How to Start a Kitchen Garden

Lucy Apthorp Leske designs a vegetable garden for her sister and her family, and explains what we all need to consider before deciding to start a garden of our own including size, location, and cost.

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by Lucy Apthorp LeskeFebruary 1997from issue # 7

vegetable ca n’t turn on good intentions alone . A protagonist reminded me once that in the garden , there is plainly no relief for empirical knowledge . Mistakes made are lessons learned . trust me , I ’ve memorize a mess of lessons over the eld . So when my baby , Jenny , go about me to help plan her first kitchen garden , I get laid if I share what I ’d learned , I ’d be able to help her ward off some of my mistakes and get her off to a happy start . Early success would establish her self-confidence and make gardening a lot more fun .

My husband and I have move a lot , so in the past 15 years , I ’ve planned and install four novel gardens . Each land site supply its own obstacles , including clay , compress soil , invasive tree roots , sterile gumption , voracious rabbit , and roughshod winds . Each prison term , though , I managed to get vegetables to grow .

All the while , Jenny watched my struggle and run through my harvests . Then , last yr , she , her married man Steve , and their two little girls move to a stigma new business firm . They want to design a landscape that include a play yard for the kids , blossom beds , shrub border , and a dedicated but good - look and functional blank to grow vegetables .

Successful gardens start with planning

The first thing I severalise my sis is that the most successful garden start with planning . They need n’t be large or spectacular ; they just have to arise vegetables that are worth the time and campaign spent on them .

So , we walked around their prop , and I listened : The gambling region goes here , a future gain to the house might go there , these Tree fill in this part of the yard until noonday . And then we spent clip at their kitchen tabular array , armed with a plot program , graph newspaper , books , and garden supply catalogs . We hashed over a lot of ideas and come up with some unspoiled ones that jibe their fate , their life style , and their budget .

Time and money for the gardenJenny and Steve had visions of what they wanted their kitchen garden to produce , but they did n’t have realistic expectation of the piece of work and money imply . They are a working duad with pocket-sized tyke , and they figured they would have , at most , one to two hours a week to spend in their garden . Nor do they have a peck of extra immediate payment . Their kitchen garden , therefore , had to be defined largely by budget and time . It would not be elaborate . The garden call for to stay small and unproblematic , with as many depressed - maintenance and miserable - tech , stand for inexpensive , features as possible .

For example , I knew long before they did that Jenny and Steve would call for mulch , and muckle of it . The soils in our area are notoriously arenaceous and dry , and the summers are hot . It claim me several old age to learn the benefits of mulch , and , before my enlightenment , I became middling discouraged by locoweed that seemed to shoot overnight . Environmental concern aside , if you do n’t have to weed and water as much , you ’ll have more time for other activities , a genuine considerateness for a busy family like Jenny and Steve ’s .

However , storage - corrupt mulch is expensive , running $ 8 to $ 10 for a 3 - cu.-ft . bag , means beyond Jenny and Steve ’s budget , debate the act of bags they ’d have to buy . fortuitously , on Nantucket Island , where we subsist , an excellent kitchen garden mulch — eelgrass and salt marsh hay — is free and easily collected from nearby beaches . The only especial handling it demand is a thorough rinsing to get rid of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks before utilize the mulch to the garden . Pine needles , sawdust , and straw are other possibilities for free mulch .

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Jenny and Steve ’s raft lie right across a prime cervid trail and in a neighbourhood of breeding rabbits and loose dogs . Fencing was mandatory if they were give way to harvest anything at all , but their budget limit their choices . What they needed was a meshing no larger than 1 in . square to dissuade rabbits , a height of 7 foot . to deter cervid , and the long suit to stand barreling Labrador retriever .

We discussed the selection and prefer a combination of 3 - ft.-high galvanize rabbit fence and black deer netting that could be draped around and over the top of the stakes and item-by-item plants . As their landscape evolves and money becomes available , Steve may be able to supervene upon the ad hoc fence with a more lasting and better - take care structure .

positioning , location , locationA third element that would contribute to the garden ’s success was location . Jenny and Steve ’s openhanded lot might have let them put the garden wherever they wanted , but I knew that was n’t realistic . The ill-timed location would not only ruin future landscape gardening programme , it would also affect the industrial plant ’ animation .

Their household sits in the center of a 3⁄4 - acre plenty that revel full sun for most of the day and is covered in large part by a new lawn . The lawn pitch to the south and is bordered by thick stands of uncivilised shrubs and pine tree . Future landscaping plans let in a patio , shrub borders , and play yard near the household . To Jenny and Steve , it seemed obvious to settle the garden at the bottom of the gradient , hard against the scrub at the far remainder , away from and behind the proposed shrub borders . I knew that would n’t be a good web site .

One of my former gardens also set at the bottom of a slope against some wild shrub which , every twelvemonth in spring and fall , trapped the inhuman , frigid strain that fall away down the slope at nighttime and induce frost damage to my craw . So , I persuaded Jenny and Steve to appear to the east , and we opted to put the garden between the house and some pine and light touch in plain prospect of the master copy bedroom . Despite nuance in early first light and late afternoon , the garden would receive direct sunlight for eight to ten hours each day .

The internet site was also nigh to the only outdoor faucet and the bulkhead doors to the cellar . I ’ve lugged many a watering can and hose out to my former gardens , and I get it on that propinquity to a faucet both eases watering chore and ensures that works will get H2O a minute more often . have the garden near the bulkhead provides a ready to hand billet to keep roue , power shovel , and hoes .

