How to start a garden

Want a productive hobby this summer when the heat is at its hottest? Sick of paying $3 for a bag of lettuce?

There is nothing tastier that a ruby red tomato fresh off its vine. There is nothing sweeter than a rosy strawberry harvested from its stem. There is nothing more satisfying than growing your own food.

Being an urban farmer is a rewarding pursuit that can save you money and help you stick to a healthier diet.

How to start?

There are three ways to start your garden:

• Grow seedlings in early spring for planting two months later.
• Plant seeds after the threat of frost has passed.
• Buy seedlings from your local greenhouse for late spring planting.

A packet of seeds costs about $1.39 and can render the farmer about 12 seedlings, maybe more. Not all seedlings grown from seeds survive the transition to a plot.

A pack of four or six seedlings from a local nursery can cost about 80 cents. These seedlings tend to be larger and more mature than homegrown seedlings.

Planting seeds in a plot can be the most successful option or not. Gardening is hit and miss sometimes and is mostly dependent on precipitation, sunshine and the health of your soil.

Where to locate your plot?

There are so many considerations to take into account when locating your garden plot.

Does your area have garden critters like bunnies and squirrels? They like to eat most vegetables and fruit plants, so your garden can be destroyed before harvest time.

Do you have an area that can get seven or eight hours of sun each day? A garden doesn’t need sun all day, but it does need at least six hours or your plants won’t be robust.

Land with a south or west exposure gets the most sunlight. If you don’t have much sunny space, consider planting vegetable seedlings in pots that you can position in the sun.

A raised bed garden surrounded by a plastic mesh barrier is the best environment for a vegetable garden, especially if your soil is clay or drains poorly. Using a plastic mesh barrier keeps out the nuisance animals. You can ever drape a plastic mesh over the top to prevent birds from feasting on your plants.

The advantage of a raised bed is you are able to use your own purchased soil full of nutrients conducive to growing food. Soil that includes time releasing nutrients works best.

Most gardens want well draining soil. Plants that sit in puddles with be under-performing or mold will grow.

If you are using your own earth you can change the chemical makeup of your soil by adding peat moss or other composting material.

Go organic?

If you want to grow fruits and vegetables in an organic garden look for organic soil when purchasing your dirt. Or add composting material like rotting leaves and animal waste to your existing soil. A garden needs fertilizer whether it comes from artificially produced nitrates or natural animal manure. Cat and dog manure are not useable as garden fertilizer. The best manure to use as a fertilizer comes from livestock, fish and worms.

What to grow?

Before you plant your seedlings draw a diagram of your space and organize plants according to crop families. Try and group root vegetables like carrots, parsnips and parsley together, while onions, garlic and leeks flourish when they are close. Growing plants in crop families can help avoid blight and pests.

The mistakes beginner farmers make is not realizing vegetable plants can grow very large like zucchini and crowd out other plants like herbs or onions. Many predators do not eat zucchini so it’s best left out of the box and planted in the open.

Tomatoes are also space hogs and work well in containers. Leaf lettuces can grow into tall bush-like plants, while carrots work best if they grow deep into the ground or in a pot with depth.

Watermelon, cantaloupe and cucumbers require a lot of water and won’t succeed without daily watering.

Don’t try and grow a little of everything. Be selective for your first try at a vegetable garden. You can also space out your harvests by staggering your plantings. Harvesting, weeding and fertilizing the plot can be time consuming so make sure you plant what you like to eat.

How to care for your garden?

As your plants grow, you will have to remove weeds that can suck up your soil nutrients and choke out your plants. Do this weekly as the weeds can grow very quickly.

If your region gets a good amount of rain, then you won’t have to supplement too much. But if you live in an arid, dry, hot region you will have to water daily. You will notice when your plants are suffering, the leaves start to droop and look sickly. Consider attaching your home eaves troughs to a water barrel to cut down on water expenses.

If the leaves of your plant turn yellow or brown it could be because the plant needs nutrients. When you buy the seedlings or seeds, also pick up some soil nutrient that you may have to use weekly once your plants start growing. You can get this in a solid or liquid form and is usually called plant food in the stores.

When to harvest your plants?

You don’t have to sow all your plants at once. Space out plantings so that the harvest season lasts longer. Lettuce can be harvested for weeks by removing leaves periodically as other leaves grow in their place. It’s the same process for snow peas, which need an area to climb. Early harvests are replaced with new growth.

If planted in May, tomatoes start turning red in early August and small tomatoes varieties like grape or cherry can mature in July. Your tomato plants might continue producing fruit into fall, but the produce will be destroyed at the first frost. You will have to collect under ripe fruit to avoid ruin, but the produce can continue to develop on a sunny windowsill.

Many root vegetables need 60 to 90 days to mature as do melons. Potatoes can be harvested mid-summer, while beets can mature in early summer. Lettuces can be harvested in early summer and continue to produce until late summer. Zucchini can turn out a bounty crop by mid-summer and continue to flower for the rest of the season. The individual zucchini fruit will keep growing in size until picked.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor

At the end of your gardening season take stock what worked and what didn’t. Take note of what plants got crowded out and which ones refused to flourish. You may have to reorganize your plot next season, introduce new crops and nix old ones. Evaluate your work and take pride in your effort. You’ve joined an exclusive club of urban farmers who have moved to the next level in healthy living.