yourself.
There is a method for planting potatoes called the ‘Lazy Bed’ method (lazy because the ground has been unused), where you can plant them directly on established grass. If you like potatoes, you might consider doing this. Crop rotation is very important for potatoes, so you shouldn’t put them on more than 1/3 (or 1/4 to be sure) of your garden at a time or you will have to go without planting some years.
When I have a chance, I’ll do a post on my blog about this. I have a few more ideas, and maybe some other people will to. I’ll also hunt down some more information about the things I already said here.
April 6th, 2008 at 14:09 pm
I read this several days ago, have been meaning to post a comment, and something just reminded me to do it! My knowledge is at the more theoretical end of the spectrum in this area (I’ll be giving an academic talk on Kropotkin and radical horticulture this summer), but this site
http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/Resources2.html
has some decent informational resources (or at least links to sites that could lead you to some practical information). The book itself is a bit preachy for my taste, but I imagine could be of interest to beginning gardeners. Best of luck!