Several months ago my husband and I were asked to teach a class on gardening to the Relief Society sisters. I was surprised as I wondered if they'd ever seen our weedy (salt grass is taking over), haphazard garden. There are so many others in the ward that have better gardens than we do. Somehow, though, that RS lesson was sort of hijacked and turned into a ward activity instead--a ward dinner/barn dance/gardening display (which was great fun, by the way).
In the end, I was really glad because it got me hunting for ideas and got me enthused about gardening again--maybe this year I'll get a little more involved.
Since I figured most everyone already knows how to garden, my tactic became more what keeps us from gardening or gardening the way we'd like. We had a little raised bed gardening demo and a display with the following hand out:
OVERCOMING SOME OF OUR CHALLENGES IN GARDENING
There was a study done on people’s nutrition knowledge where
the results were that most people knew how to eat properly—they just didn’t do
it. I think it’s usually the same thing with gardening. We know we have been
asked by our church leaders to raise a garden if we can, and we may even know
how to garden, but somehow, it may not get done. This informational packet is
intended to help us bridge the gap between our knowledge and our actions, at
least a little bit.
Since entire books are written on almost every topic here,
I, of course, cannot fully cover these topics. Hopefully, though, you will see
something that will pique your interest and help you to do a little bit better
in your gardening plans this year.
One of the nice things about gardening is, you can keep it
simple or you can get as complicated as you want. The decision is yours as to
how much time, money, and energy you will put it.
Stop and think what prevents you from gardening or if you do
garden, what are some of the difficulties involved? There are many challenges
that keep us from gardening as we would like. Some of these may include: poor
soil and limited time, energy, desire, mobility, space, sunlight, money, and
knowledge. Which obstacle is yours? And you probably have more than one.
Here are some ideas to help overcome these gardening
challenges: start small, lasagna gardening, water and weed efficiently, composting, start
your own seeds, container gardening, square foot gardening, and raised-bed
gardening.
DON’T EXPECT
PERFECTION: Thinking your garden should look like something that could be
put in a magazine will cause you to spend too much time, energy, and money to
make it look just right--which can be overwhelming and cause you not to start
in the first place. “The Prophet said to plant a garden” but he did not say it
had to win awards for beauty.
We will see the day when we will live on what we produce.
–President Marion G. Romney
FALL HARVEST CHALLENGE:
In the fall, our ward will be having another harvest dinner. Once again, there will be a display table for you to bring your best or worst, biggest or smallest, most beautiful or funniest looking home-grown vegetables. So keep that in mind this summer as you work on your growing skills!
WE LEARN BY DOING. Pick a gardening goal and “Just do it.” J
REMEMBER-When picking a spot for your garden or containers
you will want 6 hours or more of sunlight for that spot-- then make sure to water
your spot consistently.
START SMALL: If you start small, your garden won’t take much of your time and will allow you not to feel overwhelmed. Sometimes we don’t want to garden because it seems too difficult or the tasks involved seem overwhelming.
Try sticking your toe in the pool before you jump in. Things
like container gardening or using square foot gardening (and just making one
square) are projects that are small enough to handle, but will still produce
results.
Vegetables that are considered easier to grow in general:
Broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, green beans*, lettuce*, onions,
peas, peppers, potatoes, radishes, spinach, summer squash* (zucchini), tomatillos, tomatoes*, and herbs like basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, and
rosemary. (* vegetables considered very easy to grow)
Easy to grow in containers:
Carrots, beets, peppers, zucchini, basil, chives, cilantro,
garlic, rosemary, and strawberries.
“LASAGNA” GARDENING
(aka layer gardening or no dig gardening): This will help you with poor soil and save you energy and time; however, if you start now, it will prepare a garden spot for next year and not this year.
This has nothing to do with Italians or growing tomatoes and
herbs, but with making layers so that you can turn a poor spot into a gardening
spot for the next season.
At your chosen spot, you layer various goodies on top of the
current vegetation without digging or preparing the ground, and then you let it
sit all year. Next year you turn it over and plant. The goodie layers are: 1st-newspaper
or cardboard; 2nd-organic “browns” like leaves, peat, pine needles,
shredded newspaper; 3rd-organic “greens” like vegetable scraps and
grass clippings; 4th-more “browns;” 5th-more “greens”
(repeat until garden is 2 feet deep); and the final layer-compost or manure.
