Grow a phenomenal food garden

by: Carolyn Herriot | Image: Carolyn Herriot

Ten essential tips for getting high yields from your organic garden this year

If this is the year you decide to go all out with a food garden, these basic considerations can make the difference between a mediocre garden and a really productive one.

1. SEED SELECTION

In answer to the question “What to grow?” ask yourself what you and your family most like to eat. There’s not much point planting a row of space-hogging cabbages if no one likes cabbage. It also makes sense to grow food that costs more, especially if space is limited in your garden. Check the number of days to maturity to select plants that will thrive in your garden’s microclimate.

TIP: When your seeds arrive, separate them into cool weather, heat-loving and winter vegetables. File packets alphabetically in a shoebox, using recipe card dividers.

2. SOIL FERTILITY

Years ago I came up with “The Four Secrets of Successful Soil Building” – compost, manure, leaves and seaweed. Add these organic amendments to your soil every year and you will notice an incredible difference in productivity.

Plants remove nutrients from the soil as they grow, which means soil quality degrades over time. After years of teaching gardeners to grow food, I have come to the conclusion most don’t consider feeding the soil nearly enough. That’s why “lasagna gardening” – growing food in beds composed of layers of organic matter – works well for today’s busy lifestyle. (For more on this, visit my blog.)

3. LOTS OF COMPOST!

In order to simplify things I now make what I call “Super Duper Compost.” I fill one bin of a three-bin compost system made of free recycled pallets by building 15-cm (6-in.) layers of material. For layers I use leaves, weeds (no seeds), herbaceous clippings, manure, grass clippings, spoiled hay, seaweed, sawdust, chicken litter, etc. To make it super-duper, I add layers of comfrey leaves, nettles and dried horsetail.

I don’t add kitchen waste to the compost bin, because this can attract rodents. Kitchen scraps are collected in a rat-proof plastic cone composter. When it fills up, the contents are buried 23 cm (9 in.) deep in a trench dug into the food garden; you can plant food on top of the trench right away. If you add layers of other materials to the food waste in the cone, by the time it fills up you will have useable compost.

4. COMPANION PLANTING

Plant diversity is key to healthy gardening, because communities of plants work together to keep bugs at bay, attract pollinators and improve plant growth. Uniform monocultures do not exist in nature , because the myriad beneficial relationships between plants cannot exist. Large-scale monocultures attract pests and disease, which is why they require the use of pesticides. When we grow a diversity of food crops, planted together with hedgerows, flowers, grasses, herbs and berries, nature can control potential problems.

5. CROP ROTATION

If the same plants are grown in the same place year after year, it’s just a question of time before problems arise. After seven years club root develops in brassicas; after 10 years white rot develops in garlic; bean-weevil populations explode where beans are continually grown; and blight is passed on to all members of the Solanaceae family from year to year. Moving plants around inhibits pests and diseases, as the life cycle of the pest or disease can be broken.

6. PEST PREVENTION

There’s nothing more frustrating than losing food crops to wildlife, but there are physical traps and barriers to prevent this. Deer have a very broad range of tastes, from fruit trees to broccoli; in my experience, the only way to keep them out is to use 2.4-metre-tall (8-ft.) fencing. Raccoons and birds can cause a ripe corn or cherry crop to disappear overnight, so try netting plants as the crop ripens. Slugs can also do a lot of damage, but collecting slugs at dusk helps to keep their populations down. To control an outbreak of whiteflies in the greenhouse, I cover squares of cardboard with bright-yellow plastic and smear them with sticky Tanglefoot.

7. STARTING SEEDS EARLY

Instead of direct-seeding in the garden, I now grow seedlings in the greenhouse whenever possible, and transplant them when outdoor conditions are finally settled. If you do not have a greenhouse you can improvise with cold frames and cloches, which can be made inexpensively from recycled glass windows or wooden frames with 6-mil plastic.

8. WEED CONTROL

The best time to remove weeds from the garden is when the soil is moist. At the start of each season I go through the garden and do a major weeding to prevent weeds setting seed. At the end of the season I smother any new weeds with a thick layer of mulch.

9. SEED SAVING

To save your own seeds, grow open-pollinated seeds, which have not had their genetic makeup tampered with by hybridization or genetic modification. Plants adapt to the conditions they grow in, which is why using organic seed is best if you are an organic gardener. This is also why local seeds have an edge; seeds grown in different bioregions have adapted to the local climate conditions.

10. WINTER GARDENING

There’s no need to leave beds empty from October to April when there are so many food plants that can be harvested in winter. In cooler areas, a cold frame will be necessary, but growing some food is still possible. There’s nothing more rewarding than harvesting homegrown kale and leeks with parsley for supper on a blustery winter day.