Preparing Your Plot

(This post assumes you've worked through the previous posts first: Choosing Your Plot, Choosing Your Vegetables and Things You Need.)

If you are planting early spring vegetables, it's definitely time to get your plot ready.  Peas and greens like arugula need to be planted soon to mature in the cool weather they prefer. See the Choosing Your Vegetables post if you are unsure which vegetables are early spring ones. If you're only planting warm weather vegetables in late spring, you still have a month or two to get your plot ready. Otherwise...

Get your gloves on, grab your trowel and your other supplies (compost, containers, potting soil, etc.).

Preparing Pots and Containers

Do this work in the area you are actually going to grow in, because big containers will be quite heavy once you water them. But you can fill the containers in a different spot as long as you move them into their final position before you water them.

To make clean-up easier, spread out quite a bit of newspaper around where you are going to fill your containers. For me, at least, potting soil always seems to spread out everywhere, no matter how hard I try not to spill it.

This is your last chance to make sure all the containers have ample drainage holes! Punch holes in the bottom if they don't already have them. I mentioned this before, but I should emphasize again that it's essential to prevent your plants from dying of root rot. Even if they're not exposed to rain, you could very easily water too much without realizing it. And, as I also mentioned before, if the containers are in an area where you don't want leakage on the floor, then you need to have something under them to catch it.

Fill each container about 7/8 full of potting soil, and about 1/8 full of compost. (Okay, that's a very rough proportion - I really have no idea how much compost my plants get!) Fill the container very full, because this soil mix will quickly compress down a lot as it gets watered, and also as the organic material in the soil decomposes to feed your plants.

Mix the soil and compost thoroughly together. Move the containers into their final position, with no newspaper underneath. (You won't be able to get the newspaper out from under large containers once they get heavy.)

This is not planting day, but you should water the containers now anyway. Potting soil behaves strangely until it's been wet for a while - it tends to be too "fluffy" to plant in. So by wetting it now, you will make it easier to work with when planting. Water until you think the soil is damp all the way down, but avoid making the soil sopping wet.

Using an Existing Garden Patch

If you are going to plant in ornamental landscaping that's already got stuff growing in it, or if you are going to plant somewhere that's been cultivated before, you just have to clean up your vegetable growing area now.

If this is going to be a dedicated garden patch (rather than planting among other existing plants), it might be a good idea to consider your approach. Dig into the soil a bit with the trowel.

The soil should be pretty lose and easy to dig, not hard packed or densely full of roots from grass or trees. Some weeds are not a problem at all. Earthworms are a good sign: they both improve the soil and prefer to live in healthy soil. If the patch is very wet and muddy right now, that makes it a little hard to tell. Good soil will stick to your shovel a lot if it's very wet, but when it's only moist, it will crumble easily. On the other hand, if it's very sandy or gravelly, that's not great either.

If any of this puts you in doubt, you can consider if you want to do the hard work of shallow or deep preparation described below under "Creating a New Plot". That's a lot more work, but compacted, clayey soil, or sandy, gravelly soil, are not so great for vegetables - the plants will not be able to create as strong root systems and the soil will not hold moisture as evenly, so the plants will experience more severe wet/dry fluctuations, and the soil will probably also be effectively less nutritious because soil organisms will not be thriving either.

If you've planned to remove some existing ornamental plants, remove them now to make room for your vegetables. You can transplant them somewhere else if they're nice and you want to keep them. In that case, try to dig out a large enough root ball of soil so that you don't damage the roots too much. Then just dig a new hole, and try to get the plants in at the same level they were before, or just slightly lower (so that rainwater will tend to flow in towards the roots).

Remove old dead growth left over from last year, if it's in the way, and dig up any perennial weeds that are growing. Try to get the roots of the weeds out. Any roots or pieces of roots that look firm and healthy will start to grow into new weeds soon. If there are dandelions with new leaves, you can eat the greens in a sandwich or salad - as long as you know they are dandelions. (Please don't poison yourself.) Some other weeds are tasty too, but that's beyond the scope of this blog. (Foraging is another topic - though a great one. I do eat my edible weeds.)

