Gardening 101: Weeding, Fertilizing, & Caging the Garden

I'm a bit behind with this post but we've had a cool and wet spring and if gardening has taught me one thing, it's that Mother Nature will not be hurried along.

Garden maintenance requires weeding. And the vigilant gardener will be rewarded by stronger produce and neat and tidy garden rows. The trick is that the early plants and seeds must have time to sprout such that you can identify that which is a desired plant and that which must be removed.
My regular garden plan is to keep up with the weeds and be sure that plants are thriving and then to spread newspapers between the garden rows. I cover the newspapers with a layer of cedar mulch; typically I put down about an inch of mulch; enough to cover the newspapers and neaten the garden.
This year, we've had a lot of rain. Three times I weeded, with the expectation that I would lay down the mulch within a few days, only to be confronted by more rain. Newspapers and mulch in the rain is not fun and so I'd wait to put out the mulch, only to fall back into needing to weed. I repeated this pattern more often than I care to admit. But last weekend, I finally finished up the mulch job. Now there is plenty of tidy space for the growing pumpkins and squash.
Why mulch and newspapers? First and foremost, it's effective weed control. Controlling weeds means that the plants you want to grow will have more room and resources to thrive. So weeding is critical. Newspapers are organic and printed with soy ink. Soy is good for the soil and so as the newspapers decompose, they nourish the soil. Same with the wood chip mulch that I put down. Prior to decomposition, they'll keep the weed population in check and help to hold water, a handy notion as the summer weather turns up the heat. When the growing season is over, the newspapers and mulch can be turned back into the soil to nourish things over winter. It works for me.

I've also got most of my tomato plants caged up, to provide support for what I hope will be a lush crop of tomatoes. The cages also provide support for the plants when the rain pours down. My advice is that you put up the cages before the plants seem to need them. They cages seems to tower over the plants right now, but that won't last.
I've harvested some radishes and clipped some basil, oregano, and cilantro for cooking. That will tide me over until early next month when the garden will start to supplement my grocery supply. This week, I will plant a second round of carrots and beets, for harvest in late September. And, soon, there will be cut flowers from the zinnias.

Perhaps the best part of the garden at this stage is the daily growth. Most evenings, JT and I take a walk out back and to check out our garden's progress. I love that part of the day, sharing my pride in the growing plants with my growing boy.

Gardening 101: Time to Plant

You've developed a plan, you've prepared the site of your garden, you've planted the early seeds. Now it's time to plant the rest of your garden. For me, that's tomatoes, bell peppers, some herbs, a fava bean plant, the various squash seeds I chose for the year, some cosmos flowers and zinnias. Lots and lots of zinnias.

I usually aim to get my planting completed by early May, once the danger of a frost has passed. This year, I went a bit earlier and planted the rest of my garden on the last weekend of April. We had a spot of unusual warmth with temps north of 90 degrees that weekend and I took it as a sign and planted. The basic layout had already been organized and I can't stress enough the importance of having a layout plan. Don't overcrowd the space. The tiny tomato that measures just an inch right now will grow to be nearly 3 feet tall, with spreading branches. If you want tomatoes, it will want space.

At the garden shop, you should choose healthy-looking plants.....no dead leaves, no suspicious spots, nothing dried out. If the plants look crummy, take your business elsewhere. Be judicious about how much you can plant. You may want 6 types of tomatoes, but if the plants are sold in sets of 6, that's either 36 plants in your garden OR the purposive wasting of plants. So pick a few (or, better yet, go shopping with a fellow gardener and split the plants).

Once you get the plants home, it's time to plant. Seedlings can stay outside for a day or two before you plant, but not much more than that. Keep them well-watered if you're waiting to plant. In terms of the garden plot itself, the soil shouldn't be too wet, but it should be moist. I count my plants and dig all my holes and prepare my furrows before I put anything in the ground; that way I can be sure that there is a place for everything. That's oregano in the picture below.
And here's a close-up of a tomato plant:
I plant mini pumpkins and squash in a separate row located just to the east of my dwarf fruit trees. Here's squash alley:
JT helped put those seeds in the hills (I like to pretend that he will also be willing to eat the produce of his efforts):
A note on mint: plant it in a separate, large pot. Keep it well away from the rest of your garden. Mint grows mighty quickly and will take root in your garden with a vengeance. The smell is lovely and a few mint leaves in some iced tea or lemonade is heavenly, but the stuff will commence to take over your entire garden if you let it. Don't fall victim to its wily ways.

The week after planting, I check to make sure the new plants are getting the water they need (about an inch of rain every 4 days or so....3 days if temps are warmer). I placed an old garden tile around a few of the more vulnerable looking plants but that won't last for too long. Gardens demand survival of the fittest. Next weekend, I will weed and add some organic fertilizer that I picked up at the garden shop. I will also set out tomato cages. I call this the waiting season and I check my garden nearly every day, looking for any sign that a new plant has taken root and started growing.
Though it doesn't look like much right now, it won't be long before I have flowers for my vases and a freshly-picked tomato for my supper.

