Frank Tozer, Author at SmartGardener Blog

Looking for the best way to water your vegetable garden? Climates may differ, but the essentials of how to properly water a garden are the same everywhere. There are four key things to keep in mind to keep your garden thriving all summer long.

The best way to water your vegetable garden

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

Summer has arrived in California with record high temps, and in my garden we have already passed the point where the vegetables can get enough moisture from the soil. Until the rains start again in late October it is up to me to supply enough water to keep them alive. This is the most important summer gardening activity and if it isn’t done properly there really won’t be much of a vegetable garden to bother with.

Your climate may differ from mine, but the essentials of watering are the same everywhere. These are four things to keep in mind to make sure your garden thrives all summer long:

Watch your plants

If you know what to look for it is easy to tell when plants are suffering from lack of water. The first sign is that they lose the sheen on their leaves and start to sag slightly instead of standing rigidly upright. It is important to water immediately when you see this happening, as further stress will slow their growth.

More extreme signs of water stress include curling leaves, floppy growing tips, and dying leaves. All of these are signs the plant is severely distressed and has basically stopped growing, and is struggling to stay alive.

Simple wilting of leaves isn’t always a sign of stress however. Many plants (especially those with large leaves such as squash and cucumber) do it intentionally in hot sunny weather as a means of reducing water loss. They recover quickly when the temperature drops though, whereas water stressed plants recover more slowly. This is why you should check plants for water stress in the cool of early morning or evening and not in the midday heat.

Sunflowers are particularly prone to water stress. Because they wilt before almost anything else, they can be used as a living indicator of when the soil is starting to get dry before your other plants begin to suffer. Simply plant a few sunflowers in your garden bed and when they show signs of wilting, it is time to water the entire bed.

How much to water

The general rule of watering says to give your plants 1″ of water per week in summer and about ½” in spring and fall. An inch of water means ⅔ gallon per square foot, or 66 gallons per 100 square feet, which should be enough water to penetrate 6″ to 12″ into the ground.

Though 1″ per week is a reasonable average to start with, it is only a guideline and will need to be adjusted to account for temperature, humidity, soil type, crop, and other factors.

It is better to look at the plants themselves and the soil they’re growing in to determine if you are watering enough, and then adjust accordingly. After watering, the soil should be evenly moist all the way down.

One of the most common mistakes beginner gardeners make is to water only until the surface of the soil looks wet and then move on. Appearances can be deceiving. While the top of the ground looks wet, an inch or so down the soil may still be completely dry. If your plants are wilting again within 24 hours you didn’t give them enough water.

Time of day to water

In hot weather you should avoid watering in the middle of the day, because any water that lands on the leaves, or that stays on the soil surface, will quickly evaporate and be wasted. It’s best to water either in the morning before the sun it too high, or early enough in the evening so that any wet leaves can dry out before nightfall.

How to apply water

Water should only be applied as fast as it can soak in. If you apply water faster than this it will puddle and the surface structure may break down. Excess water may also run off of the bed and be wasted, taking valuable soil with it.

The method you use to apply the water depends on your garden set up. Whether you choose to set up an irrigation system (soaker hose or drip irrigation), or if you prefer to hand water or use an overhead sprinkler system, it is important to keep in mind the water needs of the different plants in your garden, your climate and soil type, and what you find to work best for you.

Fortunately, all of that information is easy to find in the Crop Care tab in the Plant Guide for each plant in your garden plan. Smart Gardener makes it easy to keep track of each step of planning, growing, and harvesting your own food.

Two more things: compost and mulch!

To help conserve all that precious water you just put into the garden, it’s important make sure your soil is full of water-holding compost, and to cover it with a layer of mulch.

Mulch is an indispensable part of the vegetable garden, with a multitude of benefits. We’ve got tips to help you know how much to add and when to add it.

How to apply mulch to a vegetable garden

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

Benefits of mulching

Mulch is an indispensable part of the vegetable garden. Adding a layer of mulch over your garden soil will pay off in a multitude of ways by:

slowing evaporation of water from the soil
preventing weeds (many weeds need bare soil)
supplying nutrients to the soil (as it breaks down)
protecting the soil from damage by sun and air
reducing disease (by preventing soil splashing on leaves)

If a genetically engineered commercial product did as much, it would be patented, hailed as a miracle of science, promoted in all of the garden magazines and sold for a hefty price. Yet mulch does all of these things and more and costs next to nothing.

