High-Yield Vegetable Gardening: Grow More of What You Want in the Space You Have
320
High-Yield Vegetable Gardening: Grow More of What You Want in the Space You Have
320(Spiral Bound)
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612123967 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Storey Books |
| Publication date: | 12/29/2015 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Brad Halm is an experienced CSA farmer and, together with co-author Colin McCrate, founder of The Seattle Urban Farm Company, a business that designs, builds, and maintains edible gardens. The work of Halm and McCrate has won gold and silver awards at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show and has been profiled in a wide range of media outlets, including GQ, Sunset, Newsweek, Outside magazine, Grist.org, Slate.com, and The Daily Candy. They co-authored High-Yield Vegetable Gardening, and teach community classes and urban farming workshops in Seattle.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Making a Site Plan
Before you start digging up your yard, it's a good idea to develop a complete site plan and a detailed strategy for developing your garden. To attain your high-yield goals, it's important to efficiently utilize as much of the yard as possible. Developing a comprehensive site plan will help you meet this goal with a minimum of headaches and backaches.
Creating your site plan can be one of the most creative and fun aspects of the project. It's a way to brainstorm and plan for all the elements you'd ultimately like to see in your garden. This is the time to be open-minded and consider as many variations on the project as possible. Soliciting outside opinions from friends and other gardeners can generate great new ideas and/or confirm your original thoughts.
If you're starting the garden from scratch, creating a detailed map will help you think about your space holistically and place the elements of your garden in the best location possible. If you have an existing garden, this process can help you reorganize or expand your garden and find ways to add new production spaces.
Mapping Your Property
You can draw your site plan any time of year, but the off season is a great time to get started. Knowing that you have a few months of lead time will make you less likely to rush or cut corners, which you might be prone to do when you are eager to get your plants in the ground. If you already have a garden on your property, the best time to create your map is right after the end of a growing season. Putting the pieces together is often easiest when you're cleaning up your summer crops and the past year's successes and failures are fresh in your mind.
Create a Base Map
To create your site plan, start with a base map of the space you'll be working with. Try to make the representation of your property as accurate as possible, so that different areas are drawn in scale to each other.
In order for areas and elements to appear in scale on the map, you'll need to know how large and how far apart they are in your yard. This will require that you take a lot of measurements. Recruit an assistant, if possible, and use a tape measure to find all possible dimensions of the yard. Measure the edges of your property line, the dimensions of your house, the location of any other notable items (such as the driveway or walkways), existing planting beds, and the placement of hose spigots and dryer vents on the house. Even small, seemingly insignificant details can affect the garden, so try and take note of everything you can. (For example, a dryer vent can blast very warm, drying air outside and coat nearby plants in a film of lint, both of which can result in stress and lower productivity.)
If you're computer savvy, you can use online resources that will make mapping your property much easier. Depending on your location and other variables such as how much tree canopy cover is on your property, you might be able to trace an image of your lot in Google Earth and print the image, or even export it to a computer-drawing program such as SmartDraw, SketchUp, AutoCad, or Inkscape.
You may be able to use a few other shortcuts to create your property map. For example, you may have received a map of the property when you purchased your home. If not, in many municipalities you can request a map of your property from the city or town government. If you have an existing map, scan it into the computer or trace it onto a new sheet of paper for use as a starting point for your garden design. Be sure to draw in elements like utility lines, trees, ornamental landscaping, fences, patios, decks, water sources, streets, alleyways, light poles, and known time capsules.
Siting Garden Space
Once you have a good map of your property, it's time to figure out how your garden fits into it. There are four important questions to ask:
* How big will your annual vegetable garden be?
* Will perennial garden spaces be incorporated into the plan?
* Where will garden spaces be located on your property?
* Where will garden-related elements like toolsheds and compost bins be located?
Once you've identified the general areas you're going to use for garden space, you'll choose the exact location of your garden beds and other elements within the space. Because annual garden spaces are much more time and energy intensive than perennial garden spaces, deciding on the size and location of your annual beds should be the first priority. In general, we recommend against mixing annual and perennial crops in a single planting bed.
Determining Size
Annual beds can be created to fit whatever space you have available. As the garden increases in size, you'll have more opportunities to diversify your crop selection, extend your harvest season, and increase the overall volume of food grown on site. Even the most intensively managed garden space has limits to how much food it can produce, so adding square footage will always add productivity. At the same time, adding space means that you'll need to invest additional time and materials to create and manage your garden.
Let's take a look at the three factors that will help you determine how large a garden you might be ready to manage. You should think in terms of space, time, and priorities.
How Much Space Do You Have?
First, look at your property map and think about the amount of space you can devote to your garden. It may be that you're comfortable opening up your entire property to food production, or you may find that you have a few other competing priorities that you must resolve first. Do you need to preserve some play space, for example, or do you want to retain the large screening hedge that shades the side yard? In addition to the spaces that will be used for growing, you'll also need to identify the areas you have available to help support your garden, including spaces for tool storage and composting.
How Much Time Can You Spend?
Your time commitment and availability is something you'll need to honestly assess before developing your garden plan — this may be even more important than deciding how much of your yard you can commit.
If you create an annual garden that is three times larger than you have time to manage, you will have created a weed propagation site that exponentially adds to the work you have to do. If you plant more crops than you can tend, food may go to waste. It's important to remember that creating a highly productive home farm is a lifestyle choice, and that a portion of your free time will be dedicated to caring for it. If you plan to take long summer vacations, for example, you may miss the harvest of some of your crops.
Fall is an especially busy time of year for the production gardener, as many hours are needed to harvest and preserve your amazing food. Fall evenings and weekends are often needed to complete this work. If you're truly interested in high-yield gardening, you'll most likely take pleasure in these tasks, and probably choose to harvest during the growing season and find time for vacations during the off- season.
Creating a highly productive home farm is a lifestyle choice ... a portion of your free time must be dedicated to caring for it.
What Are Your Growing Priorities?
Why are you building a high-yield garden? Do you want to sell tomatoes to the local corner store? Do you want the most diverse range of edible plants possible? It's important to identify your end goals for the project so that you can intelligently lay out the garden and dedicate appropriate amounts of space to each crop.
For example, if you want to grow salad for dinner every night, you will have to determine how much salad your household uses, how many nights per week you eat at home, how long it will take each planting to grow, and how many plantings you'll need to make through the year. This planning process is actually a lot easier than it sounds, and it can be fun to do, as you'll see in the next chapter.
Write down your big-picture priorities as clearly as you can, and use them as a reference during the design process. You will need to keep these goals as your guiding light through the process so that you stay on track and actually get what you want from your project.
Siting Annual Beds for Ideal Production
After determining the size of your annual garden beds, finding the best location for them will most likely be your next priortity. You may want to include lots of other features in your garden, such as tool storage and vegetable washing stations. However, your annual beds will be the most intensively managed and productive space, and will require the most sunlight, so they should be given primary consideration.
You should consider the following few factors when selecting the best spot for your garden beds. Bear in mind that your entire garden doesn't need to be in one spot — it can be dispersed across the space, if that works best on your property.
Full Sun Exposure = Productive Plants
Good sun exposure — a minimum of six hours of direct sunlight per day — should be Rule #1 in the high-yield vegetable gardener's handbook. There is a direct correlation between hours of sunlight and plant productivity, and with few exceptions, more sun is always better. Without adequate light, even a garden with the most amazing soil and meticulous care will produce leggy, stressed crops and minimal harvests. If your yard has many shady areas, reserve them for other uses such as shade- tolerant perennial edibles, mushroom production, tool storage, or a potting area.
Seeking the sun with technology. There are several new technologies that can help you identify sun exposure, and we encourage you to try them out. If you have a smartphone or other mobile device, try an app called Sun Seeker. The paid version of this app allows you to create a 3-D view of your space, including the trajectory of the sun on a given day, and on the winter and summer solstice! There are probably other similar apps on the market, so explore the options and find one that works for you. Technologies such as these will be a quick and invaluable resource when selecting a garden site.
Just look around. Barring the use of such technology, you might have to locate the sunniest spots the old-fashioned way: by looking around. Make note of the sunlight and shadows in your yard at different times of day. You may already know which parts of your property get the most sun, but once you start looking, you may be surprised to find previously overlooked potential garden locations.
Timing the Light
If you have difficulty determining the best spot(s) for your garden, wait for a clear, sunny day and keep an eye on the yard throughout the day. Write down what time a potential garden area starts getting sun and what time it becomes shaded. The sunlight doesn't need to be continuous; a few hours of midday shade is okay, as long as the total sun exposure adds up to at least six hours.
Without adequate sunlight, even a garden with the most amazing soil and meticulous care will produce leggy, stressed crops, and minimal harvests.
Orientation. A sunny area may be on any side of the yard — north, south, east, or west. What's important is the garden space's relationship to your house, nearby trees, fences, neighbor's houses, and other shadow-casting objects. If you want to place a garden to the north of a tall object, assume that the object will cast a shadow equal to its height. For example, if your house has a roof that's 20 feet high, a garden on the north side of it should be at least 20 feet away.
It's also important to think about the light your yard gets in the morning and evening. A space to the east of a large object might be sunny in the morning but completely shaded in the afternoon. Growers in cooler summer climates generally prefer western exposure (plants don't do much growing during cool summer mornings), and growers in hotter summer climates generally prefer eastern exposure (it may be too hot in the afternoon for the plants to do much growing).
Seasonal variation. Depending on your latitude, the amount of sun a space receives can change dramatically from season to season. Unless you live on the equator, the trajectory of the sun changes throughout the year. The arc of the sun is higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Therefore, a location that is shady in December may get plenty of sun in midsummer. If you are analyzing your space in midwinter, keep in mind that deciduous trees will create lots of shade in the summer. During winter, sunlight may be filtering through the exposed branches of trees, so remind yourself that things will look very different in the middle of July, when the tree has fully leafed out (although a spot near a deciduous tree might work well for a shoulder-season fall or spring garden bed).
Identifying Beneficial Microclimates
Every property has a unique set of climatic conditions that contribute to the property's "microclimate." Wind patterns, sun exposure, and the building materials on your property all have significant effects on plant health and productivity. Building materials can have surprisingly large impacts; for example, a concrete driveway will capture and radiate much more heat than a gravel driveway. Similarly, an exposed concrete wall will capture and radiate more heat than a wooden wall.
Keep the following points in mind as you identify microclimates on your site.
* Urban areas are typically warmer than rural areas; as a general rule, the closer to a city you live, the warmer your property will be. Man-made structures tend to absorb heat, so the density of buildings and pavement correlates to a warmer local environment. This is often referred to as the heat-island effect.
* Areas on your property that are adjacent to east-, west-, or south-facing walls often have higher temperatures. The exterior walls of your home, garage, shed, or other outbuildings absorb heat from the sun throughout the day. These walls act as a heat sink, capturing warmth and radiating it back out into the environment when temperatures drop. The heat-sink effect creates higher daytime and nighttime temperatures.
* Ground-level pavement or stonework can also act as a heat sink. Your driveway or patio might be several degrees warmer than a nearby lawn.
* Tall structures and plants can create windbreaks. Wind can cool down crops and dry them out. An area that is relatively protected from prevailing winds may be a better garden location.
* The areas underneath trees and the eaves of buildings may have extremely dry soil.
* Areas at the base of a hill may be cooler than nearby areas. Just as hot air rises, cool air sinks, and cool air pockets can settle at the bottom of a hill. Properties or portions of a property that lie in a valley may experience earlier and later frosts each season than the surrounding areas.
Deep, Rich Soil
In a perfect world, the soil in your yard will be deep, rich, and full of organic matter, primed and ready for vegetable growing. From our experience, this is a very uncommon occurrence. Most likely, you will be spending some time and effort improving the soil on site. (See chapter 5.)
Don't worry too much if the soil in your ideal garden location needs help. If you're concerned about contamination (lead, arsenic, or others), then you should get the soil tested. (See chapter 5 for more information on testing for contaminants.) Contamination issues aside, consider soil improvement to be a standard part of your garden-creating process and an ongoing part of your maintenance practices. In other words, don't rule out a space just because it seems to have poor soil.
Good Access
Determine what path you will be taking to and from the garden, and make sure there are no obstacles in the way of efficient garden work. Not every garden can be placed right outside your back door, but you'll want to make accessing the garden as quick and simple as possible. All those wasted minutes running all the way around the house to grab a tool or packet of seeds add up during the course of a season. And you'll want the opportunity to run out to the garden to grab last-minute vegetables while cooking up dinner. Even small inefficiencies, repeated over and over, can become obstacles to effective garden care.
You'll also want to consider access to water when locating your garden beds. No matter what irrigation system you employ, it is essential that watering the garden not be a hassle or an additional burden on your time. Identify all of your available water lines and determine the easiest routes to bring that water to your garden site.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "High-Yield Vegetable Gardening"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Colin McCrate and Brad Halm.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
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