Grow some food at home, the organic way
By Sally Cunningham

Vegetable gardening is in. Surveys by the National Gardening Association estimate that increases in vegetable gardening have doubled from ten to twenty percent over the last two years, and the Garden Writers’ Association has determined that over forty-three million Americans will plant vegetable gardens this spring—twenty-one percent of which will be new gardens. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, every $100 spent on vegetable gardening yields $1000 to $1700 worth of produce. And this just in—the Obamas are starting a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, the first such garden in decades.
Veggie gardens (and a chicken coop!) were even featured at the Philadelphia Flower Show.
Photo by Jack Maeder.

There’s a Victory Garden feeling across the country; it seems the right thing to do in uncertain times. How to do it is another matter.

Some of us haven’t gardened since childhood, with Grandpa, or maybe at that first house before there were kids or two careers. Or maybe you’ve been gardening all along, but feel discouraged about the effort, the pests, and poor production. And many of you tell me you want to keep it healthier, but don’t know how to go organic and still achieve a salad. Having heard these messages, I’d like to spare you some mistakes and pass on some learning—so you can eat a homegrown salad or ratatouille with a healthy conscience and a good dose of pride.

Getting off to the right start
Let’s throw out some bad practices now, and waste less time. Whether Dad, or Grandma, or the neighboring farmer did it, some gardening practices of the last fifty years were just wrong. It wasn’t an evil scheme; rather, we just didn’t know a lot about soil, ecological communities, and disease. Here are some mistakes of recent decades, and much better approaches.

Many old-time farmers and gardeners, in America and most old-world cultures, revered the soil; they knew it as the source of life. They used animal manures, cover crops (green manures), and rotations to put back what they used. But progress brought machine-driven farming, chemical fertilizers, and efficient large-scale production (monocropping and vast cleared tracts of land). Then came soil erosion, river pollution, and loss of ecosystems. Gardeners even adapted their ways, following the agriculture model. We forgot, if we knew, how soil and natural systems really work.

Now we know that soil is full of life—billions of microorganisms under each foot as we step on it. What gardeners used to do—adding manure or turning under oats or winter rye every spring—was their way to “feed” the soil. (Actually, when we add any organic matter we’re feeding the microorganisms—invisible life forms—and macro-organisms: visible ones like earthworms. The organisms produce or make available the plant fertilizer.

Understanding that, our first job as gardeners is to take care of and improve soil by (a) not wrecking it and (b) by rebuilding it as we use it.

How not to wreck the soil
Don’t put weight on it. Do make wide beds. Feet or machines smash the homes of microorganisms along with their air and water. Compaction also damages soil texture or tilth. You know how clay soil compacts, and it takes years to rebuild. Make wide, permanent planting beds (raised or flat) with walkways you stay on. This looks different from many old vegetable gardens, with single rows a foot or two apart. Instead of a single row of beans or broccoli, plant three-foot rows or blocks of them. Once the garden is planted, work from the sides, or put a paver or flagstone where you have to step to weed or water.

Don’t till it to death. Work once over lightly. Spring fever and a good tiller make monsters of some folks. Well-meaning, they work the soil until it has no texture left at all—it’s pulverized! The point of tilling is to break up the soil crust, and turn over some weed seeds and grubs for the birds. It’s not to make powder. (The powder will just pack solid when water hits it; you’ll have a good clay tennis court.) Instead, go lightly, and leave the soil lumpy. Hand-digging is fine for most small home gardens (and it saves money at the gym).

Lighten up
If you have compacted (often clay-ey) poor soil, add compost every year. (Do not use sand. Peat is fine, but compost is much better.) Put chopped leaves or other organic matter on the garden in fall, and turn the well-decomposed stuff under in spring. Get into cover-cropping (green manure) if you have bare places for future gardens—buckwheat is an easy first effort to improve and de-weed a new area. Unless your soil is polluted, compost and cover crops will bring your soil to life. Organic gardeners produce food mostly by feeding the soil, rarely using organic fertilizer supplements. If you have a rough start, yes, get a boost with the fine products now on the market (organic supplements and the newer microbial boosters). Plants don’t need Miracle Gro or other synthetic fertilizers to grow, and the synthetics set back your progress if the goal is rich, lively, organic soil. Trust compost.
Country gardener Michele Owens saves thousands of
dollars every summer by growing her own.

Creating a new bed
If you suspect polluted soil in your urban garden, or the site was a parking lot, it may be time to buy new garden soil. Buyer beware, however—standards for “topsoil” are nearly nonexistent, so go to reputable people for advice or product. Then hedge your bet. Topsoil can be clay-ey, sandy, weedy, or nutrient-poor. Mix it with at least one-third compost (also inconsistent in quality but nearly always good). Break up the compacted soil below the new beds; poke drainage holes or make trenches to carry off excess water. Then build your new beds wide and two feet high if you can. Prepare to weed early and often, and cover bare areas with mulch.

