Starting a vegetable garden

Gardening is one of those things that is very difficult to write a one size fits all formula for. What works for me, might not work for you because of our different climates, soil and level of experience. But what I hope to do today is to write a general guide to starting a garden and hope it encourages you enough to give it a go and in doing so develop your own skills in this important subject. I also hope to answer some of the questions asked after yesterday's post.

Hanno and I live in the sub-tropics, and although our temperatures in summer are always in the 30s C (86 - 100 F) with high humidity, we experience that only from late November till February. In winter - June - August our general temperature range is 5C (at night) to the mid 20s during the day (41 - 77F). So for six months of the year we have what I would call extreme temperatures and the remaining six months the weather is perfect - low humidity, with temperatures ranging from 15 - 25 (59 - 77F) day and night.

Here is our home - the yellow area is where we have our vegetable garden, the pink is the chook run, blue is the screen Hanno built last week and the light dots are fruit trees and vines. (Clicking on photos will enlarge them.)

Those temperatures allow us to grow food all year round, although what we grow and how we grow changes according to the season. We have one acre of land and our home is about in the centre of it. There is a little one lane, dead end track leading to our place, we have an old abandoned timber mill across the road that we can't see due to a planting of pine trees, there are neighbours on both sides and a permanent creek and remnant rainforest at back. We are at the edge of a pine forest and about 15 kms from the Pacific Ocean. Our creek at the back runs into the ocean.

I have been a vegetable gardener for many years and have grown vegetables and kept chickens for the past 25 years. Over that time we have never deviated from the one true guide to what we grow. We grow what we eat. So I guess my first piece of advice to you if you're just starting out with a garden, is to make a list of the fruits and vegetables you eat regularly, then start cutting that list back. Strike out anything you know you can't grow. For instance, if you're in northern Canada or Scotland and eat pineapples and bananas, strike them off your list because I doubt you'd be able to grow them. And if you could, it would be such a trial it wouldn't be worth it. This is a guide to practical vegetable gardening, not in forcing food to grow against all odds. If you live in sunny and hot northern Australia or Hawaii, you probably won't be able to grow cabbages, cauliflowers or swedes.

Where I live we never grow onions. We have Welsh (green) onions, but never the bulbous red, brown or white onions that both Hanno and I love. We tried them for two years and the harvest of them was so poor, and they took up so much room, we decided that onions where one of the vegetables we would have to always buy. Ditto for garlic. We grew some but much of it rotted in the ground, so now we buy organic garlic from the market.

Do you see where I'm going with this? You'll finally have a list of food you like to eat that you can easily grow, once you have developed your skills and have the time it takes to do it. You will also have some things you can't grow, or will take too much room or effort to make it worthwhile. Remember, vegetable gardening is not something you'll dabble with when you feel like it. Once you've made the commitment to it, you will be working hard on producing your food and that will require time and effort. Don't go down that path unless you will give it the necessary time and effort.

Get yourself a good book on gardening in your climate and read all about the vegetables and fruit you want to grow. If you're in Australia, I recommend Lyn Bagnall's Easy Organic Gardening and Moon Planting. It is, by far, the best book on gardening in Australian conditions that I've read. Plant up everything you want and be guided by your book for the care of your plants. I would recommend you start with seedlings and when you have a bit more experience, start growing from seed and save your own seeds each year. This will cut down on your costs but also give you seeds ideally suited to your climate and soil conditions. Each year your seeds with get better and be more inline with your own conditions. When you have some experience, push the boundaries imposed by your climate and, if there is something you really want to grow, try it and see what happens.

It is commonly held to be true in my region that you plant one crop of potatoes in Autumn to be harvested in early Spring. We did that for a few years, then wondered if we could push our boundaries to another later crop - it worked. Then we tried for an earlier crop as well, that worked too. Now we plant potatoes all year through and generally have good crops that make it well worth our time and effort. You probably know already that home grown tomatoes taste far better than anything you'll get from a supermarket, the same applies to potatoes. They have a much better taste if you grow them in your own backyard and one taste of a new potato, cooked to perfection and dressed with butter, parsley, salt and pepper will convince you, far better than my words can, they are a valuable back yard crop.

But I digress, we are still at the planning stage. You will always have some foods you can't grow, that's just a fact of life. Don't be upset by that, just accept it and get on with what you can grow. Once you have a list of possible contenders, if you're a novice gardener work out what it is you eat the most of, or what is the most expensive to buy, and start with that. Don't take on too much in the first year. I know you'll be excited and optimistic, but this is a new skill, just like sewing and knitting. Start off with a dishcloth or apron, instead of a cable jumper or ball gown. Each year add new things or grow more but in those early stages, be prudent and concentrate on a small but well grown garden.

The best bit of advice I can give you is to improve your soil before you start gardening. Unless you live on an old volcano your soil will be like mine and will need improving. If you plant into virgin soil, your plants will grow but you'll most likely have small crops or small vegetables. Remember too, that the bugs attack stressed plants much more than healthy ones. Gardening takes a lot of time and effort so make sure you maximise the potential of your crop and give your plants every chance. Improve the soil before you start. That may mean that you work on your garden soil for a while before you start. If you have clay soil, you'll improve it by adding compost. If you have sandy soil, you'll improve it by adding compost. (I'll write about compost tomorrow.)

If you have clay soil and are prepared to add compost to it, you'll end up with the best rich soil you can imagine. Clay holds a lot of nutrients but as it's so sticky and dense, the plant roots cannot breathe and they die. Adding compost to clay lightens up the soil, providing air spaces for roots and worms, and it frees up the nutrients already there so they're available for your plants. Clay also holds the water and often plants drown if they're planted into unimproved soil.

Sandy soils are at the other end of the range. They don't hold water or nutrients and you'll have to water much too often if you don't improve the soil by adding compost. Planting in sandy soils will give you grief because your plants will fail to thrive and probably die without fruiting.

If you take the time to improve the soil you will grow plants quite easily. They'll be fed by the nutrients in the soil, they'll benefit from the moisture holding capacity of your soil and not go constantly from dry to wet, or sit with their roots in water that can't drain away. Don't be tempted to buy in garden soil either. Unless you can get a tested organic blend, you'll be importing more trouble in the form of weed seeds that might take you ten years to get rid of. And remember, garden soil and the mix you put in pots, are two different things. Garden soil is the topsoil from the earth. Potting mix is manufactured soil made by combining compost, sand, peat etc that is free draining and won't go hard in a pot when you add water.

I hope by now I've convinced you to improve your soil before you start anything. You should start building your list of foods to grow and look around for good quality seedlings. The first step though is to build some compost, we'll start that tomorrow.

ADDITION: Rosie is unchanged. Hanno will try to get her to the vet today.