Or if it's an area with some kind of "mulch", e.g. something covering the soil like wood chips or plastic, you need to remove that from the area you are going to plant in.

You are done when you have a pretty clear patch (or patches) of soil to plant in.

Creating a New Plot

If you are planting in a patch of lawn, or somewhere else that has not been cultivated before, now you have the hardest work to do: the shovel work.

To prepare new ground, you want to loosen the soil and mix in compost as deeply as possible, which means as deeply as you have the energy for.  If you've kept yourself to a small patch, that will be a big help now.

One note: you should make sure your soil is ready for this work. There is a standard planting phrase "as soon as the soil can be worked". When the snow has just come off, the soil will still be partly frozen. After that, it will be very "waterlogged" for a while. Just after heavy rain is no good either. When the soil is very wet, it's almost impossible to dig and prepare, because it just forms huge, heavy, muddy lumps on the shovel. You will suffer unnecessarily if you try to garden then!

The soil is only ready to "work" when it has drained enough so that doesn't happen very much. (But your soil might still be pretty heavy and sticky if it's very compacted, high in clay, and doesn't have much organic matter in it. That's why we need to "prepare" it.) So before you get going, check with your trowel, and see if the soil is still in a very wet, muddy mass. If lumps tend to crumble at least a bit when you squish the lumps with the trowel, then the soil "can be worked", and you can begin. If it's still too wet, you have to wait a few days, and try again.

In preparing the soil, what we are going for is loose, aerated soil full of organic matter that keeps it from clumping up again. That will be the kind of soil that is makes it easy for plants to grow roots, holds lots of water without getting waterlogged, is immediately nutritious for plants, and also supports lots of soil organisms that are the real long-term source of released nutrients for your plants. Also, well-prepared soil is ready earlier in the following years, because the higher amounts of organic matter make it behave better when wet.

Once you've prepared a bed, try never to walk on it again. That will keep it uncompacted. Make sure your bed is small enough to reach in comfortably from the sides - no more than 2 feet away from a path in any direction (so maximum 4 feet between paths), and less is better. (Less sore back is better, to be precise.) If your planting area is too large for this, then add more paths to cut it into smaller, more reachable pieces.

If you never walk on the prepared soil, and you always add more compost each time you plant, you will not need to do this heavy work again. Earthworms and the roots of plants will together keep your soil deeply aerated and uncompacted. 

Shallow Preparation:

I'll talk about the easier, shallower way first. This way is less work, but shallower, so the result will be less supportive of more deep-rooted vegetables like tomatoes, chard, and beans.

If you are removing existing lawn, you probably should do deep preparation. And generally, I'd say do deep preparation if you are physically capable of doing it. It's a one-time thing, after all.

Remove any weeds from the surface. Now start digging up the soil and stirring it around as deep as your shovel blade goes, looking for masses of living roots you find. Remove those and put them aside. They are strong healthy future weeds you most likely don't want.

Once your patch is very stirred up, spread lots of compost on top - ideally you will have enough compost to form a layer on the surface that is a few inches deep. Now continue stirring up the soil with your shovel, mixing it very well with the compost and breaking up all the remaining lumps of packed soil.

The deeper you stir it up, the better.


Deep Preparation:

The deep way to prepare the soil is called "double digging". It goes two shovel-lengths deep (instead of one shovel deep, like the shallow preparation described above). Lots of vegetables (tomatoes, beans, chard, etc.) prefer to root deeper than one shovel depth, so this is definitely worth the effort if you can manage it.

But the basic idea is still just that you want to mix in compost and loosen the soil as far down as you can go.

If you are digging in a grassy area, see the section below about dealing with grass.

If your plot is very small (say 1 metre by 1 metre), you may just want to remove the whole top "1 shovel deep" layer of soil, piling it all to the side. Then prepare the entire bottom layer all at once, mixing in compost and breaking up lumps as deep as you can go with the shovel. Try to leave it loose and fine. Then put the entire top layer back, and mix compost into that as deep as you can go with the shovel, again breaking up all the lumps and leaving it loose and fine.

