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Bombproof
Veggies for Beginner Gardeners
Edible Gardens and veggie patches are all the rage, but where on
earth do you start when you’re a complete beginner? Helen
McKerral covers the basics. |
Veggies picked straight from your own garden somehow always
taste better than the same ones bought from the shop; growing
your own food is enormously satisfying and, with prices
continuing to rise, makes economic sense as well. Tending a
veggie patch isn’t brain surgery, nor requires a country acreage
or hours of backbreaking toil. If you understand the underlying
basic principles of productive gardening and start small and
sensibly, you’ll succeed.
Location, location, location!
In all but the hottest and driest areas of Australia, the
sunniest position in your garden is best – preferably 8 hours or
more from early morning until at least mid afternoon (the
reverse – morning shade and afternoon sun, is trickier, as
plants are more prone to scorching in summer). Sunlight
stimulates flowering and fruit development, as plants convert
the energy of sunlight into something you can sink your teeth
into. More sunlight = more energy = more production. Remember
that an area that is sunny in summer may be shaded in winter
when the sun is lower in the sky. Northeasterly aspects are
ideal.
Don’t despair if you have a garden with dappled shade or with
morning sun only. In this case, for best results choose leafy
vegetables rather than those that produce fruit. Yield will be
reduced, but you’ll still be able to harvest a modest crop.
Root competition can also stop veggies in their tracks as nearby
trees suck up all the precious water and fertilizer you’re
pouring onto the beds. Pines, eucalypts and poplars are
notorious but you can grow veggies in containers or lay weed-mat
under the raised bed when you build it to stop tree root access.
It’s also feasible to try winter veggies near deciduous trees as
long as they grow and are harvested while the tree is leafless
and not in active growth itself.
Very sheltered spots with no airflow encourage fungal diseases,
but spots that are too exposed and windy dry out veggies.
Water restrictions have devastated lawns in many towns and
cities. Why not do something useful with the area, and convert
it to vegetables?
Start Small with Raised Beds
If you’ve never built a vegetable bed before, start small: it’s
better to effectively tend a small area (no more than 60sqm and
preferably half that) and succeed, than to start with a huge
area that is difficult to maintain - you’ll need to water,
fertilise, and control insect pests and weeds. As you gain
experience, you can extend the length of the beds, or add more
beside the first.
Raising beds 30cm above the height of the surrounding soil
improves drainage and the deeper profile gives roots more
foraging space. Two raised beds each about 1 – 1.2m wide and ten
metres long (or four beds five metres long), separated by gaps
of about 40-50cm is manageable for even the busiest of
gardeners. Use timbers or old railway sleepers held in place by
short steel stakes to support the sides of the beds. From the
gaps or paths between beds, dig out the topsoil and place onto
the beds on either side. To stop the paths from getting muddy,
“pave” them neatly with biscuits of pea straw (which will rot
down and which can later be added to the beds at the change of
season).
If root competition is likely to be a problem, excavate the beds
to the level of your excavated path, lay weed mat and then put
the soil and retaining timbers back on top.
Soil Preparation.
As well as the soil added from the “paths”, you’ll need to add
plenty – and I mean plenty, at least 1-2 barrowfuls per square
metre - of well-rotted organic matter. I can’t emphasise enough
the importance of this step. Organic matter provides nutrients,
creates a healthy soil ecology and acts as a sponge to hold both
water and air. In heavy soils, it improves drainage and prevents
water logging. If you have no compost heap, access to manure or
to your own composted garden mulch, it’s worth buying a trailer
load from your local garden center. Free compost is available
from some Council recycling depots but beware – you’re likely to
introduce weeds into your garden, and there’s a possibility of
introducing contaminants that may affect food crops. I
personally would not be comfortable eating vegetables grown in a
medium with unknown provenance.
Remember that rather than mulching with the compost, you’ll be
mixing it through the soil, which is why it needs to be
well-rotted, rather than fresh. When unrotted organic matter,
such as fresh sawdust, is dug into the soil, the organisms that
break it down deplete the soil of nitrogen in the process – the
opposite effect to the one you want.
Thoroughly fork through the well-rotted compost (not too deep –
avoid digging into the subsoil) to create a friable, crumbly
growing medium that holds water but also drains freely.
Add gypsum at the recommended rate to roughly cloddy, unimproved
heavy clay and give it a month or two in rainy weather to take
effect. I recently have also begun incorporating a product known
as Hydrocell into my veggie garden area, when planting citrus, as well as
into the medium for my potted fruit trees and have found it to
be highly effective.
You can sculpt the surface of the bed into a slight mound to
shed water if your region is very wet and water logging is
likely to be a problem. Alternatively in dry areas, you can
create a furrow or shallow depression along the centre of the
bed and plant on the shoulder on either side. You’ll be able to
easily hand- or bucket-water into the furrow, where it will soak
down and sideways where the veggies’ roots can reach it easily.
A coarse, open mulch such as pea straw around veggies is
essential.
“No Dig” Gardens are also excellent for veggies (see links below
for detail on this highly effective technique).
The Right Plant at the Right Time
Vegetables are grouped into warm, cool and mid-season crops –
they like to germinate, grow and ripen in hot, cool or mild
conditions. Classic “warm” season crops are tomatoes (plus
eggplants, capsicums, chillies), the cucurbits (cucumber,
zucchini, pumpkin, squash, melons etc), corn, and beans. Cool
season crops include broad beans, broccoli, caulis, peas,
turnips and swedes, and asparagus. Intermediate crops are pretty
much everything else (beetroot, cabbage, celery, spinach and
silverbeet, radish, leek, carrot, onion and beetroot). Often
particular cultivars of mid season crops may be planted at other
times of the year, or the “mid” season extends earlier or later
depending on whether you live in a tropical, temperate or
Mediterranean climate region, and depending on your
microclimate; with a southerly aspect, my garden is “cool”, or
“late” – it takes time for the soil to heat in spring so I delay
planting warm season crops; it’s also slightly cooler in summer
and autumn, so my cool season starts earlier.