For more info see: Lasagna
Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling,
No Weeding, No Kidding! by Patricia Lanza. (635.04 LAN at our local library)
Or go to: http://philadelphiacountymastergardeners.blogspot.com/2012/03/second-saturday-lasagna-gardening.html
WATERING EFFICIENTLY:
This will save you time, energy and perhaps some money.
If you can set up
some kind of watering system, your garden can practically run itself the first
few months with just a little early weeding from you.
Idea #1-If you have a drip hose, put out the hose and turn
on the water. Wherever a puddle forms, plant a plant. It’s as simple as that.
And it gets even simpler if your hose is set up to an automatic timer so your
garden gets watered regularly, even if you aren’t home--no need to hire someone
to come and watch your garden while you are away.
Idea #2-Plant your garden in rows with ditches for
irrigating. With PVC pipe, make a series of Ts on one side that are spaced as
far apart as your rows are with an attachment for a hose. That way, you turn on
the water and leave it for a set time, then turn it off. No running the hose
back and forth between the rows.
WEEDING EFFICIENTLY:
This will save you time and energy.
The idea here is that weeding often and early on in the
season is almost effortless and it will get things under control and lessen the
weeding for later. Carefully weeding with a hoe when you first plant will save
you endless hours and backaches. As soon as the weeds start popping up, take a
hoe and skim the surface of the soil, or take a shovel and cut the plant off at
ground level. If you do that when they are little, they are uprooted or cut off
at the stem with very little effort. After a few weeks, there won’t be hardly
any weeds sprouting. You just have to occasionally check on them and handle any
late comers. A little weeding now saves a lot of weeding later.
And, of course, if you mulch, you keep many weeds from
popping up in the first place. Besides plastic or hay, layers of newspapers are
said to be very effective for this.
COMPOSTING: This
is great for saving money and
improving your poor soil.
This reminds me of making yogurt: milk + a bit of yogurt =
more yogurt. Here organic plant “trash” + dirt = more dirt! Of course it’s just
a little trickier than that, but not by much.
The basic idea is a pile is made of organic plant trash
(grass clippings, leaves, vegetable peelings from the kitchen, ashes from your
fireplace, etc) and some dirt, keep it moist, keep it warm, stir it occasionally
and it will decompose into wonderful, rich dirt. Adding worms can help, but
isn’t necessary. You can get fancy with special bins or just make a pile on the
ground. Compost is perfect for improving the soil in your garden whether it has
too much clay or sand.
For more details, go to http://www.thegardenofoz.org/composting101.asp
START YOUR OWN SEEDS:
This can save you money for
sure—plus it’s thrilling to see.
There are many ways to start your seeds. You can buy little
peat pots or you can go super cheap and put compost or store-bought soil into empty
toilet paper tubes and start your plants there.
You don’t have to buy new seeds every season either. To check
to see if your old seeds are still viable, put about 5 on a paper towel and
keep it damp. After a few days, if any have sprouted, they are good to use. You
might have to use a few more seeds per pot to make sure at least one of them
sprouts, though.
If more than one seed sprouts in one pot, simply snip the
smaller ones at the bottom of the stem—don’t pull them out as you don’t want to
disturb the delicate roots of the seedling you want to grow.
To help keep your seeds good from one season to the next, store
them in an airtight container. If you have one, a vacuum sealer works great for
this.
As your seedlings are growing, make sure they get plenty of
sunlight or they will get spindly.
CONTAINER GARDENING: If you have limited space or sunlight, containers
are great. You can move the pots around to take advantage of moving sunlight,
if needed.
There are all sorts of containers that you can use—buy new
containers or recycle things from around the house. A large plastic garbage can
can be used to grow potatoes. Drill holes in the bottom for drainage. Add about
10” of dirt and plant your potato eyes. As the plants grow, add compost or hay.
At the end of the growing season, your harvest is super easy. And you don’t
actually need a can, you can do this in a heavy-duty trash bag.
A reminder: carrots, beets, peppers, zucchini, basil,
chives, cilantro, garlic, rosemary, and strawberries are easy to grow in
containers. Just about everything can be grown in a container, however, so
don’t let that list limit you. It’s just to get you started.
