Dig up a piece of your backyard, put in a raised bed, or just pop them in between existing plants – whichever way your choose, you can be eating home-grown organic vegetables from your garden within weeks.
Some gardening books and TV programs can make growing your own vegetables as complicated as the Kama Sutra makes lovemaking. But growing food to eat is innate in us all.
Just trust your instinct, follow these basic rules with a willingness to learn what your garden has to teach you about itself, and you’ll feel the thrill that happens when you pick your own succulent produce and proudly prepare it for your friends and family.
Four basic steps:
Work out how and where your vegetables will be grown.
1. Prepare the soil.
2. Plant the vegetables
3. Nurture with water, sun, fertilizer and look at them and feel the love
4. Visualise your patch being abundant, and watch them grow to big, juicy, vitamin-packed vegetables saying, ‘eat me’.
If you dig up a piece of your backyard:
Put down some sand if your soil is mostly clay, and make sure you add natural manure like horse or cow manure. Ensure it’s in small pieces, and if it’s in large, hard lumps, make it smaller and crumbly. Add some chicken manure if you can get some, and then a light layer of straw. Then layer some sheets of newspaper with a layer of sand on top. Water it everday to soften and leave it for a couple of weeks to settle in.
Purchase some seedlings that will grow in the growing season that you’re planting. Its best to start in spring to early summer, but in some climates you can grow in autumn and winter.
Alternatively, try planting some seeds in small pots which can take a while to germinate and grow, but they are cheaper than buying seedlings.
Dig the new garden over making sure the soil looks warm, soft and cosy for the new plants.
Plant them in a small hole according to the instructions on the plant, water and fertilise with organic manure if needed.
Water daily in warm weather. You may need to shelter young seedlings from hot sun with some shade cloth over the top.
You’ll be eating organic lettuce, bok choy, herbs, chicory, spinach, and silver beet from your garden within about four weeks. Just pick off the outer leaves and the plant will continue to grow.
You can also plant fruit crops like passion fruit vines, which will grow along a fence or trellis and produce beautiful flowers and fruit.
When the zucchini, squash or pumpkin plants start producing flowers you know that the baby vegetables are on their way, so lightly fertilise them with liquid organic manure that you’ve made by mixing horse or chook manure in a bucket of water. Leave for a couple of weeks, stirring occasionally and then pour around the plant base. Do the same for the leafy vegetables when they are big enough to eat. If you don’t want to make your own, use a commercial organic liquid or solid fertilizer.
Root vegetables like carrots take a bit longer and may be better if the seed is sown straight into the soil. If you do, make sure the soil is sandy, like fine crumbs, cover the seed with an old piece of carpet underlay or a sack, and keep damp. Take off the sack when the seeds start to germinate and water regularly and gently.
Zuccini, squash and pumpkin take about six weeks to start producing but they are abundant.
Keep an eye on them all for bugs or birds that may eat them, and use an organic spray like garlic or onion cooked up in some water, or pick them off if they’re big enough to see. You may have to simply grow enough to share with the birds.
Like a human, if the plants are healthy, they are more resistant to bugs and disease.
No-dig or raised beds:
Just build beds in a square using old railway sleepers or anything to hold the soil. Build the bed as for the dig garden but you’ll need more material.
Plant and care for the vegetables in the same way. This is useful if your garden is too small or the soil’s not suitable for vegetables.
Sharing with other plants:
If you have no space for a separate vegetable garden why not plant your vegetables amongst your other garden plants?
Just dig over the spare ground between plants, ensuring there’s enough sunlight for the vegetables to grow. Plant, feed and water as in the other methods. The vegetables won’t mind growing alongside other plants and may benefit from companion planting. For instance, many plants love growing with marigolds, tomatoes love basil, while spinach and lettuce love stawberries. Check a companion planting guide for more information.
Mixing food and ornamental plants can give your garden an unusual, exotic look. Like the square metre method of gardening which says it’s possible to grow enough to feed a person in 10 square metres of space, or 3×3 paces across, mixing plants means they grow close together reducing the space for weeds to grow.
Experiment and enjoy.
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