”The road to happiness is paved in mulch.”
- Lisa (Ozzie's Garden)
Don’t feel like you need to have a dedicated food garden. You can grow crops anywhere! Container gardens and putting food plants in with your decorative landscaping can still allow you to grow your own food in limited space.
Steel colanders make great in-ground compost units.
Enjoy bug-free time in your garden by making a Mosquito Bucket of Doom. It’s inexpensive, safe for pets and wildlife, and drastically reduces the amount of mosquitos in your yard. Using a no-spray method also protects the pollinators your garden needs. If you can get your neighbors to participate, even better!
Plant flowers in with your crops to attract more pollinators to your space. Some flowers even have beneficial effects as trap crops, like nasturtium.
Go vertical! Using trellises, arches, tomato cages, even your fence can help you maximize your growing space.
- Kim
A poem by Jeff
Mulch woody plants with wood mulch
Mulch leafy plants with leaves
Mulch feeds fungi which is good for woody plants
Leaves feed bacteria which is good for leafy plants
From Rae
Amend the soil with good compost regularly. Natives look meek at first but patience pays off; within a year or two they will take off. Create a space you will love a little bit at a time.
Lisa's List
Sunshine is the biggest factor in the success of your garden. Plan based on exposure (there are apps that can help with that, like Sun Seeker).
The road to happiness is paved in mulch. Bare dirt will only make problems for you. I’ve tested this extensively.
Observe before your squish—you may need some of those bugs, even if they look scary. (If you like lightning bugs, make sure to grow some plants that have big leaves.)
Start small. A well-tended small garden will often yield better harvests than big ones you don’t have time to maintain. You’ll be more likely to notice and correct issues before they can get out of hand.
Seek out dwarf/mini varieties of plants and grow vertically to maximize space. Except for squash—keep that on the ground. The vine borer moth is a real issue in our area, and squash vines left on the ground are more likely to survive because they will root in multiple areas.
If growing from seed, plant 1/3 more than you think you’ll need. If something dies (or gets eaten), you can fill in gaps. If everything lives, you can make garden friends by giving away your extra plants. Win-win.
Feed and water your wildlife to help keep it from eating your garden. Bunnies favor dandelions and hate the taste of garlic. Wildflowers will attract birds that eat the bugs. Leave water out for squirrels to keep them from taking single bites of your tomatoes. Use insect cloth over grow hoops if the fauna needs firmer boundaries.
Crop rotation doesn’t need to be complicated. Just remember:
Root to Fruit to Leaf to Legume Fruit = heavy feeders (depletes soil). Legumes = nitrogen fixers (replenishes soil).Food requires bees. If you have beautiful plants, but no tomatoes, you don’t have enough bees in your area. Support them with a variety of plants that flower throughout the season, avoid the sprays (even mosquito Joes), and leave some leaves undisturbed in the Fall. You will be pleasantly surprised how fast you’ll attract bees and how much more your garden will yield.
Some plants are divas (looking at you, blueberries). Try to limit the number of new-to-you divas you introduce to your garden to one or two each season. That way you will have time to get familiar with the plant and decide if it’s worth the effort.
D'la Résistance
The 70th St. Resistance Garden is a work in progress. Here are a few things we've learned.
Your soil needs nitrogen. Broccoli and cabbage will devour it. Amend your soil with bonemeal or Neptune's Harvest (female owned) organic fertilizer derived from fish. It's a concentrate you mix with water. Measure with your heart.
Use squash vine borer traps and grow your squash on the ground to avoid a squashless garden season. Grow squash varieties that are more resistant to this bug in the Cucurbita moschata family.
It feels wrong, but thin your carrots, beets, and radishes and do not transplant the thinned ones. The transplants will grow wonky or hardly at all. Sow many seeds.
Let thriving crops bolt, dry out, and save the seeds. They are living heirlooms.
Grow with your neighbors. It's more sustainable, more fun, and how communities thrive.
Finally, and most importantly, share the harvest.
”Your first garden season may likely be your hardest. You will effectively be opening a grocery store in a food desert, and the local wildlife will be very excited about it. This will balance out with time, so hang in there."
- Lisa