Well hello friends. You're here to learn some tips on how I grow gardens. Many of you will be accomplished gardeners who read this. But many more will be just starting to learn how to garden and this page is for them.
Before you start with the soil start with your mind. You'll need to read a little bit before you start the garden. In the long run the knowledge gained will save you time and money. The first book I'd recommend is John Jeavons' classic,
"How to Grow More Vegetables" paperback. Clicking on the book will take you to the Amazon.com website where you can buy it for less than the price of a cheap meal. Jeavons explains how to organically improve soil structure and gives you the essentials on raising seeds into plants. He then proceeds to cover spacing in double dug garden beds. What I like about his principles is that they apply equally to preparing beds for ornamental plants. With just a little modification his ideas can apply to large perennial beds and more. The other book I consider essential is the Sunset Garden Book which just got updated and expanded. It contains a comprehensive set of chapters on every aspect of gardening and a huge list of plants for you to consider. Another incredible source of information and camaraderie is the GardenWeb.com website. I highly recommend you pay the $15 to become a member and communicate on a vast range of subjects including the new forum on Accessable Gardening for disabled people, long a interest of mine.
Now another thing I have to add is this. I garden for effect. I am not a purist about organic principles. I use common sense in what is most time-efficient. If I think that Miracle-Gro or Peter's 20-20-20 sprayed over the whole garden
takes me a fraction of the time compared with putting down spoonfuls of organics and scratching them in under a hundred rose bushes, I'll do it. Where possible I will use mulches of all kinds libeally. But on the other hand there is a corn-starch based pre-emergent herbicide that I'll use to prevent weeds taking over a bed of Pansies and save me weeks bent over the bed with a hoe. I hardly ever use poisons in the garden for any purpose. That's why you'll find the Gardens Alive! site/catalog in the links. It has non-toxic alternatives to commonly used ecologically unsound poisons.
You'll find a lot of different ways and containers to start plants.
They all work but I don't have the time to worry over my plant starts every day. The best seed starting system yet developed for the home gardener is the APS system first marketed by Gardener's Supply Company. APS means Accelerated Propagation System. The picture is of the one that I use, the APS-40 which has 40 cells. Just fill it with planter mix, or if you wish to spend a bit more, seed starting mix and put in the seeds and just cover them with the mix. Drench them with a fungicide recommended by your local nursery to prevent "Damping Off", a fungal disease that will kill seedlings overnight. If you wish to follow an organic method you can drench them with strong, room temperature Chamomile tea once a week instead. Oh yes, an by the way, DON'T EVEN consider using "Jiffy Pots"! They are terrible and a major waste of money too. You can read about them by clicking here.
Follow the directions and presto! excellent seedlings. It's just $9.95 each and it pays for itself the first time you use it. It works like this: there's a reservoir base that holds about a half gallon of water. Just mix up your favorite water-soluable fertilizer at half strength to fill it. A "capillary mat" sits up over a styrofoam deck and draws up the fertilized water to the top part, also styrofoam, with holes where the mat contacts the soil mix which then draws it up to the seeds. Then you just put on the clear plastic lid and wait a couple days and the seeds sprout. Once they sprout prop up the lid gradually a little at a time over a couple days and then remove and store it for the next batch. You only have to water these about once a week through a built in hole in the end, they do the rest. Then after about a month just take them into the garden, push them out with your finger through the hole in the bottom of each cell and plant them. It couldn't be easier. I use 10 or more of these at a time for masses of flowers real cheap. 10 APS x 40 seedlings=400 plants. 400 seeds for about $5.00. You'll get about 100 seeds for about a buck, that's a penny a seed. Now consider this: a six pack of an annual costs a buck for six month old seeds. That's about 17 cents each for varieties that often are not the best and are frequently root bound. 400 seedlings x 17cents=$68.00! My APS planters last at least 5 years so you can see what a savings they make.
So now you've got your books to read & you've got your propagation system. Now you are ready to start with SEEDS! Going to a neighborhood nursery for a 6 pack of seedlings is extremely profitable for them and is unbelievably uneconomical for you. Ornamental plants look best, at least for my gardening style, in large groups. The impact is far bigger with a few hundred Pansies than a single row of a dozen. But let's start with a couple "big impact, can't miss" plants for your first
venture into growing seeds: cosmos and tomatoes. Cosmos "Psyche" mix will give you fragrant fabulous bouquets for months. I had gophers dig all throughthe bed of it and not eat any of the roots. Just dead-head once a week and you'll have masses of flowers spring to frost. On the tomato list I'd choose "Brandywine". Huge tomatoes, often over a pound, with the taste that has made them the standard against which all others are measured. You'll find these two seeds commonly on many store seed racks. But if you choose you can find these both in the Park's Seed Catalog. Park's foil packed seeds are the best in business.
