How to start a vegetable garden

Factual Questions
1

Having moved out of the city, we’re working on adding a vegetable garden to our property. No more planting in 5X5 plots or scattered containers—we’re looking to do things ‘right’ (ever try and grow corn in pots? Kinda pitiful. Doable, but pitiful).

Here’s what I’ve done so far~ stripped the top 1/2" or so (i.e. the grass/weed layer) off of a 7X25’ patch of the lawn. It runs north—south, and is in full sun for most of the day (more so than any other area of the lawn not already covered with perennial beds). I then dug down about a foot or so, put all rocks larger than a baseball in a pile and have the remaining dirt sitting off to the side. The soil has a Ph of about 5.6. Ok, now what?

Before filling it in with dirt, should I take a mattock to the bottom and break up the soil? I don’t plan on redigging the entire garden year to year (I’d rather expand it over time), so would doing so add any benefit?

What should I fill it with? Of course, there’s the dirt I took out (lots of clay), but with all the rocks taken out, I’ll need to add something more. As for the dirt that was in there, should I get a screen and take out as many rocks as I can? If so, down to what size? A local nursery can deliver screened topsoil, compost, or a mixture of the two. Do I put the original dirt on the bottom, see how much space is left, then fill the rest with the nursery’s soil? Or should I order it now, and mix the new and old soil together before adding it? If so, any idea of the proportion?

Hopefully that should be enough to get me to the next stage—if I’m lucky I should be able to start planting in a couple weeks!

Thanks,

Rhythm

2

It sounds like you have your work cut out for you. I would recommend that you bring in some topsoil and mix it with the existing dirt, plus throwing in some organic stuff to help your soil retain any water (peat moss is wonderful stuff) plus some organic stuff to help provide some nitrates (steer manure is wonderful stuff). Work it all in down about a foot or so. Most vegetable plants don’t put down roots deeper than a foot, and those that do (tomatos) will do so without you having to break the ground up for them.

You can start planting once your nighttime temperature stays above 40 degrees F. You’ll want to work out a supply of water if rain is infrequent. Give us a list of vegetables you want to grow and we can recommend specifics for those plants.

3

Sorry, I forgot to mention: I wouldn’t worry about rocks smaller than a baseball. Lst year I put in quite a number of different vegetables, along with 35 tomato plants. My soil is VERY rocky. I would love to have a garden space where I don’t have any rocks bigger than a baseball, and year by year I might finally get there. It seems the pebbles I had thre last year have grown to potato-sized rocks, and the potato-sized rocks have grown to grapefruit-sized rocks.

But the point is, all of the rocks didn’t impact my crop yields. I was able to get 100 quarts of tomatoes canned last year… Yum! Of course, your mileage might vary based on soil type and vegetable plant.

4

I have always done the lazy way, and it has seemed to work fine. I cover the area I plan on gardening with newspaper (a very thick layer). Over top the newspaper I put horse manure (again, very thick). I then wait until the next spring, and I rototill the hell out of the area. Being covered kills the grass/weeds, and the manure composts. I then plant.

5

5.6 is a bit on the acidic side, so peat moss is not the best soil amendment to use. What you describe in terms of rocks (are you in New England?) makes it sound like you need to add a bit of volume to your planting bed now that the larger rocks are out, and this can be wel-rotted compost, aged manure, old mushroom soil etc. Think of starting your own compost pile as well.

You can go ahead and loosen the soil at the bottom of the planting area a bit with a pitchfork or other implement. If your bed gets full or nearly full sun, the soil drains well and you don’t overfertilize, your vegetables should do well.

6

I agree with Jackmanii about poking holes in the “floor” of your garden, but I’d use a spading fork for the job. With your heavy clay soil, you’d probably wreck a pitchfork. Drive it down with your foot, and wiggle it enough to pull it out.

There are many things you can use to add organic fluff to the soil. Straw works, and even shredded paper. Every fall, before you dig it over (or, as I did, hire a guy with a big rototiller,) cover the garden with leaves, straw, and your chopped up dead plants. The bacteria in the soil will rot it nicely. After a few years, the texture of the soil will be totally different.

7

With that Ph, I would also add some crushed limestone and bonemeal. I would use a couple bags of composted manure (I use sheep and shrimp, but I have no real reason to think that is better than others). And a lot of topsoil. I never dug out rocks, but just remove them as they surface (they are still doing it after 1/3 of a century). The worst thing is the grass. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been a lot easier to cover it with a tarp for a year and then hire someone with a roto-tiller to turn it all over.

8

Dgging normally consists of just excavating a trench, then turning the next row of soil over into it, adding compost or manure as you go, then refilling the last one with the contents of the first.

but if you’ve dug out the entire patch to a depth of a foot, then I would suggest you sieze the opportunity to get some organic matter into the soil; are there any riding stables near you that might have a big stack of well-rotted manure? Sometimes they’ll let you take whatever you want for free, as it solves their waste disposal problem.

It can’t hurt to break up the soil in the bottom of the patch, then add a generous layer of compost and dig back the topsoil, possibly mixing it up with more compost as you go.

9

Personally, I think you jumped the gun there. Ever heard of square foot gardening? Mel Bartholmew perfected the idea and before you go to any more work, I highly recommend reading his book on the matter.

The basic idea is using raised beds of perfect growing medium (he recommends equal thirds of compost, vermiculite, and peat moss), actually gridding your beds, intensive successional planting, growing some crops vertically.

Four years ago, wanting to get back into gardening without all the back-breaking labor, I was a quick convert to the method. I started with one bed 4’x12’ and have built up to six beds.

I take far more produce out of those beds than I ever took out of a half acre garden and the best part is there is very little work once the beds are established. The raised beds heat up quicker in the spring, and they are compact enough to even build inexpensive hoop greenhouses over for extending my season by two months (which is important to those of us with a measly 90 day growing season). The vermiculite and peat moss help to retain moisture yet provide excellent drainage. Since you are essentially starting with made soil, there are no weed seeds in it. Planting on measured spacing keeps almost all the weeds down. Watering is a breeze, and he actually recommends hand watering individual plants but I use sprinklers and drip irigation.

Last fall for example, I took six five gallon buckets of tomatoes off one bed as well as probably 10 gallons of sugar snap peas off the trellis at the back of the bed throughout the season.

Another bed produced probably 400 lbs. of various summer and winter squash, (though the vines were everywhere in the garden area.

Another bed produced about 300 lbs of potatoes and was the most work of all the beds because you have to keep adding more soil as the plants grow up. You end up with a bed two or three times higher than when you start in the spring.

Last spring I converted my original bed to half asparagus and half strawberries.

The other two beds are devoted to salad stuff, lettuces, radishes, carrots, beets, herbs, onions, garlic.

I’ve even experimented with growing corn as many people have great success with his method, but I was disappointed with the yields as well as the small size of the ears for the space used.

The best part though is all the extra time I have for other stuff, because It only takes me a couple hours a week t maintain all that. What few weeds do crop up are a breeze to pick. I’ll hit the garden for a few minutes before heading off to town for work and decide I’ll week 20 squares. A minute later, I decide I might as well do anothe 20 because that was just too quick.

Order that book and start filling your hole back in!

10

The Official Site of Square Foot Gardening

CMC fnord!

11

Start a compost pile NOW. Start a stone pile NOW (take all the larger stones you find and put them in a pile, and later use them as part of a fence or something). Hiring someone to till your garden is better than renting a tiller and trying to do it yourself. Start a small garden, don’t expect to get a complete garden up and running the first year.

And don’t forget to plant some purely ornamental plants, flowers and other nonessentials.

12

The grass and weeds you stripped off will be fine in the bottom of the trench, and will die before they can reach the surface again. I agree with Jackmanii and AskNott about loosening the bottom.

There’s a directory site here for more square-foot resources.

13

I’ve used all kinds of manure, and seem to have gotten the best results from chicken manure. We live near an egg ranch, and I’m able to buy large bags of well-composted, black, crumbly chicken manure cheaply. Every winter, when the veg beds are resting, I plow in a batch of manure and handfuls of bone meal. Every summer, I’m inundated with tomatoes, herbs and veggies. And the quality of the soil just keeps getting better and better.