For somewhat larger areas, double digging is a clever approach designed to work the soil down to two shovel-depths deep, while minimizing how much you actually have to move the soil around. This is done by proceeding in strips, so you don't have to remove the entire top layer of soil at once.

First you remove soil from a trench that is one full shovel depth deep. (It's helpful to have a plastic sheet to put this soil on, or a wheelbarrow, or some kind of bin, just to reduce the mess and make it easier to recover this soil at the end of the process.) Then you work the bottom of the trench, the deep layer. Mix compost into the soil at the bottom of the trench with your shovel, mixing it and losening it well, going as deep as you can - another full shovel depth. Ideally, you have enough compost to mix in a layer that's a few inches deep.

Next you start a new trench beside the original one, moving the top layer of soil from that trench over to fill in the first trench. Then you add more compost to this top layer of soil in the first trench and loosen it well.

The first trench is done, and now you are standing in the second trench. Now you work compost deep into the bottom of the second trench. Then you dig a third trench, using soil from the third trench to fill in the top layer of the second trench. You mix that with compost, and so on.

You fill in the last trench with the soil you set aside from the first one.

Need help visualizing that? The wikipedia entry on double digging includes an animated illustration that makes this quite clear.  However, they show mixing the top layers at the end, which would require walking on the prepared soil - which you should not do. I suggest mixing each top layer while you are standing in the next (unprepared) trench.

The advantage of this whole trench-by-trench double-dig approach is simply that most of the soil that is moved is just moved a little ways - from a new trench to the previous trench beside it, instead of, say, putting the whole top layer aside at once. The objective is still just to loosen the soil and add compost as far down as possible.

Dealing with Grass

If you are digging where there's solid grass, you should probably double dig. And as you go, you need to do one extra (hard) thing: from each trench, cut away the turf, the layer of grass including its whole root layer, with the shovel and set it aside.

After you prepare the bottom layer of each trench (after it's all mixed with compost and loosened), put the turf from that trench back in, grass-side down (i.e. upside down), before the rest of the topsoil from the next trench goes on top.  That puts the grass in deep, where it won't be able to grow anymore, and where it will decompose and further enrich your soil.

(Now that you're reading this, you may want to contemplate "keep it small" for a while. Did you keep it small enough? If not, this is a good time to adjust your plans!)

Things You Need

(This post assumes you've read Choosing Your Plot and Choosing Your Vegetables first!)

Obviously this is a very unusual year: last year there was still snow on the ground at this time, but this year it feels like we're late to get things planted.

So I'll be accelerating the pace a little, and posting more than once a week for a while.

You'll need to prepare the soil in your containers or garden plot, and after that it will be time to plant things like peas, arugula, chard, etc.

But first, you need to make sure you have your supplies. You don't need very much (gardening is not an equipment sport), but there are some inexpensive things you need.

1. Gloves

Getting your hands in the soil is romantic, but unless you want to spend more time scrubbing dirt off them than gardening, you need gloves.

For gardening, don't buy gloves made of knit material: too much dirt goes right through the knit. Cotton cloth is nice because you can rinse them out a bit while you are outside, and then take them in and throw them in the wash.

2. Trowel

You definitely need something to dig and cultivate with. An ordinary garden trowel is good, as long as it's strong - you'd be surprised at how hard you crank on the trowel sometimes.  So look carefully at what you are buying, and try to choose something strong, unless you want to buy another one again soon.

A basic, sturdy trowel the only cultivating tool you really need for basic gardening. On the other hand, I do love my Korean "homi", which has a longer, narrower blade set at right-angles to the handle. It's great for preparing soil and planting, but it's not as good for digging holes or moving any amount of dirt around, so it doesn't substitute for a trowel. I use both. But just a trowel alone is definitely enough.

3. Compost

Compost is nicely decayed organic matter.  It is pretty much odourless, and basically looks like light, crumbly, loose, black dirt.

Compost is the original garden black magic, and you want lots of it in your soil, for many, many reasons. It keeps the soil from clumping and packing into hard chunks. It retains moisture that would otherwise drain away, so plants don't dry out as quickly, while at the same time it also retains air-pockets needed by the micro-organisms in the soil that provide your plants with the nutrients they need. And it feeds the soil organisms and your plants.

So you must have compost, lots if it. It is the main easy in easy gardening. Every time you plant anything, you put more compost into your soil.

How much do you need?  If you're keeping things as small as I've recommended (a square metre or two), then one large bag should be plenty - and a smaller bag should be okay if you're going really small, like just a few smaller containers. Up to a point, more is better. All the vegetables on the short list will be happy with lots: for example, 25% compost, 75% soil would be just fine.

Toronto city compost is free, but you have to pick it up yourself. Soon (March 31st), the Toronto neighborhood environment days will start up (schedule here), where you can fill your own bins or bags full of compost for free - your own food coming back to you full circle, isn't that beautiful? But an environment day event in your area might come too late for you if you're starting with early spring greens, so check the schedule, and if necessary, buy a bag of compost now, and pick up more when there's a conveniently located environment day event near you.

4. Seeds

Hopefully you've already decided what you are going to grow, so you can buy seeds now. If you haven't quite decided, I suggest going back to the posting on planning your plot, and working that out soon!

Personally, I mostly buy from Urban Harvest in Toronto. Besides their great selection, the people are friendly and knowledgeable, and they carry only organic, open-pollinated seeds, which also means you can keep seed from most varieties to use next year. (They also happen to be convenient for me because they come to my local farmer's market.) Also, talking with someone who knows the varieties is very helpful when trying to choose which type to grow. But there are also lots of other choices of seeds at garden centers everywhere.  Don't sweat it too much.

For some plants, it is often more practical to buy them as seedlings. On our shortlist, tomatoes, basil, chives, and nasturtiums are all good candidates for this approach.

Tomatoes are usually started very early indoors so they have a good start by the time it gets warm enough outside for them. Basil, chives, and nasturtiums are the other things from the shortlist that you might want to buy as seedlings. Chives you will only ever need to buy once anyway, because they are perennial, and when your first clump gets larger, it can be split up into many.  Usually one or two nasturtiums are all you need, too, because they spread quite vigorously to cover a large area.

If you're only going to plant a few of those, or if you have more money than time, or you just definitely want to keep this easy, I suggest just buying the potted seedlings: but later, right when it's time to plant them out in May.

So don't buy seeds for the plants you are going to buy as seedlings.

On the other hand, in this blog I will cover how (and when) to start seeds indoors from seed, so you can do that if you want to. I will cover that (next month) because I do it myself, but be warned that we're straying out of easy territory there, and the results I get at home are nearly always smaller and weaker than the seedlings grown by experts with greenhouses. I just like to do it, and I'm also cheap.

5. Shovel - optional

A full sized shovel is occasionally helpful, but it's only absolutely necessary on one very rare occasion: when you dig a completely new area of garden patch.  So if that's what you're going to be doing this year, you should borrow a shovel or buy one, because it's almost time to start digging.

6. Containers and Potting Soil - optional

If you're planting on a balcony or patio, you'll need your containers and soil. Whatever the containers are, make them deep, and make sure they have drainage.

The main problems with containers are the extremes: they can easily dry out too fast, or they can get too waterlogged. So they should be very deep to hold lots of soil (and thus retain lots of water), but they must also have plenty of drainage in the bottom so that too much water doesn't just fill them up.

If you're using something that doesn't have holes, you need to add them.  A drill would probably be the best way, though a hammer and a nail might work for some things. (So add borrowing a drill to your list if you're in this situation and you don't have one.)

Drainage also means you need to have something for under the containers if they're in a place where the runoff has to be controlled. Water that leaks from the bottom of the pot will be somewhat dirty. Commercially made plant pots usually come with drainage dishes, or you can place a pot that has drain holes within an outer container that doesn't - which is both decorative, and good for your plants, since it will add protection from heat and cold for the roots.

The soil can be any potting soil (which will be light and absorbent, generally), but I'd suggest going for something certified organic, since it's anybody's guess what might be in the unregulated products intended for ordinary house plants.

7. Climbing Support - optional

If you are planting peas, or later tomatoes or climbing beans, they'll all need to climb or be supported. The easiest is to plant against an existing fence, but lots of things will work, as long as it's tall enough - 4 or 5 feet at least - and strong enough not to fall over: tomato plants and beans in particular get pretty heavy.

Garden centres have lots of things for this, like purpose-made stakes, "tomato cages", bamboo poles, or wooden lattice. If you already have a wall or fence but it's not readily climbable, just hanging many twine strings from it is enough for peas and beans to climb. Tomatoes you'll have to tie up more because they don't really hang on for themselves.

I know I say this a lot, but: don't worry too much. Try something, and if it doesn't work... just try something else.


Where to Get Things

You can get everything listed here at a garden centre or hardware store.

Seeds are also in most grocery stores, too. Seeds (and later on, seedlings) will be for sale at local farmers markets too. (As mentioned above, I usually get mine from Urban Harvest - they are always at my local farmers market, and they are organic, and they are local, and they have an incredible selection of seeds and seedlings, and they are nice. But there are other good seed people around, too.)

Choosing Your Vegetables

I'm assuming you read the last blog entry: Choosing Your Plot. So hopefully you've already decided (more or less) on what garden area or containers you are going to grow in. Now it's time to decide what to plant and how to fit it in to your garden.

Here is the shortlist of easy-to-grow and tasty vegetables: 

Early spring planting:

• Mizuna
• Arugula
• Mustard Greens
• Chicory
• Chard
• Peas
• Chives

Late spring planting:

• Climbing Beans
• Bush Beans
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Basil
• Nasturtiums

Some may be unfamiliar. You can read more about them on the short list page, or look them up elsewhere if you're unsure.

The next task is to choose which ones to grow and plan how they are going to fit in your space. We don't have to figure out the exact details in advance, but we do have to figure out the general layout. A rough plan on paper helps because:

• Some plants need to be planted early (they grow well in cool weather), and some plants need to be planted later (they can't tolerate cold weather).
• Some plants grow tall and will shade out smaller plants unless they are positioned behind them relative to the sun.
• Some plants take up a lot of room, and will leave no room for anything else if you plant too much of them!

So all that takes a little bit of working out. Maybe you'll need as much as an hour to piece this all together the first time.

Once we have a rough plan, we can be pretty relaxed. The plan ensures you know what will fit where, in your containers or your area of earth, so that you don't buy seeds or seedlings you don't have room for.

1. To start with, list the vegetables from the short list that you really want to grow. Or if you're growing something else that's not on the list, put that down. Substitutions are fine with me, as long as you don't mind doing some figuring out for them on your own! You can let me know in the comments what you're growing, and I'll help out if I can.

Most of all remember that one of our guiding principles is: only grow what you really want to grow. See the How We Keep It Simple page for the zucchini story if you need to be reminded why.

2. Now sketch your containers or garden patch on a piece of paper or in a notebook, with some rough indication of the size of the containers or plot. For containers, try to make the positions of the containers relative to each other fairly accurate on the diagram. That's because we have to plan for light and shade with taller plants and shorter plants.

Is it clear to you which direction the main daytime sun will be coming from? Where most of your sun will be coming from depends on where you are planting: for example if you're on a west-facing balcony, most of the sun will probably be coming from the south-west diagonal. In a wide open area, the strongest sun will be coming from the south.

Once you've figured this out, indicate the main direction of day time sun on the diagram. If you're having trouble with this, it will probably help to go out to the location and look at the situation from right there. This doesn't have to be extremely precise, but should be mostly right so you can position your tall and short plants in such a way that the tall ones won't shade out the short ones.

Next we will lay out the plants in the sketch.

3. Position the climbers first.

Sketch out the areas of your plot or containers that will contain the climbers. The climbing plants from the short list are peas, cherry tomatoes, and climbing beans.

If you are growing climbing plants (which need some kind of tall support), they have to be in a place where they won't shade out the other ones. That is, they need to be behind the other plants, from the point of view of the daytime sun, which hopefully you already drew on your diagram.

Peas and beans are planted quite close together (a few inches apart) in a row or group where they will climb the support you provide: a fence, or very tall strong stakes and strings.

Cherry tomatoes are planted individually, further apart - at least 6 inches apart, or one per pot. They will also need strong, tall support.

Using those distances, figure out approximately how many plants you will have of each type.

4. Now fill in the self-supporting plants. These rest of the plants in our list support themselves, so they are just planted to fill an area at their preferred spacing, like dots in a grid. But some of them can be planted closer together than others.

So what you do now is sketch out the areas of your plot or containers that will contain each of these plants.

There's lots of factors you can consider when you decide to lay these ones out. It's a bit harder to plant the late spring plants behind early spring plants, for one thing (because the early spring ones will be in place and growing already). For another placement example, I harvest spring greens often (like whenever I make a sandwich), so for me it's nice if they're near the edge, very easy to reach.

Here is a table to help summarize the planting needs of each plant. Still, don't worry about it too much. Plants are not perfectionists.

	Height	Planting Time	Spacing
Peas	climber	early spring	close row or group (3cm)
Climbing Beans	climber	late spring	close row or group (5cm)
Cherry Tomatoes	climber	late spring	wide (15cm)
Mustard Greens	tall (1m)	early spring	close (5cm)
Basil	tall (1m)	late spring	med (10cm)
Mizuna	low	early spring	close (5cm)
Arugula	low	early spring	close (5cm)
Chicory	low	early spring	close (5cm)
Chard	low	early spring	med (8cm)
Chives	low	early spring	close group (1cm)
Bush Beans	low	late spring	med (10cm)
Nasturtium	low	late spring	close group (3cm)

Basil and mustard greens are both quite tall, so you should consider the shade issue again - they should be behind any lower plants (from the point of view of the sun), so they don't shade shorter plants. Basil is traditionally grown beside the tomatoes to ward off tomato pests. Basil and mustard greens should both be planted to fill their areas at spacings of about 4 to 6 inches apart.

Some of the greens - arugula, mizuna, and chicory - are grown very close together in their area, about 2 - 3 inches apart.

Bush beans and chard need a bit more space: they should fill their area at 4 to 6 inches apart.

Nasturtiums and chives will both eventually form bigger clumps, so you just need to find one spot or a few spots for each of these, with some space around for them to spread into.

As you sketch in where each of your vegetables will go, also note down approximately how many of each plant will fit into that space you've allotted.

5. Don't worry. Sure, it can get complicated and confusing, but it doesn't matter that much. Believe me, stuff will grow and it will taste good. So let's just keep this fun and interesting and low stress! That's why we call this "side plot", and not "melodrama" or "tragicomedy".

6. Keep your list somewhere safe. No, no, it's not secret, you don't have to hide it. Just don't lose it, that's all I'm saying.

Choosing Your Plot

Where to Grow?

Your task now is to choose your garden plot - or your pots, containers, buckets, or wherever you are going to grow. There are lots of options. Furthermore, small is good: a few big pots or a planting container can make a great garden.

Maybe you already have a place, or maybe you already have a place in mind. Still, it might be worth giving it another think.

By the way, despite the weather, make sure to go out and actually look at the spot while you are thinking about it. It's much easier to visualize things if you are right there.

When it comes to choosing a spot, here are the key points, in order of importance:

1. Keep it small!  Keep it small!  Keep it small!

We're aiming for total manageability, and zero intimidation/procrastination. So how small is small? I suggest trying for something like 1 metre by 1 meter, or maybe 1 metre by 2 metres.

That probably sounds pretty small. But you can actually grow quite a lot in that, and it will be way better to do a small patch successfully than to have trouble keeping up with a larger patch and then get discouraged. Unless you have a lot of time and you are a really good follow-through person, you probably don't need to go any bigger than that your first time around.

But you could go even smaller. One or two deep pots or buckets, or one deep planter, or one sunny corner of your flower bed - a little spot can be fun and easy.

