How do I plant a garden?
I hear this all the time. And every time I hear, “I’d love to plant a garden but I can’t” or, “I just don’t know how to plant a garden” it’s hard for me to stay quiet. I know sometimes I take for granted how overwhelming it can feel to try and plant a garden the first time, just remember we were planting gardens long before written words and internet access.
So when a friend of mine here in Rhode Island said she’d love to have a garden I decided to kill two birds with one stone, put in a garden and take enough pictures to help others do it for themselves.
How do I pick a spot for a garden?
First the garden needs to get as much sun as possible, with a minimum of 6 hours. I prefer the garden to run from north to south, just because it allows me to put the tall stuff (corn, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) on the north end and not shade out the short stuff on the south end (spinach, lettuce, cilantro, etc.) In the picture above I’m standing on the south end of the bed and we’d already started to dig the turf out.
Next choose your spot and start getting rid of the grass/turf inside your designated space. I have had good luck with 4’ by 12’ beds, but there is no “right size”, only the size right for you and your garden. 4’ – 5’ is about the widest you can go, since you’re not going to walk in the bed itself, that’s about as wide as you can work without being a contortionist.
In my original beds I spent a gob of money on redwood boards and galvanized brackets to hold everything together perfectly. On my second set of raised beds I used scavenged concrete blocks. On this project I didn’t even bother with sides and still it seemed to work out fine. Gardens are primarily about quality food, followed by return on investment, and finally trying not to upset the neighbors with something from the Beverly Hillbillies.
The grass sod that we scraped off the top is the beginning of the compost pile for my neophyte gardener friend. The grass needs to be removed so that your garden plants won’t be competing with it. If you think about it in advance and put cardboard down for a few weeks, it really does make the project easier. We did not, but we lived to tell the tale regardless. Put every kitchen scrap (save meat), along with coffee grounds, leaves, cut grass and all the shredded paper you can find on your compost pile. Water it from time to time and will give your garden health and fertility. I’ll put up another post on how to build your compost pile.
My soil isn’t healthy enough to grow a garden…
That’s the next thing I hear, “I’d love to grow a garden, but – my soil is crap, it’s too rocky in my back yard” yada yada. My solution to just about every problem you may have? Compost. It really is the elixir of life for the first couple of years of gardening. To still an old Martin Lawrence bit, it’s like ‘Tussin for your garden, whatever the problem is put a little compost on it.
I picked up a cubic yard that at the RI dump for $30. (Yes, I think the state really does just have one landfill…) The quality of the compost for a garden may have been questionable, due to the rubber glove, roofing shingle, and large pieces of wood that we found while moving it. I’ll let you know in a later post it was radioactive or not...
OK, so now we have a spot picked out for the garden, we’ve removed the layer of topsoil that has the grass/grass roots in it. What now? Now my friend, if you do not have a tiller to do this for you, you dig.
Dig! Dig like the wind grandmother!
Beggars can’t be choosers, and since my friend was trying to do this on the smallest budget possible, we dug with the only shovels available for free, as you can see above. The flat nose did a great job on the sod, but as we tried to dig down into the actual ground the lack of a long handle took a toll on my middle aged back… And pride.
We dug down about a foot and put all of that dirt in a pile next to our future bountiful garden. Next since the back yard was inaccessible to my truck we threw the compost from the bed of the truck into a wheel barrow.
This wasn’t your normal size wheel barrow mind you, but one that had escaped from the kid’s section at Benny’s (a local hardware chain in Rhode Island). We spent the next couple of hours moving the compost to the hole and mixing it back in with the soil we had just taken out.
FYI – this is a one-time deal. After the first dig you’ll simply put a couple of inches of compost on your raised bed (4”-8” depending on how much the garden sank at the end of the year. My goal with my raised beds is to only till the soil once.
Note the kiddie wheel barrow
in the background….
When you’re finished recombining the soil and compost your bed should look something like this:
You can see the future compost pile in the
background.