One of the tricks to successful container gardening is to be
careful that you don’t let you plants get too dried out. They will probably
need to be watered more often than a traditional garden.
A FUN IDEA:
You don’t even need to prepare a true spot. Buy a bag of
soil, lay it on the ground in a sunny spot, cut small areas into the bag, and
plant your plants right into the bagged soil.
SQUARE FOOT GARDENING:
Will save you space and some time.
The idea is to pack more into a smaller area and still reap
plenty of vegetables.
To get started, you make a 4’ x 4’
gardening area and divide it into 16 equal squares (either mentally or run
strings across the area). A trellis can be placed on one side for vertical
plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans). You then plant your seeds more
closely than normal.
Each one foot by one foot square can
be planted with:
16-radishes, carrots, or onions
9-spinach or beets8-pole beans (vertical)
4-swiss chard or lettuce
2-cucumbers (vertical)
1-tomato (vertical), broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, corn, eggplant, or pepper
One of the nice things about gardening this way is you
can make a greenhouse-type cover using PVC pipes and plastic to help keep
things warm in the spring or you can put netting or chicken wire over the PVC
frame to help keep pests out.
For complete details see:
Square Foot
Gardening by Mel Bartholomew (635 BAR at our local library)Or see his website at http://www.squarefootgardening.org
RAISED_BED GARDENING: This is especially good if you have limited mobility and can’t get down (or back up) to garden in the traditional way.
The basic idea is you build a tall box and fill it with dirt
to use for your planting--that way you don’t have to bend over to tend to your
plants.
You can combine this with the square foot gardening and it
is then called cubic foot gardening.
A last word--FERTILIZERS:
You can use compost by putting some in each hole that you
dig to plant your seedlings. If your soil needs a little help, you can
fertilize according to the directions on the package. Do not over-fertilize or
you wind up with a bunch of leaves and not vegetables. Fertilize are before
planting. Tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers (called long-season vegetables) will
need a second application of fertilizer mid-way through the season. Fertilizers
for vegetables should have 3 identical numbers like 10-10-10.
If you want to use manure, make sure it is aged manure or
you will “burn” burn your plants.
Unofficial Vegetable Gardening Guide
Using the planting dates in Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, these are to be taken as
general guidelines:
Last frost date for our area: May 15th
Feb 20 start
broccoli and cabbage seeds indoors
Mar 17 direct
seed peas outside
Mar 27 start
eggplant, lettuce, and pepper seeds indoors Direct seed Swiss chard outside
Apr 3 start tomato seeds indoors
Apr 10 plant
broccoli and cabbage plants outside
Direct
seed spinach outsideApr 17 plant onion sets and lettuce plants
or direct seed lettuce outside
Apr 24 direct seed beets, carrots, and Swiss chard outside
May 1 start
summer squash seeds indoors
May 8 start
cucumber seeds indoorsMay 15 start cantaloupe seeds indoors
Plant tomato plants and summer squash outside
Direct seed summer squash, corn, and beans outside
May 29 plant pepper, eggplant, cucumbers, and
cantaloupe plants outside
Direct seed
cantaloupe and winter squash outside
Vegetable
|
Seed inside
|
Seed outside
|
Seedlings out
|
Broccoli &
Cabbage
|
February 20
|
April 10
|
|
Peas
|
March 15
|
||
Lettuce
|
Mar 27 (Apr 10 then 24…)
|
April 17 (May 1, then 15…)
|
April 17 (May 1, then 15…)
|
Peppers
|
March 27
|
May 29
|
|
Eggplant
|
March 27
|
May 29
|
|
Swiss chard
|
March 27
|
April 24
|
April 24
|
Tomatoes
|
April 3
|
May 15
|
|
Spinach |
April 10 (April 24…)
|
||
Onion sets
|
April 17
|
||
Beets
|
April 24
|
||
Carrots
|
April 24
|
||
Summer squash
|
May 1
|
May 15
|
May 15
|
Cucumbers
|
May 8
|
May 29
|
|
Corn
|
May 15
|
||
Beans
|
May 15
|
||
Cantaloupe
|
May 15 |
May 29
|
May 29
|
Winter squash
|
May 29
|