Gardening 101: Planting the Early Seeds

You've got a list of plants and you've selected a patch for your garden. You've been working to get that patch ready for planting day. But before you can plant, you'll need to invest in some equipment. To turn the soil, in my last post I recommended a potato fork. You will also need a few more tools to get started. Invest in some gardening gloves. You may think that you'd rather get your hands in the dirt, but the dirt-under-the-fingernails look is not as alluring as it might seem. And gloveless hands have a tendency to get scratched and torn up, not to mention exposed to that vine of poison ivy that you just grabbed. Get some gloves.

All of my garden tools came from auctions. I recommend that you be on the lookout for estate sales with garden tools listed. Craig's List is the modern equivalent. A garden supply store is the next option. In addition to the potato fork, you'll need a rake and a shovel. More equipment is always nice, but it isn't necessary to get started.

Collect some weather data for your planting zone. Until the danger of frost has passed, you don't want to set out any plants. But you can plant some frost-hearty seeds. I have radishes, carrots, beets, and onions out right now. To this list you can add potatoes, leeks, scallions, broccoli, and cauliflower. Other early crops may thrive in your climate ---- read up on line or check with the local nursery. In the end, your personal palate and garden space should dictate how much you plant.

Some folks start seedlings inside while the weather is still cold. I don't do that; I've never had much luck with getting enough light in the basement for that process to succeed. But if you'd like to go that route for next year, I'd recommend reading up on the Organic Gardening test garden blog.

Each December, I buy my seeds on-line from Pinetree Nursery. You can buy seeds at the garden store, but you will pay a lot more (and you won't get better seeds for the money). Pinetree is a small Maine-based business and I see from their website that they are over-loaded this year (yeah for them and home gardening!). Those seed packets are your friends; read the instructions on the packet and follow them. If it says to plant the seeds ¼ an inch deep, that's what you should do. Mark the depth you need to plant with your rake:
Then put the seeds down into the row you marked. Below are some beet seeds:
Mark the rows with sticks or garden markers (or my practical, if inelegant, fork with the seed envelope method).
Eventually, right around the time the seed packets have faded and frayed, the plants will come up and you can remove the markers. Some seedlings should be thinned after they've sprouted....if that's the case, the seed envelope instructions will say as much.

In the early spring, your soil should be nice and moist. If it's not, turn on a sprinkler for 30 minutes about 3 hours before you plant. In my climate, until the temps get over 70 on a regular basis, I can let rain water handle the watering chores. But once temps are regularly above 70 degrees, I'll water the garden for 30 minutes every 3 – 4 days. You should start to learn your own climate and be aware of rainfall. A good rule of thumb: check the soil an inch or two down before you water....if it's damp, wait another day before you turn on the sprinkler. Watch the pressure: young plants prefer a gently spray. In the spring, water in the early morning so that the sun's warmth can dry off the plants during the day (you don't want wet plants sitting in wet, cold soil all night long)

And now you wait. It will take a week or two (or more) before you begin to see sprouts from the early plantings. I sketch out a picture of my garden so that I know what I planted and where I planted it (it's easy to forget and when it's time to weed, I don't want to pull up the wrong things, a risk for me because of my vigorous weeding habits). JT and I walk through the garden every few days so that we can check things out. This weekend, we saw a radish sprout:
About 10 days from now, I'll have some tips for putting later spring seeds and actual plants in the ground. That's flowers, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, and peppers.

Gardening 101: Site and Soil Preparation

By now, you've figured out your planting zone and should have a list of the things you'd like to grow. The next step is to find a patch for planting. The size of the patch will be driven by what you intend to plant. In my experience, the patch you plant will grow larger over time and it's okay to start small. The patch must receive direct sun for at least a portion of the day. And it should be in range of your sprinkler in the event that your find yourself with a shortage of rain. Get yourself a rain gauge so that you know how much water is landing on the patch.

As you think about what you want to plant, you can start the business of soil preparation. If your spot has grass, that's got to go. A tiller is the easiest way to make that happen and I recommend that you rent one for a couple of hours. You don't need to buy a tiller (not yet, anyway) but you should go out and get a potato fork. It looks like this:
And it will help you to turn the soil, which you will continue to do after the first tilling. And if you forgo the tiller, you can use the potato fork to turn the soil. It's work, but who doesn't love some sore muscles? Turn the soil in your patch bit by bit. Like this:
Tilling and turning the soil is best accomplished when the soil is wet. In the fall, after the harvest is completed, I'll have some tips for fertilizing the soil over the winter. Just as your garden is a work in progress, so is the patch of soil that you use. It should be nourished and cared for and that's an on-going process.

