To say you’re gardening, however, doesn’t mean you’ve necessarily mastered the art of growing your own food. If you aren’t getting the quality or yields of produce you’re expecting, you might be making some mistakes that are holding you back when it comes to growing your own food. We talked with three gardening experts to uncover what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it. Cheers to a summer full of enjoying and sharing your fresh bounty. There are also the gardeners who start their own seeds way too early for the area in which they live. “The problem with all of these scenarios is that you start the season with plants that are already suffering,” says Joneve Murphy, a farmer in residence at The Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, where she oversees multiple vegetable gardens, a dwarf cherry tree orchard, and a greenhouse. Plants that stay in pots too long become leggy, starved, and root bound. Plants that go out too early can become stunted or even burned by the cold. Most will recover and you will get a yield, says Murphy, but it won’t be as high as if they had gone in at the appropriate time as healthy, happy plants. To fix this, find out what zone you are in, and look up your last frost date. (Try this handy tool from the National Gardening Association.) Most seed packets tell you how many weeks before that date to start your seeds as well as when to plant, says Murphy. It’s also a good idea to look at the temperatures required for the plants you are putting in. A tomato plant, for example, can survive outside until frost, but will only begin to thrive when nighttime temperatures are solidly in the 50s (or above). This will tell you your organic matter percentage and you can use that to calculate the amount of compost needed for your garden.) People often overestimate needs with fertilizer, too. “Unfortunately, putting down more fertilizer than your plants need can cause runoff and impact waterways, [and lead you to spend] more money than you need to,” says Murphy. Here’s why: Corn takes a lot of soil resources and is very tall; beans are nitrogen fixers, which help combat the pull of the corn (if you go with pole beans, they can take advantage of the corn as a natural trellis); and the ground-crawling squash benefits from nitrogen fixation of the beans, as well as the tall corn blocking some sun during the day. As a bonus, Williams says having a full row of plants ranging from tall to ground crawling helps to suppress weeds and reduce maintenance. (She adds that she’d also plant some carrots in a row with the three sisters, helping to break up the soil, along with some herbs and flowers like marigolds for pest management.) You should make sure that pathways between garden beds are sized appropriately for the tools you plan to use to maintain them, and the same goes for the garden beds themselves. For example, if you have a 5-inch hoe, then make sure all your plants are spaced at least 6 inches apart so that you can fit your tool between them. “Want to plant them closer? Then buy a smaller hoe,” says Murphy. Your hoe should be your best friend in the garden. Hoeing is meant to be done before the weeds are truly visible and is most efficacious when weeds are at their “thread stage,” when you can just see a tiny inkling of a plant on the surface and the root beneath is a small white thread. Work your hoe lightly through the soil so that you don’t disturb your plants and you don’t bring more weeds up from below. “When done on a sunny day when the soil surface is dry, almost all of your weeds will die before you see them,” says Murphy. Another benefit to hoeing? It can be a pretty zen-full activity. [BTW, here are more all-natural ways to eliminate weeds.] Instead, water your garden every four to five days for a longer period of time. A full inch of water (i.e., about the equivalent of running your sprinkler for a full hour) should sustain them for that four-day period. “This will help your plants to develop deeper root systems that will be better adapted to the hot weather to come,” says Murphy. If you are worried your plants do not have enough water, dig down a little. The surface of the soil may look dry, but if you find moist soil within the first inch or so, then you are fine to wait to water. The time of day for watering is also important. Early in the morning is your best bet, but always avoid watering after 2 or 3 p.m., says Murphy. “Many people think watering in the evening is best, but that is not true. It leaves water on the surface of the leaves overnight, which creates the perfect environment for fungus and disease to move and spread, which it cannot do if the sun is out or if the leaves are dry.” Watering in the early morning will ensure leaves are dry when the sun goes down. It can take a few growing seasons to dial in your gardening when it comes to watering, transplanting, bed preparation, and critter control, to name a few, so it’s best to give yourself some early successes. Besides, heirloom and exotic varieties are often fussy and hard to grow outside of near-perfect conditions, says Albert, and they may not line up with your climate or soil type. Larger bees will work almost any day that isn’t freezing cold or pouring rain, whereas honeybees will stay inside for a drizzle. This is important because many vegetables—including squash, cucumbers, pumpkins, and okra—require pollinators to produce fruit. You can attract wild pollinators to your garden in several ways, says Murphy: The first is to make sure you have flowers in your garden in all seasons, especially flowers that they really like (such as dahlias, snapdragon, or sunflowers). To protect your precious plants, observe your space during dawn and dusk and see who and what is coming and going through your yard or porch, then determine what type of barrier to install. Chicken wire and ground cloth are pretty sturdy deterrents to most of these critters, says Albert. Bug infestations in a small garden plot are slightly easier to control: Most of the time, simply picking off the pesky pests and dropping them into a bucket of soapy water will do the trick, she adds. (The hard part is determining which is a pest and which is beneficial.) Whether that’s cooking and eating it yourself every day, giving it away to neighbors, selling it, or canning it for later, think about how you can best use each type of produce you’re growing to avoid contributing to food waste. And whatever you do, don’t leave excess produce hanging on the plant; it will lead to decay and could bring disease to the plant and surrounding garden, as well as encourage more pests.