All right, so you've read John Jeavons story about double digging beds and enriching the soil. Here's the first thing to remember: DON'T EVER STEP ON THE LOOSENED SOIL AGAIN! A planter bed's soil has a huge volume of air channels and pockets in it. Your seedling's roots will then get plenty of oxygen and the water and nutrients (Jeavons calls them "nutriments") will easily penetrate the soil.
So let's say you REALLY want to garden like Husband Bob does. He makes beds sometimes 6 and even 8 feet across. How does he avoid compacting the soil? Simple, take old half sheets of plywood and lay them on the loose soil and step on them. This distributes your weight and prevents soil compaction.
Water delivery: the most efficient, and from what I've experienced, the best for the plants is drip irrigation. My entire garden is on drip irrigation. The products that I use is the Home Depot store brand equipment. It's a better deal than the ubiquitous Rainbird products which are also very good.
Here's what you'll need: scissors to cut the drip line. That's all.
I like the "leaky" hose made of recycled tires that they sell in big coils. These don't come in a kit by the way though you can get them that way. I use hundreds of feet of the stuff and this is cheaper. Unlike regular drip hose, which you'll also need to buy to get the water to the garden spots, this stuff is porous along its entire length. Using regular drip lines you need to punch a hole and plug in an individual emitter which is a lot more work. Emitters produce a single spot of water. The leaky hose produces a band of wetness along its entire length about 1 foot wide. For dense plantings this makes more sense and is cheaper too.
Always include an in-line filter in the system to remove minerals and particles that would cause clogging. These are easy to clean once a month or so by simply unscrewing the holder, removing the plastic mesh screen and rinsing it and then reinserting it. Another thing that you can do is to periodically flush the lines. This is very simply done. At the end of each leaky hose is an end cap with a screw on cap. Just turn on the water and remove the cap to flush the system. It should work just fine.
Get the compression fittings that you'll need. Draw a garden plan and show it to the helpers in the store and they'll guide you in what to buy. And don't forget an anti-siphon valve. This will prevent any water from the garden backflowing into your domestic water system. You also need to buy a whole bunch of their "Earth Staples" or whatever they call them. These are galvanized wire U-shaped spikes that you use to hold the leaky hose where you want it.
Stretch out the leaky hose and uncoil it by tying one end to your garage door handle and twisting it the opposite of its' coil until it lays out flat. Then bring the end back in big gentle loops and let it rest in the sun to loosen up.
Next you're going to lay the hose on the UNCOMPRESSED SOIL; remember, use the plywood to distribute your weight! Lay the hose out in a flat back and forth design and secure it every few feet as you go with the Earth Staples to hold it in place. You want to lay them out about a foot apart, maybe even a foot and a half. Once you've done this the next step is put in your seedlings. Use the method Jeavons uses: a triangle, diamond, or square grid is usually fine. This will allow dense coverage of the soil in a relatively short time and the biggest display of color.
Then finally save yourself endless work. Apply a pre-emergent herbicide. The non-toxic corn based one is now starting to become available in nurseries but if you can't find it get it from the Garden's Alive! catalog. These stop all the weed seeds from germinating allowing your seedlings to use all the available resources and to grow to their fullest potential.
Ok, muscles achy after a day or two of labors? Now let's get into the next phase. Make them sukkuh's grow & keep them varmints away.
Lots of things use baby plants for food. Birds will land and munch up the leaves, slugs n snails come out at night and in the morning big parts just vanish. Your pet dog decides he needs to roll in the freshly prepared and planted bed. Augh! There are lots of ways to stop these problems. On slugs the new thing is the Iron based poisons such as Sluggo. This stuff not only poisons the slimy thieves but it breaks down into plant fertilizers. AND IT'S NON-TOXIC! The rest of the problems have so many solutions that I'll let you investigate them.
Fertilizer now. I fertilize the soil before I put in a single seedling. I always dig in plenty of manure and at least once a season apply liberal amounts of ground rock powders for the mineral content. I use bagged composed manures because they don't have weed seeds. Another manure that I used at the start of the garden was human sludge. I needed an enormous amount to improve the Diablo Clay here on the mountaintop. The soil was thin, nutrient poor and extremely full of rocks. An area near the house had been treated with a persistent herbicide so I literally had to dig up and throw away that soil and replace it with native soil from other areas which solved the problem of "nothing grows here".
Finally, wait a month before you use any spray over fertilizers. But there is one product I recommend highly to cause incredible growth in your plants. Get Spray-n-Grow and use it as directed. All the amazing claims for this product are true. I also spray my plants regularly with Sea-Rich foliar sprays from Gardens Alive! and also organic pest and fungal control products where and whenever problems occur.
If you have any more questions contact me by e-mail.