You want to grow the things that you love to each. Not what you’re supposed to eat, or think you should eat, but things you really enjoy eating. Otherwise you’ll be checking for unlocked cars at the mall and slipping in kilos of Zucchinis in the ones you find unlocked…
For this garden we put in cold loving cauliflower, broccoli, Swiss chard, peas, a Mesclun blend, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, rosemary, basil and Thai basil (doesn’t love cold, but it’ll be covered if it gets close to freezing), oregano, and sage,. Later as the weather gets warmer tomatoes, peppers, squash, and a variety of other plants will be added. The how deep to plant guidelines are on the back of each packet of seeds. If you’re unsure how to plant your started plants, generally if you plant level with where the plant is you’ll be fine.
Remember to chart out where each plant was planted. Otherwise in a few weeks you’ll be really confused as to what is a plant you want and what’s not.
We planted the starts in traditional, if cramped rows, and the lettuces in the square foot gardening style. I did my best to cover, scrape up the soil around the garden to create a walking path and beat back the grass growth a bit.
As the garden progresses and the plants get bigger I use two strategies to combat weeds and make the garden as low maintenance as possible. I use the square foot method to ensure my production growth is as thick as possible to choke out undesirable plants, and around plants such as tomatoes and peppers I use recycled newspaper (the regular, not the slick). I place it on top of the bare soil and then put grass clippings on top of the newspaper. This does several things for my beds, it disallows unwanted plants access to sun – and thus less weeding, it decreases how much water I need to use, and it gives my red wigglers and other worms all types of organic material to break down. The one downside I’ve had is it also gives slugs a place to hide out during the day, but nothing a couple of ducks won’t take care of for you! Back to the circle of life! I’ve also used blocks of alfalfa hay that had gone bad with the same affect.
All in all about $80 was spent on seeds, starts, and soil. I’ll post later on lessons learned, ROI, and things that could have made this easier.
I hear this all the time. And every time I hear, “I’d love to plant a garden but I can’t” or, “I just don’t know how to plant a garden” it’s hard for me to stay quiet. I know sometimes I take for granted how overwhelming it can feel to try and plant a garden the first time, just remember we were planting gardens long before written words and internet access.
So when a friend of mine here in Rhode Island said she’d love to have a garden I decided to kill two birds with one stone, put in a garden and take enough pictures to help others do it for themselves.
How do I pick a spot for a garden?
First the garden needs to get as much sun as possible, with a minimum of 6 hours. I prefer the garden to run from north to south, just because it allows me to put the tall stuff (corn, tomatoes, peppers, etc.) on the north end and not shade out the short stuff on the south end (spinach, lettuce, cilantro, etc.) In the picture above I’m standing on the south end of the bed and we’d already started to dig the turf out.
Next choose your spot and start getting rid of the grass/turf inside your designated space. I have had good luck with 4’ by 12’ beds, but there is no “right size”, only the size right for you and your garden. 4’ – 5’ is about the widest you can go, since you’re not going to walk in the bed itself, that’s about as wide as you can work without being a contortionist.
In my original beds I spent a gob of money on redwood boards and galvanized brackets to hold everything together perfectly. On my second set of raised beds I used scavenged concrete blocks. On this project I didn’t even bother with sides and still it seemed to work out fine. Gardens are primarily about quality food, followed by return on investment, and finally trying not to upset the neighbors with something from the Beverly Hillbillies.
The grass sod that we scraped off the top is the beginning of the compost pile for my neophyte gardener friend. The grass needs to be removed so that your garden plants won’t be competing with it. If you think about it in advance and put cardboard down for a few weeks, it really does make the project easier. We did not, but we lived to tell the tale regardless. Put every kitchen scrap (save meat), along with coffee grounds, leaves, cut grass and all the shredded paper you can find on your compost pile. Water it from time to time and will give your garden health and fertility. I’ll put up another post on how to build your compost pile.
