Independent gardening advice for real gardens, balconies and windowsills.
Practical guides on soil, composting, watering, seeds, pests and the everyday skills that make a garden thrive.
The row's center is about 3 feet from the edge of the raised bed. In March I sow my very first salad greens down half this row--mostly assorted leaf lettuce plus some spinach--and six closely spaced e...
There is another thing to be considered in making each vegetable do its best, and that is crop rotation, or the following of any vegetable with a different sort at the next planting. With some vegetab...
Half the row grows early bush peas. Without overhead irrigation to bother them, unpicked pods form seed that sprouts excellently the next year. This half of the row is rotary tilled and fertilized aga...
Under the first section we will consider: Beet Carrot Kohlrabi Leek Onion Parsnip Potato Salsify Turnip Any of these may be sown in April, in drills (with the exception of potatoes) twelve to eighteen...
In deciding upon the site for the home vegetable garden it is well to dispose once and for all of the old idea that the garden "patch" must be an ugly spot in the home surroundings. If thoughtfully pl...
Here I erect a 125-foot-long, 6-foot-tall net trellis for gourmet delicacies like pole peas and pole beans. The bean vines block almost all water that would to on beyond it and so this row gets more i...
Row 2 gets about half the irrigation of row 1 and about one-third as much as the raised bed, and so is wider, to give the roots more room. One-third of the row grows savoy cabbage, the rest, Brussels...
Row 3 grows 125 feet of various kales sown in April. There's just enough overspray to keep the plants from getting gnarly. I prefer kale to not get very stunted, if only for aesthetics: on my soil, on...
Mostly carrots, a few beets. No irrigation, no fertigation, none needed. One hundred carrots weighing in at around 5 pounds each and 20-some beets of equal magnitude make our year's supply for salads,...