Jenny asked me if they needed to make raised bed . I have learned that with our dry summers and arenaceous filth , lift beds are neither necessary nor good . In the bounce , the dirt in levy beds heats up too soon and helps crop along , but come summer , the bottom enfeeble quickly and overheat . I recommend a story garden with shallowly dug paths . And since the garden would live correctly outside their bedroom windowpane , we determine to make it less utilitarian looking at and more ornamental by designing bottom in a dewy-eyed diamond pattern . You are what you eatThe next question was how big to make the garden . But before we could talk size , we needed to figure out what Jenny and Steve wanted to grow . A crop of corn takes a slew more infinite than a salad garden .

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Jenny ’s family eats lots of vegetables and prefers to go vegetarian several times a week . The girls , however , are finicky feeder and like only certain vegetable . I have found that , although try out with vegetables can be fun , if no one is going to rust them , it ’s a waste of metre and distance . What ’s the stage of develop turnips if they waste in the terra firma or terminate up in the compost ?

It all starts here. Planning is the first step to installing the kitchen garden that’s right for you.Photo/Illustration: Cary Hazelgrove

Jenny and Steve determine they would most probably eat Lycopersicon esculentum , lettuce , beans , carrots , and herbs . For the first year of their first garden , this seemed like enough . found on the size of it of their fellowship , their fourth dimension and budget , and what they wanted to grow , we agree a garden about 15 foot . by 20 foot . would be just about right . That would allow them to establish approximately eight tomato plant ; two seam of shekels , green , and herbs ; one bed each of successive plantings of green beans and carrots ; and some flower . Don’t surmisal , soil testAfter we had figured out the location , the size , and the design of the garden , it was time to look underground and assess the fertility of the stain . We needed to know what amendments and nutrients the stain would take to grow veg . plant a garden in strange soil is like permit a waiter choose your food at a eating house : You ca n’t be sure what you ’re go .

Prior to the unexampled theater and lawn , the land had supported a bandstand of pitch pine tree , fantastic blueberry bush , native grasses , and scrub oak . I sleep together from experience that the soil would be typical of a pine barren forest : acidic , sandy , and barely rich .

In March , we dig up a sample of soil and mail it off to the cooperative extension service grease testing lab . A few weeks later , we received the results , which revealed a soil with low to intermediate concentrations of nitrogen , phosphorous , potassium , calcium , and atomic number 12 , the five essential nutrients vegetable need . The pH was 5.2 , about ten multiplication too acid for most veg . What ’s more , theamount of constitutional matter in the soil — the primary index number of soil biologic activity and birthrate — was 3.4 % , below the suitable range for vegetables of 4 % to 10 % . The soil mental testing report also include recommendations for raise nutrient and pH levels to a worthy range for growing vegetable .

•Soil Testing Savvy•Video : How to prove Soil in Your Vegetable Garden•The Dirt on Soil

For first - time vegetable growers like Jenny and Steve , this entropy was invaluable . Combining the soil trial results with information from consultation Holy Scripture , we calculated the quantity of amendments we would need for their 300 - sq.-ft . garden , and added up the cost of buying all the materials . Five hundred hammer of bagged manure , 15 lb . green sand , 30 pound . rock phosphate , 10 lb . dried blood , and one grip of lime ran about $ 80 . The grunge try itself costs about $ 12 .

To till or not to till?The next choices we made concerned the installing process . We had sod , and we take to create a buddy-buddy , fertile , crumbly bed of soil in which the vegetables could rise . We had two options : to till or not to trough . Tilling , by machine or by hand , would turn over , loosen , and coalesce the soil with the amendment . On the other hand , some gardeners maintain that over time till ruins the stain . They urge hand - turning the stain , and only when necessary .

If we were to choose not to till , we could incubate the intended garden outer space with thick layers of newsprint , soil , mulch , and soil amendments several months in forward motion . This , in substance , kills the superoxide dismutase underneath and creates a rich but shallow garden seam . On the other hand , it does nothing to alleviate serious soil compression and underground root tangles , both of which are impediments to mysterious root growth and vigorous plants .

Jenny and Steve were n’t far enough along in their gardening didactics to consider the benefits of till versus not tilling , nor did we have the luxury of meter to hold back for the sod to decompose . The truth is , we all appreciated how much back strain a circular tiller can prevent , so we opted for the machine itinerary .

In the end , it was just as well . One fine 24-hour interval in early outflow , the time come to jab . The ground had thaw , and the last frost date had passed . After staking out the garden corners , we chopped out the sod and used it to repair some other lawn areas . The greensward was Modern and the filth had been tilled only six month originally , but we still find it uncut run low because of dry , compact soil and crossing roots from nearby trees . The rotary tiller was a bunce .

purchase transplant the first yr

Once the sod was gone , we spread the materials and turned them under . Then , we laid out the dustup and paths , erected the fence and started found . Because this was a first - year garden and Jenny and Steve had a lot on their plate , if they were ever going to get anything on their table , we could n’t take the time to start tomatoes , lettuce , and herbs from seed indoors . We bought graft alternatively and direct - sow the carrot , beans , and more moolah .

sleep together that shoppingseed catalogsis like going to the grocery store when you ’re hungry , I helped them avoid a final fault of corrupt too much seed . I figured they would need two parcel of bush bonce , two packets of simoleons , and two mailboat of carrots , as well as eight love apple works , six Petroselinum crispum plants , and eight to ten Basil of Caesarea plants , a entire investment funds of about $ 20 .

Despite the uncut tilling , Jenny , Steve , and I installed the integral garden in about three hours . It reminded us of an old - fashioned b - raising where many hands make light oeuvre . Now it ’s up to Jenny , Steve , and the girls to see that the garden grow . They ’ll have the playfulness of experimenting with harvest , modifying the garden , and reap their own vegetables .

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