To me, small, intense, organic vegetable gardens are the most beautiful gardens of all, a profound alignment of human thought and effort with the complex natural systems to which we belong.

2. Lots of sun is important.  

When you're thinking about where to plant, think about how the sun moves during the day and as the seasons change. (But remember, as you look now, that the sun will be much higher in a few months.)

Most vegetables will do fine as long they get at least 4 or 5 hours of full (unshaded) sun between 10 am and 4 pm. More is better, but that is usually enough. Note that sunshine early or late in the day is not as powerful.

You can get clever with some things: for example, spring greens can be planted early and start growing before the leaves are on the trees, and once established will do fine in a spot that gets somewhat less sun when the leaves are on the trees.

Also remember that on the Toronto street plan, an "east" exposure is really north-east, and so an east balcony won't get very much sun - though people sometimes make it work. A Toronto "west" exposure is really south-west, and will be just fine for growing - but you'll have to keep up on the watering, because it gets very hot on that side: pots and containers in particular will dry out very fast.

3. Grow your garden close at hand.  

The best place to grow is somewhere you will see, be in, or pass by often. This has two benefits. Your garden stays present in mind because you see it all the time, so you remember to do the watering, weeding, or whatever needs to be done next. And you also get more pleasure and satisfaction because you notice it more.

It's really, really worth doing a little extra work at the beginning to make this principle work for you. For example, if you are growing on a balcony, try to position the plants so they'll be very visible from where you sit inside. Raise them up on crates or bricks if that helps. If you live in a house, consider planting your vegetables in the front landscaping that you pass by whenever you come and go, instead of in the back garden (if you don't use the back very much). These days, chard in the landscaping is all the rage, so you can be both convenient and stylish that way.

4. Climbing room for vine plants is ideal.  

Peas, climbing beans, tomatoes and cucumbers, among others, need to be or do best grown as vines on tall supports. Growing against a south-facing or west-facing wall or tall fence will be great, if you have that option. Otherwise, to grow climbers you will need to provide some structure for them to climb, and it needs to be tall and somewhat strong and stable, so it doesn't fall over in a wind or just from the weight of the plants (which get pretty heavy as they grow).

5. Containers or pots should be deep and wide, and must have drainage holes.

This is one aspect in which bigger is actually better. Soil in bigger containers will dry out much more slowly than small ones, and will go through less extreme heat fluctuations as well. And depth is also important, so that deep-rooted plants have lots of room to expand their root systems. Big, foodsafe plastic buckets are a good size and material, but lots of other things will do fine - commercial pots, or whatever you think is good. (But toxic materials: not so good!)

No matter what you use, drainage holes in the bottom are necessary to avoid drowning or rotting your plants' roots. You will probably need to put your own holes in containers that aren't already meant for growing plants in.

Drainage also means you will need some kind of underlying dish or outer pot to capture runoff, if you need to keep your growing area dry, neat, or picturesque. Actually, an outer pot is good for another reason: it's an extra buffer to reduce extreme summer heat that will stress your plants and dry out the soil fast.

6. Easy Access

Accessibility matters. You need to be able to reach all parts of the garden without straining too much for your own physical condition. If it causes you pain to garden, that will probably be the end of your gardening!

You also need to be able to reach only from the edges without stepping on the dirt. Compacted soil is very poor for growing in, so try never to step on your planting dirt, even out of season.

Typically for garden patches, this means they can't be bigger than 3 or 4 feet in one direction, with access both sides so you can reach the whole patch easily. In a larger garden area, you put in pathways to make a number of smaller patches. But if you are keeping it small, so that won't be necessary.

7. Preparing new ground is the hardest work.

One last issue might be considering the work to prepare new ground. If you're thinking of turning some existing lawn or a heavily overgrown area that hasn't been gardened recently into a garden patch, that's probably going to be some hard work with a shovel.

If you have an easier option, maybe that's better. Still, if you are following principle number 1 and keeping things small, it won't be too bad, as long as you are physically capable of some hard digging - or you have an able and willing helper for that part.