Types of mulch

How to apply mulch to a vegetable garden - Image of a child's hands planting a small tomato plant in the soil under a thick layer of straw mulch The best all-around material for mulching your vegetable garden is straw. Straw comes neatly compacted into a convenient (if rather heavy) bale, is clean and easy to use and looks quite attractive on the bed.

Just be sure to avoid the similar-looking hay at all costs! It is full of weed seeds which can turn your soil into a weedy nightmare!

If you don’t have access to straw, you can use grass clippings or chopped tree leaves (run these over with a lawnmower to chop them, or put them in a metal bin and shred them with a string trimmer).

Compost can be used as mulch too, if you have enough of it. You can also buy the hulls of cocoa bean, cottonseed, buckwheat, and other types of silage (and even pine needles in some areas!) for use as mulch, but they can sometimes be more expensive when compared to straw.

When to mulch

If you are growing transplants, you will need to spread a 2- to 3-inch layer of mulch around the newly planted plants (it will settle as you water). Just make sure to keep the mulch about 2 inches away from the stems of your plants. If you are direct sowing seeds, though, you will have to wait until the seeds have germinated and the plants are a few inches high before applying it.

When not to mulch

How to apply mulch to a vegetable garden - Image of small seedlings sprouted in soil and mulch Mulching is probably the most important thing you can do for your garden, except in a couple of important situations. Primarily, I don’t recommend using mulch if you have a problem with slugs in your garden because it provides the perfect hiding places for them.

Additionally, it’s a good idea to skip mulching in the early spring if you want the soil to warm up rapidly, as natural mulch creates an insulation layer, keeping the ground under it cool. Leaving off the mulch will allow the warming rays of the sun to warm the soil.

How often to add mulch

The beauty of using mulch in the garden is that, as a natural material, it will add nutrients to your soil as it breaks down. But because it breaks down, you will have to add more mulch from time to time. Generally I reapply a layer of mulch when I am first starting my planting and that will last through the season.

The good news is that this year’s mulch will be easier to mix into the soil for next year’s garden, giving you a jump start on preparing your garden bed.

Whoever came up with the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch” didn’t know anything about vegetable gardening or saving your own seeds.

Saving Your Own Seeds: Getting Something for Nothing

Frank Tozer
2 Comments

Whoever came up with the phrase “there is no such thing as a free lunch” didn’t know anything about vegetable gardening or saving your own seeds. You very definitely can get a free lunch in the garden. I’m not talking about the obvious free lunch you get when you eat some of the food you have grown, but rather the free seeds your garden can produce for you.

The fact that the garden can actually produce its own seed is an amazing demonstration of how living things are very different from inanimate objects. You don’t even have to do anything to make this happen. Just let nature take its course and one seed can create dozens, hundreds, or even thousands more. When you start saving your own seeds you finish the growing season with far more seed than you started it with.

Why Save Seeds?

seed saving getting something for nothing image of two halves of a tomato showing the seeds, on a background of wood Seed saving sounds fairly esoteric and mentioning it can be a useful way to one-up other gardeners at parties. But in reality it is so simple that the mystique is totally unjustified. Plants are programmed to make reproduction their highest priority. All you have to do is give them the opportunity.

Saving your own seed can save you money because it reduces the need to buy it every year. Of course, for me this advantage is more theoretical than real. I find it impossible to read through a good seed catalog without buying a whole range of new varieties. I still buy lots of seed, but the purchase is now a one-time deal, because if I like it I can save my own.

Self-Pollinated or Cross-Pollinated

The most important aspect of saving seed is maintaining the purity of the variety. To do this you need to know whether a plant can self-pollinate, or must be cross-pollinated from plant.

The difference it an important one. The seed from self-pollinated plants will be the same variety as their parents. Seed from cross-pollinated plants will be a mix of both parents and can potentially be a completely new variety. To maintain the purity of a cross-pollinated variety you need to ensure it is pollinated by another plant of the same variety.

seed saving getting something for nothing image of the inside of a red bell pepper showing the seeds The best plants for saving your own seeds are the self-pollinating fruit producers (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers). For these, all you have to do is scoop out the ripe seed before you eat them.

Beans, peas, and lettuce are also mostly self-pollinating, making them good plants for beginner seed-savers.