Don’t kill; strategize
When pesticides were discovered they solved many immediate problems, surely saving lives and producing volumes of food—in that agricultural model. Then they caused other problems. Reliance on them led to increasing dependence, and resistant species, and a long, sad saga of ecological disruption, pollution, and health problems. We know more now, and many practices and products have changed—not all—and the organic farming/gardening movement has momentum. But the kneejerk response of “see pest, spray pest” stuck with us, so that many gardeners still see a bug and reach for a can. It’s a militaristic, control-based model. If it works, it’s in a limited way, but it’s no answer for the long term or the bigger picture. When we spray a pest, we may earn a few beans, but we may set up a chain of events that have more implications than we know. Maybe we’ve only unleashed a little spray that sickens a butterfly—but how important were those beans?

The alternative to the “see bug, spray bug” model? We need to set up our gardens to unleash the power and wisdom of nature. We do want to harvest lettuce that’s not tattered, and broccoli without worms, but getting rid of everything alive out there is not the answer. We know that most insects are beneficial, that there are insects and birds that eat so-called “pests.” The trick is to invite the whole community of creatures, set up a little ecosystem, and orchestrate it a bit—even in our little vegetable gardens in the backyard. We will apply some key principles, add a modicum of trust, and fortify our design with the presence of a hands-on, watchful gardener.

How to lay out a vegetable bed
If you’re growing some tomatoes in pots or have a three-by-six-foot salad patch, layout isn’t a problem. (Do mix in some flowers!) But if the bed is ten-by-twenty (America’s average family veggie patch) your layout helps with plant health and pest management. Several factors are key:

Mix it up; keep it diverse
One big patch of anything, all by itself, just invites pests to find it. Mixed plantings keep the pests confused, and attract predatory insects that dine on other insects. Surround or interplant the tomatoes, beans, or lettuce with cosmos or calendula, dill, or coriander (in your wide rows, of course), and you’ll have pollinators and your own pest management team. Specific herbs and flowers are best for increasing the habitat for desirable beneficial insects, but a variety is the real key. You’ll also be covering up bare soil between the veggies this way, so the weeds won’t have a chance.

Meet the crops’ needs
First, straighten out what are cool-weather crops (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, peas), and plant them first, as soon as the soil permits. They will finish or bolt when the heat comes on. Delay planting warm weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, pumpkins, melons, and beans) until the soil is warm (55°F.) and no frost is possible—usually from June 1 on. Draw your plan on paper and you’ll see that you can plant beans where the peas have finished, and start squash in the lettuce patch, soon to be pulled.

Cucumbers and pole beans climb; winter squash and pumpkins sprawl all over; lettuce is short and wants shade; tomatoes can sprawl or grow upright with support. Plan for those needs. Give peas and beans an upright fence with the lettuce and spinach on the shady side. Give a very wide area for vine crops to clamber—perhaps seeding all the bare space around them with nasturtiums or alyssum or your favorite annuals. Look up spacing for each crop and don’t crowd them, but do incorporate the diversity factor—don’t forget the flowers.

Plan for water
With lots of compost in the soil, most crops will need just a few hours of watering or rain a week—but you must plan on it. As you lay out the garden, set up the rain barrel and drip hoses, and buy a great water wand to disperse water efficiently. Early in the season, regular, even watering makes all the difference if peppers are to set fruit or tomatoes grow normally without blossom-end rot later. And deciding to water in August, if your systems aren’t smooth, gets rough.

More on natural pest prevention
If you’re going all the way with this project, including cold crops (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower), squash, and melons, think about pest prevention early. Bunnies and squash bugs will come. Fences or netting may be necessary. Remay (agrifleece)—a type of white fabric cover—is the best answer for several key veggie pests that even the beneficials can’t keep up with. Spread it over the pole and vine crops, and you’ll be glad you did.

Does it sound too difficult? Growing food is not beyond us. Producing a farmers’ market crop may be. But it does take some planning, intelligence, information, and, finally, the presence of the gardener. Get into it and savor the time. Start noticing the dance of predator and prey. Then, when something unwanted is gobbling the beet greens, you can intervene with your own hands, picking off the pests or setting up a blockade.

It will work.

If we care for the soil, nurture the natural systems, and welcome diversity, our gardens will be teeming with life—including the food and flowers we crave.

Sally Cunningham will be teaching a Vegetable Gardening Seminar on May 2 in Hamburg. See www.lockwoodsgreenhouses.com or call 649-4684. For more information on companion gardening and beneficial insects, try Cunningham’s Great Garden Companions, Rodale Books, 1998.


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