A Note About Soil Quality

Generally, I wouldn't worry too much about soil quality. Gardening books will often talk about soil quality and soil testing. But soil is easy to improve on a small scale - another advantage of keeping it small. (Not so easy on a huge farm.)  Using lots of compost is the main thing. I'll talk about a few things that help improve soil, especially in the long term, when we get to the soil preparation step.

However, do make sure your soil is not outright poisonous. Plants are what they eat, too. If you're on old industrial land, this is an important point. Toronto has some very contaminated old industrial areas. If you're in doubt about your location, I recommend growing your vegetables in containers with organic soil you buy. Or get your soil tested in that case, if you want to know for sure.

Summing it all up, in order of importance:

• Keep it small!
• Lots of sun.  
• Close at hand.  
• Vine plants need climbing room (tomatoes, beans, peas).  
• Containers or pots should be deep and wide.
• Easy access to work on all parts of the garden.
• Creating a brand new garden patch is hard shovel work.

So now go ahead and choose your plot.

And remember,  most of all, keep it small! If that drives you crazy, I promise to let you have more next year. Fair?

Next week we'll go through choosing your vegetables and planning the layout.

Starting Out

This blog is to help make vegetable gardening easy for people who haven't done it before, or people who did try it and didn't find it easy.

Gardening books have often given me information overload, and they are often intimidatingly perfectionist. On the other hand, web sites are mostly jumbled and confusing and contradict each other.

So to make growing a garden easy, and to avoid information overload, this blog proceeds step by step, week by week, just telling you what you need to do next.

To help keep it simple, we:

• keep it small (keeps the work load down)
• go week by week (keeps the mental work load down)
• grow only easy plants (see the short list)
• use easy, natural methods (effective modern organic approaches)

You can grow lots of different, as long as there's enough sun: on a balcony, in your flower beds, in pots on your porch - those can all be good options.

So if you'd like to grow some vegetables but think it's too hard, follow along, and I'll take you step by step through the gardening year. 

I'll be timing the instructions for Toronto - taking into account the weather and so forth. But if you're somewhere outside of the Toronto area, let me know in the comments, and I'll try to give you some hints about what to do differently.

What now?

Want to get started?  It's still only February, but you could take a look at the easy vegetables short list.

Or do you doubt it can really be easy?  Read more about how we keep it simple.

Want to know more about container gardening?  This Toronto book project proposal includes some video footage which might give you ideas.  You can find the book itself for sale by the author here.

Or just check back next week for the first step: Choosing your plot.

2012 season coming soon...

I'll be starting up this blog again soon for 2012.

Just like last year, I'll help new gardeners through the year step by step, keeping things as simple and straightforward as I can.

Freezing Temperatures Tonight (pick your tomatoes)

It's kind of late for this - I wish I'd thought to post about this a few days ago - but freezing temperatures are forecast for tonight.

Plants that were fine to plant in early spring should also be fine now at these temperatures, e.g. chard, arugula, mizuna, mustard greens.  (Chard is the only one that will still be around from spring, but you might have planted more of the others later or have "volunteers" growing from the left-over seeds.)

However, if you have basil outside or still have tomatoes on the vine, you probably should pick them right now (I mean: right now, before you go to bed!), even if they are still green.  Otherwise, they may be destroyed outside tonight.

Even picked green, larger tomatoes will usually ripen inside in a few days or weeks, if they're weren't extremely green. Just leave them sitting out at room temperature, and use them as they ripen.  (I have found cherry tomatoes don't ripen as well, but if they are already partly changed colour, they will probably make it.)  Green or partially ripe tomatoes can also be good cooked or preserved in various ways - you'll find lots of recipes online, of course.

Note that depending on your location, you may not actually hit the forecast low.  The urban heat effect can make a few degrees of difference - often it seems like my location at Bloor and Dufferin gets milder temperatures than the Environment Canada forecasts, and further east, past Christie from Bloor southwards often seems noticeably even warmer.

You may also be able cover your plants with a blanket, and that might be enough to protect them.

I picked mine just as it was getting dark, and then realized I should write this.  But now you'll need a flashlight.