When you buy seed, read the back of the pack, which usually has
a map and best sowing times for your region. If buying
seedlings, buy them at a nursery (not hardware store) so there
is someone knowledgeable to tell you whether the seedlings will
actually grow and fruit at this time of year in your location.
Reputable nurseries only stock in-season seedlings, but
occasionally you’ll find cheap imports from out-of-state that
are way too late or early for successful cropping (e.g. in my
cool area, I’m infuriated when I see basil seedlings for sale in
late autumn).
Some vegetables are easier to grow than others. Super-fast and
easy are radish, watercress, lettuce, and silverbeet. Carrots,
cucumbers, garlic, tomatoes and chillies are straightforward if
you provide plenty of sun. Potatoes were traditionally planted
as the first crop in a new area: as the tubers grew and
expanded, they loosened the soil. Try planting them in any
friable area of your garden, not necessarily in the veggie bed,
and see what pops up. Asparagus is drought tolerant and needs a
sunny spot and sandy soil. It’s a perennial that will last for
decades, so give it a permanent bed of its own. If your (old)
compost heap is in a sunny spot, plant a few pumpkins, zucchini
or melons on top.
Some vegetables are more productive than others – that is, they
produce more food per square metre. Tomatoes, beans, carrots and
cucumbers are high-yielding.
Other veggies are great value-for-money. Many herbs are
expensive to buy but easy to grow – rocket, continental parsley,
basil, thyme and chives are great bargains.
Some veggies are more resistant to pests and diseases than
others. Silverbeet, carrots, beetroot, radish and most herbs
shrug off insects and diseases. Start with leafy veggies if you
live in a fruit-fly area.
Some veggies are especially delicious when homegrown. Top of my
list are tomatoes, parsley and peas, but your list will depend
on your palate. It’s worth going the extra distance for a
favourite vegetable.
Watering
Most vegetables don’t need heavy watering, but regular water. If
you let veggies dry out as they’re growing, they can shoot to
seed early, or develop unpalatable bits (such as crown end rot
on tomatoes). Discourage fungal diseases by watering early in
the morning so the sun dries any moisture on the leaves, rather
than in the evening. I prefer furrow irrigation to overhead
watering.
If in doubt as to how much to water, CHECK by lifting the mulch
and digging down a little way with your index finger. For a
higher-tech solution, soil water meters are now available from
some hardware stores, garden centers and irrigation suppliers.
In most conditions, a deep weekly water is preferable to daily
sprinkles, unless you’re germinating seed or have just planted
seedlings. You want the roots to follow the water down deep,
rather than spreading near the surface where the first heat wave
will dry them all to a crisp.
Fertilising
Vegetables need to grow quickly if they are to be juicy and
delicious. Regular feeding with a high-nitrogen liquid
fertilizer for leaf crops, and extra potash (e.g. bloom-booster
fertilizers) for fruit crops will help. Always apply fertilizers
at the recommended rates.
Pest Control
A little control early is better than a lot late. Pull weeds
while they’re small, squash caterpillars and snails, squirt off
aphids as you see them. In a small patch, physical control of
insect pests is the best way to encourage the growth of predator
insect populations – spraying with chemicals, whether they be
“organic” or not, destroys beneficial insects as well as pests.
If pests get beyond physical control methods, and you feel you
must use a pesticide, always go for the least toxic solution,
and ask for advice from your local nursery or garden center.
Fungal diseases generally only cause serious problems in shaded
gardens or those with too little airflow, so prevention through
appropriate siting is the best solution. However, fungal
diseases such as downy or powdery mildews can quickly decimate
crops and this is one situation where I advocate the use of
chemical controls. Vegetables such as peas, zucchini, tomatoes
and cucumbers often succumb to fungal diseases right at the end
of their season as cropping finishes – this is a normal part of
the cycle and you can simply remove the plants rather than
spraying to eke out those last three tomatoes.
Bacterial and viral diseases generally strike plants that are
under stress or growing in less-than-ideal locations. You’re
unlikely to have this problem in new vegetable gardens where
diseases have not yet had an opportunity to become established
in the soil. Always buy healthy seedlings; smokers should wear
gloves when handling tomatoes to prevent the transmission of
tobacco mosaic virus. Never compost diseased plants – put them
in the garbage and carefully clean up any dropped leaves or
fruit. Later, when you grow successive crops, learn about “crop
rotation” to minimise the buildup of pests and diseases in your
garden.
Also, remember that a few holes in leaves don’t matter; that
light infestations of insects can be washed off, and that your
harvest will still taste much better than insipid supermarket
produce!
Where to next?
Excellent resources for gardeners abound. Vegetable Gardening
Bibles for me include Peter Bennett’s “Organic Gardening”, the
Yates Garden Guide, Barry Philp’s “Your Vegetable Garden – A
Guide to Home Vegetable Growing in South Australia” and, more
recently, Clive Blazey and Jane Varkulevicius’ outstanding “The
Australian Fruit and Vegetable Garden” from the Diggers Club.
Many other terrific Australian vegetable gardening books with
clear step-by-step instructions have recently hit the shelves.
By carefully following the advice in any of these books, even
the most inexperienced gardener will be harvesting a bumper crop
of veggies in their first season! Bon apetit!
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