For your perennial vegetables and fruits, pick a spot separate from or on the edge of (second best) the main vegetable garden. The easiest way to get a bed started is to stake it out the season before you plant. Cover existing sod with a thick layer of newspapers, magazines, or cardboard. A friend of mine declares that covering sod is the best use she’s found for cast-off issues of the Congressional Record. “They’re so thick nothing will grow through them,” she says. So they don’t blow away, pile something on top —hay, wood chips, sawdust, branches, whatever. By spring, the sod will have decomposed and added green manure to the soil without a struggle. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you water frequently? Leave a section of hose laid out down the center of the garden. Drive double stakes of wood at intervals to keep the hose from decimating the vegetables as you pull it back and forth.

Double stakes protect garden from hose

Another gardener, who has several small vegetable plots, drives a stake at the corner of each bed to protect plants while he drags the hose around. Read the rest of this entry »

The extreme case of the lazy gardener might be the college professor who planted his entire vegetable patch in spring and never looked at it again until it was time to harvest. He overplanted and just let the whole business go weedy. He got enough food for the family out of the enterprise, and that was all he was after in the first place.

Most of us aren’t that lazy. We take pride in order and control. The specter of carefully planned and planted crops being choked by weeds makes us shiver. Read the rest of this entry »

Get a head start on newspaper mulch in winter. As you finish reading today’s paper, staple it to yesterday’s. Make strips of newspapers as long as a garden row, roll them up and store until spring. When you need mulch, unroll on the garden.

When I was a young, newly married gardening novice, we lived on the sea shore. A violent December storm drove high tides within a few feet of our front door. When the waters receded, a huge pile of eelgrass and seaweed ringed our home. Too lazy to cart it away, we raked the debris a few feet closer to the house and stuffed it under foundation plantings. Read the rest of this entry »

I maintained a year- round hay mulch at least eight inches deep in her Connecticut vegetable garden. In her fifty-by-fifty-foot plot, I used twenty-five bales a year. I never turned the soil, sowed a cover crop, hoed, weeded, watered, or built a compost pile. I just mulched, making compost on the spot, for as the bottom layer of mulch decomposed, it added rich organic matter to the soil— a continuing process. Ruth didn’t bother with manures, but used cottonseed meal or soy bean meal for added nitrogen. I sprinkled it on top of the mulch in winter, at a rate of five pounds to one hundred square feet, so that snow and rain carried it down through the hay by planting time. To plant, I pulled aside the mulch and sowed the seed. Read the rest of this entry »

“Black plastic has freed me from hours of weeding. I never used to finish that chore,” explains a Massachusetts gardener. “I resisted black plastic because it looks so awful, but we put dirt along the edges and scatter some on top, and that helps. We use three‑foot-wide rolls in our entire vegetable garden. We plant a row, lay the plastic, anchor the edges with dirt, plant another row, and so on. The weeding always had hung over me. Now I just hand-weed in the row itself, and we have more time to canoe or play tennis.” Read the rest of this entry »

If weeds are growing around the perimeter of your garden, scattering seeds into the garden, cut those weeds with a scythe, then add them to the compost pile. The scythe is a remarkable and efficient tool in the hands of an expert. An able hand doesn’t flail at the weeds with the scythe. He holds it loosely, comfortably, and moves the blade by pivoting his body, keeping the blade parallel to and close to the ground. He stops often to sharpen the blade. The scythe doesn’t actually get dull that quickly, but frequent sharpening is a good way to relax shoulder and arm muscles. Read the rest of this entry »

Sayonara, Japanese Beetles

Hire your children to save the garden from Japanese beetles. Pay them a penny a bug. In the evening, when the beetles won’t fly away, the kids can tiptoe along and brush them from plant foliage into jars of kerosene. Bet they won’t even be able to count their catch! Meanwhile, you can relax with a long novel or take in the evening news.

If Japanese beetle grubs are destroying your lawn, introduce milky spore disease, a microbial attack against the larval form of this insect. A little energy invested this year is well spent. Put a teaspoon in the ground every three feet for several years’ protection. It’s death to the grubs, but leaves the earthworm population untouched. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have a root cellar, keep it cool in the fall when it’s full of produce by opening ventilators on brisk nights and closing them on warm, sunny days. That’s an easy way to keep the temperature and humidity at ideal levels.