The cross-pollinated crops include all of the Brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) as well as squash, cucumbers, melons and corn. Saving seed from these is trickier because they need to receive pollen from another plant of the same variety. If this is from a different variety, say from your neighbor’s garden, then they will lose the special characteristics of the variety. For these plants, you will need to know the specific type of plant you want to save seeds from.

Know Your Plant Type

Once you know a plant is cross-pollinated, then you should make sure you know exactly which plant you are growing. By knowing both the genus and species names, you will know what other plants in your garden (or your neighbor’s garden) can contaminate your seed purity.

Plants from the same species can cross-pollinate each other, even if they’re very different plants. For example, all Brassica oleracea plants can pollinate each other, even though a broccoli appears to be very different from a cabbage. Fortunately, each plant in the Smart Gardener database has the genus and species listed, so it’s very easy to check!

The easiest way to prevent cross-pollination is to have only one species and variety flowering at one time. If that’s not possible, you could also try hand-pollinating to control the parentage of your seeds.

There are methods of isolation that you can employ to protect against cross-pollination from a different variety. Draping netting over the entire plant, or securing bags over the flowers, will prevent pollinators from bringing in rogue pollen.

F1 Hybrid Plants

seed saving getting something for nothing image of pumpkin seeds It’s also important to know whether your plant is a F1 hybrid. Hybrid seeds are popular in large-scale agriculture because they produce reliably similar fruit that mature at the same time, making it easier for machine harvesting.

For homegardeners interested in saving their own seeds, it’s best to avoid F1 hybrid seed because the offspring won’t be the same as the parent. (This may include seeds saved from produce from the grocery store.)

Sharing your seeds

I have been routinely collecting seed for so many years that it has become just another part of vegetable gardening. As a result I now have boxes stuffed with envelopes full of seed. This brings up the problem of what to do with it all, as it only has a limited lifespan. I give some of it away and use some of it to grow sprouts and microgreens.

If you have learned how to keep your varieties pure you can start to trade seed with other gardeners (personally, or through organizations such as the Seed Savers Exchange).

This opens up a whole new avenue of gardening and allows you to participate in preserving the genetic diversity of our food crops, a very important mission. The ultimate in seed saving is actually breeding your own varieties, though I haven’t got to that yet.

Planning a winter vegetable garden is surprisingly easy. Follow these tips to keep growing your own vegetables once the summer crops are done.

Planning a Winter Vegetable Garden

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

As the days grow shorter and the temperatures start to drop, many gardeners move indoors for the winter. But for those of us who live in a mild climate where we can grow late fall and winter crops, we can keep right on growing as long as we pick the right crops, get them in the ground early enough and provide them with the proper protection. Follow these tips to start planning a winter vegetable garden to keep growing once the summer crops are done.

What to Grow

Some cool weather crops are much better suited to growing in fall than in spring. Often by the time it’s warm enough for plants to mature in spring, longer days will cause short-day crops (spinach and oriental cabbage) to bolt. The warm temperatures adversely affect their flavor as well.

But if you plant these crops in late summer, they’ll get a good kickstart in the warmth of a late-summer sun, and then mature more slowly in the shorter, colder days that follow.

Planning a Winter Garden image close up of a broccoli head and green leaves When planning a winter vegetable garden, these tried and true hardy crops are your best bet:

•   Broccoli
•   Brussels Sprouts
•   Cabbage
•   Carrot
•   Cauliflower
•   Chard
• Horseradish
•   Jerusalem Artichoke
•   Kale
•   Leek
•   Mâche
•   Mustard Greens
•   Parsnip
•   Turnips

Even within these crops, it is important to use the right variety at this time of year, as hardiness can vary considerably. Fortunately, for every plant in the Smart Gardener database we’ve included a ‘Growing Conditions’ tag in the plant profile so you can easily see what each plants needs—cold, cool, warm or hot weather. For fall and winter crops, you want to look for plants that can tolerate cold weather.

When to Plant

Fall and mild winter crops commonly take longer to mature because the sun is weaker and the days are shorter. The best way to determine the right time to plant a fall crop is to figure out the number of days it takes for it to reach maturation (adding extra days to allow for slower growth in fall). Determine the day you want them to mature (in areas with frost, this is normally just before the weather turns too cold for good growth). Subtract the number of growing days from the maturation date and you have the sowing date.

It’s a good idea to plant a few successions at this time to make sure you get at least one crop before the frosts and possibly more if the frost is later than expected. If you rarely have frosts, you may be able to continue growing these crops through the winter.

Where to Plant

Beds for winter crops should receive all of the sunlight they can get, so make sure they won’t be shaded. A south-facing slope is the best choice as it gets extra heat from the sun. You can even shape your shape winter beds so they tilt slightly to the south to give them a little extra solar gain.

The beds themselves should be well protected from cold winds. Don’t plant the winter garden in a low-lying area, as it might be a frost pocket and much colder than a more elevated slope.

The soil should also be well drained, as dampness is often as great as enemy of winter plants as cold is (much of the value of cloches and cold frames is due to their protecting plants from moisture).

Let Smart Gardener Help

The easiest way to plan a fall and winter garden is to let Smart Gardener do the work for you. If you already have a spring/summer garden, you can create a copy of your existing layout and select fall/winter, and then select the plants you want to grow.

Based on your frost dates, Smart Gardener will help you find which varieties are best for your climate, and let you know when it’s time to plant them.

Frank Tozer
Comment

One of the major considerations when putting in a new garden is soil texture. The mineral make up of soil is a mixture of different sized particles: sand, silt and clay. Each component plays an important role in the soil’s structure, impacting how well roots can grow and how much water and nutrients are available. The goal is to find a good balance.

Ideally your garden’s soil will contain at least 20% clay. Soil with over 35% clay is considered “clay soil.”

Clay soil hold a lot of water (up to eight times as much as sandy soil) and are slow to dry out. This is an advantage in times of drought, but in wet climates it means they get waterlogged easily. Wet clay soils tend to be cold and slow to warm up in spring. It’s no wonder that many plants don’t over-winter well in clay soils.

Additionally, most plant roots have a hard time penetrating clay soil. The pores are so small and the particles so densely packed that plants will struggle to grow and thrive.

If your garden has clay soil, don’t give up hope. Clay soils can be heavy and difficult to work with, but if you persevere they can be very fertile and productive.

Use the tips below to turn your clay soil into an environment your plants and other beneficial organisms will love.

Timing is everything
Limit cultivation to times when soil is not too dry or wet. If you work with dry clay soil it will be so hard it is almost impossible to dig and may crack into large chunks that crumble to dust. When this dust gets wet it sets rock hard, almost like plaster. It’s usually pretty obvious when it’s too dry to work with, and you may need to add water via irrigation, or wait for a soaking rain to soften the ground.

While working with dry clay soil is difficult, cultivation of wet clay is even worse. Wet clay soil compacts very easily when you put any pressure on it, creating a sticky mass that is also hard to penetrate. One sign your soil is too wet is when you leave shiny footprints where you’ve walked because the water has been squeezed from the soil.

Amending clay soil
Add well-decomposed organic matter like compost to help particles cluster together and form larger aggregates. This will improve drainage and aeration.

You can improve clay soil’s structure by adding a mix of 80% gypsum and 20% dolomitic lime. Use an ounce of this mix per square foot of soil in spring and again in fall. This may be repeated for a second year, while also adding as much organic matter as possible.

Adding calcium may be useful to improve soil structure temporarily, until you can get sufficient organic matter and soil life into the soil. But this only works if the soil is low in calcium.

Be sure to double dig to thoroughly incorporate organic matter and calcium, as well as fertilizer and other minerals your soil may need.

Long-term solutions
Use green manures to improve structure. Growing a green manure crop will protect the soil surface as well as add organic matter when you dig it in at the end of its season.

In autumn, when it’s relatively dry, roughly dig the soil and leave it over the winter for frost to break down the large clumps.

Other suggestions for working with clay soil
Use raised beds to improve aeration and prevent future compaction. Build them high to help them drain and warm up.

Slope the site slightly so the soil can drain more quickly.

Never allow clay soil to get so dry that is cracks. These cracks increase evaporation and make the soil hard to re-wet because water simply drains away down the cracks. If it does dry out, cultivate the soil surface.

Frank Tozer
Comment

You might not think so from the countless words that have been written about it, but vegetable gardening is a pretty simple process. Plants are genetically programmed to grow (even our pampered crop plants) and all you have to do is give them the right things at the right times. You take seed, put it in the soil and it grows. The basic requirements are soil, sunlight, seed, water and motivation. Continue reading “The trick to a successful first garden: start out small”

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

Have you considered growing peas? Looking for something to feed your sweet tooth, straight from the garden? Look no further than the Sugar Snap pea. There’s a reason they’re called “garden candy.”

The Sugar Snap is actually a relative newcomer to the garden (first introduced in 1979), but it is now established as one of the great treats of spring. When my Sugar Snaps start to ripen they become the center of the garden and remain so until all the pods are gone.

The Sugar Snap differs from traditional garden peas (like Green Arrow) in that the whole pod is edible, and differs from the edible podded snow peas (like Mammoth Melting) in that the pod is fat, sweet and delicious.

As the whole pod is edible they produce a significantly bigger harvest and don’t need shelling. The original Sugar Snap variety was so successful it eventually spawned a whole range of snap peas: bush varieties, disease resistant types and some without strings. There are now even yellow, purple and pink tinted types.

The Sugar Snap was hailed as a revolutionary new kind of pea when it appeared, but it wasn’t actually as new as it seemed at the time. It turns out that the Amish have been growing snap peas for a long time and they are so similar that a casual observer probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Should I grow peas?
Peas (along with beans) have a special place in the vegetable garden because they are host to nitrogen fixing bacteria and so can add fertility to the soil as they grow. This won’t happen unless the right type of bacteria is present in the soil though, so if you haven’t grown peas within the last five years you should inoculate the seed with a suitable strain of inoculant.

The real flavor of Snap peas comes through best when they are eaten raw and this is how almost all of ours get eaten. My children will eat them straight from the vine all day long and few pods actually make it as far as the kitchen (their friends have been known to strip a planting of all pods of any significant size). They are also good when very lightly steamed, but don’t cook them for more than a couple of minutes, or they may turn to mush.

Tips on growing great peas
Air Temperature: Peas thrive in cool weather and don’t like heat, with 60-75˚ F being optimal. They are fully hardy and the first planting can be sown directly into the garden in early spring, a month before the last frost date.

Soil Temperature: The soil doesn’t even have to be very warm, as they will germinate (if rather slowly) at temperatures as low as 40˚ F.

Succession Planting: It is a good idea to make several succession plantings about 3 weeks apart, to ensure an abundant supply of pods until the weather gets too warm.

Weeding: The established plants don’t require much care. Weeds can be a problem for the young seedlings, but they soon outgrow and overshadow any weeds.

Watering: They do need regular moisture, but in early spring there is usually plenty in the soil and you rarely need to water.

Getting set up
The original Sugar Snap is a pole variety and must have a tall support structure for good growth (hog wire fence works well). If it isn’t tall enough they will eventually run out of climbing room and flop over (when my dad first grew them in England they went right over the top of his 6 foot high wall and started supplying his neighbor with pods).

It is a good idea to set up your supports before you plant, as it’s easy to damage the fragile seedlings. If you don’t want to deal with such a tall plant there are now bush varieties, such as Sugar Ann.

It is easier to provide support for the plants when they are growing in rows, so they are commonly planted in double offset rows with 3” between the plants and 6” between the rows. If you need more than one double row, then leave 24” between the pairs of rows.

You can also wrap hog wire fence into a cylinder and plant in a circle around it (this looks quite ornamental when fully covered, though not for long).

Established plants grow vigorously and quickly produce a wall of foliage 6 to 8 feet high, which makes an attractive (though temporary) screen.

Pests to watch out for
The biggest obstacle to growing Snap Peas is getting them established. It’s not that they are hard to germinate (this is easy) but rather that birds like to eat the succulent green parts and often pull the emerging seedlings out of the ground. The best way to prevent this is to cover the whole bed with netting.

Mice can sometimes be a problem too, as they sometimes dig and eat the seed before it has even germinated. If they are a problem you might have to start your plants indoors, though they dislike transplanting, so must be grown in individual cell packs (and not kept indoors for too long).

Ready to harvest!
The pods mature quickly after pollination and you need to check and harvest the plants regularly (every day or so). Harvest the pods when they are fat and round and sweet to taste. Don’t harvest too early or they won’t be as good as they can be.

It is important to pick all of the pods as they size up, if you leave some on the vine the seed will mature and production may decline (if this happens save the seed for planting next year). In cool weather, a well managed planting may yield for 6 weeks or more, though if the weather turns hot it may be as short as 2 weeks.