My soil isn’t healthy enough to grow a garden…
That’s the next thing I hear, “I’d love to grow a garden, but – my soil is crap, it’s too rocky in my back yard” yada yada. My solution to just about every problem you may have? Compost. It really is the elixir of life for the first couple of years of gardening. To still an old Martin Lawrence bit, it’s like ‘Tussin for your garden, whatever the problem is put a little compost on it.
I picked up a cubic yard that at the RI dump for $30. (Yes, I think the state really does just have one landfill…) The quality of the compost for a garden may have been questionable, due to the rubber glove, roofing shingle, and large pieces of wood that we found while moving it. I’ll let you know in a later post it was radioactive or not...
OK, so now we have a spot picked out for the garden, we’ve removed the layer of topsoil that has the grass/grass roots in it. What now? Now my friend, if you do not have a tiller to do this for you, you dig.
Beggars can’t be choosers, and since my friend was trying to do this on the smallest budget possible, we dug with the only shovels available for free, as you can see above. The flat nose did a great job on the sod, but as we tried to dig down into the actual ground the lack of a long handle took a toll on my middle aged back… And pride.
We dug down about a foot and put all of that dirt in a pile next to our future bountiful garden. Next since the back yard was inaccessible to my truck we threw the compost from the bed of the truck into a wheel barrow.
This wasn’t your normal size wheel barrow mind you, but one that had escaped from the kid’s section at Benny’s (a local hardware chain in Rhode Island). We spent the next couple of hours moving the compost to the hole and mixing it back in with the soil we had just taken out.
FYI – this is a one-time deal. After the first dig you’ll simply put a couple of inches of compost on your raised bed (4”-8” depending on how much the garden sank at the end of the year. My goal with my raised beds is to only till the soil once.
When you’re finished recombining the soil and compost your bed should look something like this:
Finally comes the planting.
You want to grow the things that you love to each. Not what you’re supposed to eat, or think you should eat, but things you really enjoy eating. Otherwise you’ll be checking for unlocked cars at the mall and slipping in kilos of Zucchinis in the ones you find unlocked…
For this garden we put in cold loving cauliflower, broccoli, Swiss chard, peas, a Mesclun blend, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, cabbage, kohlrabi, rosemary, basil and Thai basil (doesn’t love cold, but it’ll be covered if it gets close to freezing), oregano, and sage,. Later as the weather gets warmer tomatoes, peppers, squash, and a variety of other plants will be added. The how deep to plant guidelines are on the back of each packet of seeds. If you’re unsure how to plant your started plants, generally if you plant level with where the plant is you’ll be fine.
Remember to chart out where each plant was planted. Otherwise in a few weeks you’ll be really confused as to what is a plant you want and what’s not.
We planted the starts in traditional, if cramped rows, and the lettuces in the square foot gardening style. I did my best to cover, scrape up the soil around the garden to create a walking path and beat back the grass growth a bit.
As the garden progresses and the plants get bigger I use two strategies to combat weeds and make the garden as low maintenance as possible. I use the square foot method to ensure my production growth is as thick as possible to choke out undesirable plants, and around plants such as tomatoes and peppers I use recycled newspaper (the regular, not the slick). I place it on top of the bare soil and then put grass clippings on top of the newspaper. This does several things for my beds, it disallows unwanted plants access to sun – and thus less weeding, it decreases how much water I need to use, and it gives my red wigglers and other worms all types of organic material to break down. The one downside I’ve had is it also gives slugs a place to hide out during the day, but nothing a couple of ducks won’t take care of for you! Back to the circle of life! I’ve also used blocks of alfalfa hay that had gone bad with the same affect.
The final step is to water in your garden. Be like
Goldilocks here, not too wet, and not too dry. You don’t want puddles or
runoff, but you do want everything to be moist.
All in all about $80 was spent on seeds, starts, and soil. I’ll post later on lessons learned, ROI, and things that could have made this easier.
As always if you have questions or comments post them below!
No comments:
Post a Comment