I use compost and leaves over the winter so that the soil is rich come the spring. If you don't have a composting plan in place, that's okay. Use the soil you have and enrich it in a couple of ways. First, turn it over and mix in some air and get the worms moving. They will help to get air and nitrogen in place. If you have some used coffee grounds, mix those in (and start saving them, by the way). Any old leaves that you have lying around from the fall should be raked on over to the garden. A late spring snow is a poor-man's fertilizer because it is nitrogen-rich. Old-timers call it the onion snow, because it falls after cold-hearty onions have been planted. And you can fudge a bit for your first spring by adding a 10-10-10 fertilizer from the garden shop. Follow the instructions and use it sparingly and just for your first go-round. Organic methods of enriching the soil are better for the earth and better for you. Plus, they are cheaper.

Now get out that list of things you want to plant. With an eye toward the space you've selected, it's time to think about layout. I plant in linear rows with spaces in-between so that I can step into the garden for weeding and harvesting. I am admittedly uncreative in my layout; you'll have to find a plan that works for your needs. You are planting seeds and small plants, but be generous in your space estimates because they will grow (that's the idea, anyway). My garden plot measures 12 x 20. I draw it out in my composition book, so that I have a distinct plan for placement of seeds and plants. It may look a little stark at the outset, but as the plants fill in they will use that space.

Pictured below is my garden as it looks right now.
It's a bit hard to tell, but the first rows are planted with radishes, carrots, and two rows of beets. Onions (that row of green specks) fill in the last row. More than two-thirds of the garden has yet to be planted. I use the seed packs propped in forks to mark my rows (and help me remember what I have planted). The beets are in two rows and you'll see that the first row is marked with stick. The radishes will be an early crop and I've left space for a tomato plant on either end of the rows. Once all the radishes have been harvested, I will plant some marigold flowers for a little natural bug control. But I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, your task is to clear the patch for growing. Never fear: There is a lush green garden shaping up in that soil.

Next up: Planting the early seeds.

Gardening 101: Getting a Plan

With spring comes the garden season. Here in central New Jersey, I've begun weekly forays to my local garden and farm shop. And this year I've noticed that a lot more people are getting gardens together. Whether it's the inspiration of the First Family or the price of fresh produce, I don't know. I like to hope that it's a sense of obligation to the land and the people we feed. That and the desire for beauty would be a very good thing for people and the Earth.

I'm happy to see it. And in the name of helping out new gardeners, I'll have some regular posts about gardening as the spring and summer unfold. I'm no expert and regularly have questions myself. To that end, I will point to some other garden sources to explore. My Dad is the best source I know and I call him weekly with questions . A lot of his advice governs my gardening and will appear in my garden posts. Make friends with a locally owned nursery and tap into the knowledge base there. You should check out the Test Gardener's blog from Organic Gardening, the Organic Gardening web site itself (and get a subscription as well, you won't be sorry) and Mike McGrath's NPR show, You Bet Your Garden (listen to the pod casts if it doesn't air in your NPR listening area).

The very first step when planting a garden is to think about what you expect to get for your troubles. Do you want a few tomatoes for eating? Or are there more vegetables that you'd like to grow? Do you want flowers and, if so, do you want cut flowers or flowers in the yard to admire? Or both?

The questions here seem endless, but they must be considered. And you must be guided by what's realistic. Figure out what growing zone you live in (I am in 6b) and do some research: will the things you want to grow flourish in your zone? I long to have a magnolia tree like the ones I admired when I lived in Tennessee, but they don't prosper in this part of the country. Instead I have some rhododendrons and a dogwood tree to remind me of the South. Your zone will help you identify what you can grow and when you can plant.

I plant a garden for fresh food and cut flowers. The plants there are annuals. The rest of my yard is for beauty and admiration while JT and I are in the backyard and, typically, perennials form the foundation for that share of the garden. Balance is critical to your efforts. Undertake too much and there is a risk that your garden will become an unwelcome chore. Too little, and you won't have enough produce for bragging rights at the neighborhood potluck.

I have been planting a garden since 1997 and have a pretty good idea how much I can reasonably handle. This year, I will plant at two times. I recently planted some early seeds for cherry belle radishes, some heirloom carrots, sweet globe-shaped beets, and Spanish onions. These plants can handle a little cold and, in the case of the radishes and the carrots, are sweeter if planted earlier.

Later in the spring, when the danger of frost has passed and the soil has warmed a little more, I will plant tomatoes (slicers and Romas for cooking), green peppers, eightball zucchini squash, patty pan squash, a hill or two of cucumbers, basil, rosemary, and oregano. I will grow mint in a separate pot (more on that later). I grow mini pumpkins for JT to admire: Jack-be-Little and Bat Wings. And then there are the flowers. I love zinnias and will plant several varieties (I have seven different types right now....that's probably excessive), some old-fashioned Four O' Clocks, and Cosmos.

Your homework assignment is clear: Figure out your zone. Then make a list of the things you'd like to grow. Later this week in Gardening 101: Site and soil prep.

Update: Missy asked if it was safe to assume that plants at a local garden shop are safe for your growing zone. The answer is yes. A locally-run shop is certainly reliable and Home Depot, Lowes and the like typically offer money-back guarantees on plants they sell. So save your receipts and garden on. Hint: money back guarantees usually won't save you if you failed to water the plant. Or plant using dirt.