Smart Gardener makes it easy to grow peas, and more! We help you every step of the way from selecting seeds and preparing your garden, to sending you weekly reminders of garden tasks to keep your plants healthy and happy!

Frank Tozer
11 Comments

Image: soil mix with scoop. Photo source: Neslihan Gunaydin, Unsplash

Making your own fertilizer mix has several advantages over buying a pre-packaged mix. That’s why it’s a basic component of Smart Gardener’s approach to organic gardening.

Here’s a couple reasons why we like it so much:

1) Simplicity. It makes the whole question of “Which fertilizer do I use?” much simpler. It reduces the amount of boxes, bags and bottles of lots of different fertilizers you have to buy and store.

2) Less costly. It can save you quite a bit of money (as much as 50%), which you can then use for other gardening purposes.

3) Easy. It doesn’t take much time or effort to mix the various materials together, though it can be a bit dusty and the bulk bags are fairly heavy (they usually weigh 50 lb).

4) More flexibility. You can alter the recipe to better suit individual crops and can avoid materials you don’t like (for ecological, ethical or other reasons).

5) Buying bulk and sharing. If you buy the ingredients in the large bags. it’s great for community or school gardens, as well as sharing with neighbors or friends.

Where to buy
Generally the cheapest place to buy your materials is from a farm supply or feed store (a rule of thumb says that it’s cheaper to use materials sold as animal feed rather than fertilizer). If you don’t have a local feed store or farm supply, then your next option is a garden center. These are set up for home gardeners so everything is in one place and it’s easy to compare materials and prices.

Choosing the ingredients
A complete fertilizer mix will include a source of each of the primary nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as well as the secondary nutrients (calcium, magnesium and sulfur) and trace elements. The materials you choose depends not only on their nutrient content, but whether your priority is cost, organic purity (the cheaper amendments are mostly waste products from commercial agriculture and may contain pesticide residues or GMO’s) or ethical concerns (we won’t use products from industrial livestock raising).

How much to buy
Some ingredients are used in much greater quantities than others, so if you simply buy one sack of each material you will run out of one ingredient before any of the others. The next time you go to buy ingredients, you will only need to buy those that are in short supply.

Mixing
For convenience you can mix all of the ingredients at once and store it in a cool dry place (though it’s probably best not to store the mix for too long). You can also store them separately and mix as needed. We use the white 5 gallon plastic pails with lids.

The recipe uses proportional quantities so you can use any container (whether a gallon pail or a teaspoon) to make as much as you need. I usually put all of the separate ingredients into a wheelbarrow and mix them thoroughly with a shovel (wear a dust mask as some of the finer ingredients are pretty dusty). It’s not a bad idea to do this over a clean hard surface, so you can recover anything you spill. For smaller quantities, a gardening bucket or pail works well.

Storage
I store the prepared mix in a plastic bin, though you could also use the paper sack the amendments came in. Some of these amendments are edible, so if you have rodent problems you will have to store them in a secure metal or plastic container, otherwise they may get eaten (and you may have a rodent explosion). They also need to be kept dry of course, otherwise they will rot.

Standard Mix
This is a mix of various amendments intended to supply all of the nutrients plants may require. It is usually incorporated into the soil prior to planting. The mix consists of:

4 parts cottonseed meal (this is high in nitrogen and relatively inexpensive)

2 parts colloidal phosphate or bone meal (for phosphorus)

2 parts wood ash or 3 parts greensand or granite dust (for potassium)

1 part dolomitic limestone (to balance pH and add calcium and magnesium)

1 part kelp meal (for trace elements)

Mix these together thoroughly. You can do this all at once, or you can store them separately and mix as needed.

Optional extra
2 parts of sifted worm castings (This adds microorganisms and micronutrients). I prefer to store this separately and add shortly before using.

Custom mixes
You don’t have to use the recipe above, you can customize it to better suit the crop you are growing. Conventional wisdom recommends giving additional nitrogen to leaf crops, potassium to root crops and phosphorus to seed or fruit crops, so you could add extra of these as required.

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

Image: close up of blue spade in garden bed. Photo source: Markus Spiske, Unsplash If you’re like me, when the first warm days of spring arrive, you can’t wait to get out into the garden and start planting. It means winter is finally over and the gardening season has begun. You’ve been looking at seed catalogs for months and have plenty of ideas you’re just waiting to try. However, before you plant anything you need to get the soil ready.