Choose to grow thin-necked varieties of onions rather than thick-necked ones, and you’ll have less incidence of onion-neck rot in storage. Cure them in sun for a week or two after harvest, then lay screens in the rafters of your garage or attic and spread the onions one layer thick. Leave them there for a month or so. Make sure onion necks are thoroughly dry before clipping to an inch or two. Store in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. Read the rest of this entry »

Lazy gardeners, here’s a crop that has no weeds or insect pests, needs no soil, grows in any kind of weather, and is ready for harvest in two to five days. Grow your own sprouts in winter, for a continuing supply of high-vitamin greens. All you need to invest is a minute or two a day for rinsing. Read the rest of this entry »

Every garden needs a little mulch. Mulch is a thick blanket of material laid on the ground near plants or in the walkways. It blocks sunlight, keeps weeds from growing, holds moisture in the soil, and keeps the soil temperature steady and cool. Mulch is a must for many dry-country gardeners who are trying to cut down on their watering, and for folks who haven’t got the time to stir up the soil every week to stop weeds from getting started.

People use all kinds of organic matter and material for mulch—grass clippings, bark chips, peat moss, pine needles, leaves, sawdust, black plastic, and so on. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Gamble and Plant early

There’s more moisture in the soil in early spring than any other time of the year. As soon as you can work the soil and prepare seedbeds, gamble some seeds and plant some early crops. Push ahead your plantings of corn and potatoes, too. These crops take lots of water, and the more growth they can put on before dry weather, the better it is for you.

2. Don’t Fertilize too much early in the year

You’d be amazed at how few roots will develop in over- fertilized soils. Plants can get all the food they need close to the surface with just a small root system. So they don’t bother to go down deep. When a dry spell occurs, look out! They suffer quickly, you wind up watering them every day. It’s better for your crops if they have to work for their food and water. Let them develop far-reaching root systems which penetrate deep in the soil before you give them big helpings of plant food. Read the rest of this entry »

I like to use compost before it is totally broken down. I’d much rather have a coarser compost with a lot of small, loose bits of organic matter than a fine compost, because a coarser compost still has the ability to hold plenty of moisture once it’s worked into the soil. I like that.

I have three basic ways to use compost. Read the rest of this entry »

Start Transplants in the Garden

Three or four weeks before the planting dates for cabbage, broccoli, head lettuce, and cauliflower, I sprinkle their seeds in short wide rows out in the garden. It’s an easy (and cheap) way to grow a lot of transplants in a very small space.

For my fall garden, I choose the best-looking plants, dig them out of the short wide rows, and put them in another row with more room around them. Read the rest of this entry »

Amount needed per 1,000 sq. ft. … 10 lbs. Approximate cost/lb. … $1.40-$1.70 Varieties: Little Marvel, Wando, Progress No. 9 Best time to plant: early spring or early fall.

I like garden peas as a green manure crop because I can plant them very early and because they produce so much food for so little work. I call them an

“edible” green manure crop because I don’t till them in until after Jan and I harvest bushels of peas for freezing and eating, and to give to friends and neighbors. Read the rest of this entry »

Amount per 1,000 sq. ft….2-3 lbs.

Approximate cost/lb….$0.55 ($23.50 for 50-pound bag.)

Varieties: very important to buy only annual ryegrass. Don’t be confused by similar crops or names.

Best time to plant: midsummer through early fall.

I plant annual ryegrass up to about 3 weeks before our first hard frost. It grows fast, but it needs time to put on some lush top growth before the cold weather hits. Like buckwheat, it can be planted in all regions and in all soils with good success. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer workers in your nitrogen factory

Amount per 1,000 sq. ft. … 10 lbs. Approximate cost/lb. … $1-$2.

Varieties: your favorite green or yellow bush varieties, such as Contender, Eastern Butterwax, etc. Or shell beans such as French Horticultural, or lima beans (seeds are slightly more expensive). In South: plant favorite Southern peas.

Best time to plant: anytime after last spring frost and up to 8 weeks before expected first fall frost. Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone wants the harvest to last as long as possible. In a good root cellar, many vegetables easily will keep 5 or 6 months. You don’t have to process vegetables going into the root cellar. It’s a true low-energy food preservation system. A steady cool temperature (35°-45° F.) is the main requirement. Read the rest of this entry »

Many of these seeds are chewed up and destroyed by animals and hers are broken down in the alimentary canal of birds, particularly of chickens, pigeons and seed eaters with strong beaks such as most the finches. A great number, however, have hard enough coats to remain intact while the fleshy parts are digested and are finally voided by the birds, sometimes after being carried for long distances. Birds which do not have the powerful beaks of true seed eaters do least damage; Read the rest of this entry »

The temperature in a root cellar is always a compromise. It’s never equal in all parts of the cellar. Most vegetables never get the perfect temperature.

The temperature near the ceiling of many root cellars can sometimes be 10° F. or so higher than near the floor. This variance creates temperature zones in the root cellar. Your vegetables will keep better if you understand the temperature zones of your root cellar and store crops accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »