Feeling ready to take advantage of this delightful spring weather and start getting your hands in the dirt? We sure are!
So hopefully you’ve had enough time to get through all the steps lined out in part one of our Summer Garden Series. If so, you know what you are going to grow, where or in what you will grow it, and, if you’re starting in the ground, what your soil type is. Our next steps are going to be preparing your soil or other growing medium, getting your gardening supplies, and starting seeds or buying transplants. So let’s dive into our second edition!
Prepping Your Summer Garden
Step 1: Prepping Soil or Site
Your soil test is good and you’re going to grow directly in the ground.
If you’ve got a space that’s super overrun with weeds and are patient enough to wait to start growing there, you can solarize your garden area by covering it with a sheet of clear plastic for 1 to 2 moths of hot sunny weather, usually starting in the late summer. This process should kill most weeds, weed seeds, and soil pathogens and will have you ready to start some fall crops or green manure cover crops that will set you up great for growing veggies next year.
Your soil needs some amending
Sandy soils will benefit from well-aged compost or manure in order to help increase the water holding capacity of these loose and quick-draining spots.
Clay-heavy soils will be helped by the addition of fibrous organic matter like composted mulches, straw, or well-rotted manure. These materials will improve aeration and drainage in this soil type.
No matter which type of soil you are amending, it is good to have a mix of short and long term solutions. Things like grass clippings and manure will decompose rapidly, breaking down and feeding your plants quickly in the first few years. Other soil components like straw and mulch will stick around for much longer and provide benefits well into the future. Similarly, calcium additions like gypsum, dolomitic limestone, or calcitic limestone will quickly provide this nutrient to plants, but using other materials like eggshells or oyster shells will provide a longer-term solution.
One important caveat is to not over-amend your soil. It may take years to get the ideal soil, so don’t try to rush it and create more problems for yourself. For annual vegetable and herb gardens, it’s likely that you’ll be able to keep adding more amendments each year or each season, and overdoing it in one year can result in nutrient imbalances which stunt plant growth (too little available nitrogen) or burn them (too much available nitrogen), or even cause salt build-up in your soils (this is particularly a problem with the use of manures). Uh-oh.
You’re growing in a container or raised bed
Once you’ve built your bed, you’ll need to clear and level the site it will go on, and it’s best to incorporate some sort of organic weed barrier at the bottom. We recommend layers of burlap and/or cardboard at the bottom of the bed, and a thick layer of mulch around the outside path area to keep weeds down.
If you’re going to go for container gardening in a smaller space, you’ll have to find some large containers and a soil or soilless mix to fill them with. Most plants like to have at least 6–10” of depth for their roots, with root crops needing more. There are plenty of self-watering planter designs to check out that will keep your maintenance time down if you’re feeling busy.
For some extra fun, you can make your own by buying individual components for a custom mix. Use clean and sanitized topsoil, compost, sand, coir, bark, perlite, vermiculite, limestone, and a natural fertilizer source.
Step 2: Get Your Gardening Supplies
All gardeners need a tool set, so pick up some good quality hand tools for a start. A shovel and rake will be helpful for spreading and mixing those amendments into the ground, and a hoe will make weeding go quickly. A wheelbarrow or cart is great for hauling amendments and moving flats of transplants from their nursery location to the planting area, if you’ve got a large space.
You’ll also need flats or small containers to start seeds in. Buy some pots or find your own DIY or upcycled solution, but make sure that each container has adequate space for roots and is large enough that it won’t dry out too quickly (egg cartons are not an ideal choice here). Be ready to transplant seedlings into bigger containers as they grow.
If you’re starting seeds and/or growing indoors for season extension, a lack of outdoor space, or for a fun and air-purifying experiment, you’ll need some growing lights. We recommend using high output fluorescent bulbs for starting seeds and for growing herbs, root veggies, or leafy greens. If you want to get some fruits (tomatoes, peppers, squash) out of your indoor garden, you’ll need a brighter and more powerful lighting system to make plants switch over to flowering and fruiting. Here, we’d recommend an LED setup or HID metal halide lamps. You’ll also need a timer system for the lights and some fans to keep air flow going and promote healthy plants.
All plants need water, so get a watering can based on the size of your growing space. Small indoor herb gardeners can get by with a cute little watering can, or go for a bigger one or an irrigation system for your outdoor garden.
Step 3: Getting your plants ready
Starting seeds
No matter what and where you’re growing, you will need plants! Seeds or starts should be chosen based on your timeline, average frost dates, and what you’re growing. Check out our extensive Phytotheca database for the plants you’ve chosen to see how easy or hard they are to start from seed, how long they take to germinate, and whether we recommend that you plant inside or outside. Based on this information, you can easily decide which seeds are worth buying, which to start on your own indoors, and which can be sowed directly in your soil or growing media outdoors.
First, fill your flats, containers, or small cups with a seeding mix. This soilless mix does not need any nutrients, as seeds actually contain all they need to grow in their first set of “seed leaves.” The mix also needs to be sterile, so that your baby plants can germinate in a clean and healthy environment. This initial phase of development is super important for plants, so they need to be kept moist and in a well-lit and stable temperature environment. Check out the Phytotheca entries for information on what temperature each seed needs to germinate, and use a heat mat if your growing conditions indoors aren’t adequately warm.
Caring for Starts and Transplants
Most seeds don’t need light to germinate, but once they’ve sprouted leaves, they will need a light source, as will any transplants you’re not quite ready to put in the ground yet. Keep lights close to the plants to avoid seedlings getting too leggy and weak stemmed, and adjust the light up as plants grow to keep them from burning. They’ll also need some nutrients as they get larger. Once a week, you should water little plants with a very dilute solution (half to quarter strength) of liquid seaweed, fishmeal, or balanced liquid fertilizer. Keep the soil evenly most at all times, and provide air flow for plants with a small fan to strengthen them.
Before planting transplants, whether you’ve grown them or bought them, they’ll need to adjust to outside conditions. This process is called hardening off and requires you to set your plants outside, in a shady location at first, for gradually increasing time periods during each day. You can also slowly increase the amount of direct sunlight that plants receive each day, until they are ready and well adapted to the conditions you will be planting them in.
OK, that’s it for this edition. Check back in soon or keep an eye on our Facebook page for the next edition in our summer garden series, and what might be the most exciting phase of your gardening process: Planting Your Summer Garden! We can’t wait.