Don’t be intimidated
This can be quite a bit of physical work, but luckily it is pretty straightforward and doesn’t take a lot of explanation. It helps to do it methodically though, so I’ll go through the steps here. And, while it may feel overwhelming to considering tackling a large garden space, keep in mind you don’t need to do the bed preparation for your entire garden at one time. You can easily do each bed as you need the space for planting, and leave the rest for another time. Start small to keep it manageable.

When to start
Just because it is a beautiful day doesn’t mean you can just go out into the garden and get to work on the beds. I know it’s tempting, especially after a long, wet winter, but digging very wet soil can damage its structure and cause long-term harm (not to mention being harder to dig).

To determine whether your soil has the right moisture content, you can do a rough check by lightly squeezing a handful of soil into a ball and dropping it from approximately waist height. If it doesn’t break up when it hits the ground it is probably too wet to dig (you have to take into account that a sandy soil breaks up more easily than a clay one).

Another indicator of excessive wetness is when you walk on the soil and leave shiny footprints where water was squeezed from the soil. If your garden tends to stay wet every spring, it helps to use raised beds, as they drain and warm up faster than flat areas.

One very wet spring I was so desperate to get outside and get planting I covered some of my raised beds with plastic sheet to prevent them absorbing any more rain. This actually worked quite well, though such extremes aren’t usually necessary.

Clearing the space
If the soil is dry enough to work, you can start bed preparation by removing all of the surface vegetation. If there are only a few weeds or dead crops, it only takes a few minutes to loosen them with a fork and pull them out. If you have been growing a cover crop over the winter, removing it is a much bigger job. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to skim off the above ground parts with a sharp flat spade and compost them (cut right down at soil level, to sever the top growth but leave the roots in the soil). You could also dig the cover crop into the soil, but it will need a couple of weeks to break down before you can plant into it. This means you will have to prepare beds a couple of weeks before you intend to plant.

Amending the Soil
Now that you have your garden bed cleared, it’s the perfect time to add any soil amendments you need. Typically, I add a couple of inches of compost and some standard fertilizer mix. If you know your soil’s pH balance if off, this is also a good time to add some ground limestone for acidic soil, or some pine sawdust for alkaline soils.

These are simply scattered on to the soil surface and then incorporated into the soil. If the soil is already in good shape, you can simply dig them into the top few inches of soil with a fork. If it isn’t so good then single digging works better. If the soil is very poor or compacted you may have to resort to double digging (usually you only need to do this once though).

Once you have your amendments thoroughly incorporated, all that remains is to break up any large soil clods with a fork and then shape the bed with a rake. It is then ready for sowing or planting and your garden season has officially begun.

Frank Tozer
1 Comment

There are few things more frustrating than preparing, planting and pampering a bed of peas or beans and then discovering that the newly germinated seedlings have all been wiped out by birds.

In most places birds are only a significant problem in spring when they seem to relish the abundant succulent green seedlings, but in my garden quail can be a problem anytime. In winter they go for the Brassicas, in summer they like any succulent greens, and in fall they eat newly sown, or emerging, cover crops. I’ve learned the hard way if I leave a seedbed unprotected I am pretty much wasting my time, as I will be lucky to harvest anything from it.

Tips on how to protect your plants:

Easy: The easiest method to keep birds away is to use scare tactics such as flashing tape, hanging old CDs, scarecrows, and predator balloons. The problem with these is that birds will eventually get used to them and start to ignore them, though they may work long enough for your planting to grow out of its most vulnerable stage.

Functional: The usual solution to serious bird predation is plastic netting. This is awkward to handle and put up (it’s an extra step after planting that you don’t need), and somewhat hazardous to wildlife (I have released several tangled snakes) but in these circumstances it is a necessary evil. I usually support the netting on hoops made from lengths of discarded ½” polyethylene irrigation pipe, weighted down at the edges with wood or soil. It’s not particularly elegant, but its quick and it works.

Extreme: In the most extreme cases you might decide to cage the whole garden (especially if you are also plagued by rabbits, deer, squirrels, or raccoons). The simplest and cheapest way to do this is to put an 8 foot tall chicken wire fence around the garden and make a roof out of plastic bird netting.