Some easy - small - productive garden methods...
Sq ft Gardening
What’s sq ft gardening? Is it a dance? Actually it’s almost the opposite, because when you have a square foot garden layout, it’s rather easy to sit down on the job.
Sq ft gardening, or square foot gardening, is also called a box garden... and you’ve guessed it... it’s all done in small squares or boxes.
This is one of the easiest ways to garden. It makes gardening a pleasure for those who are frail or handicapped.
So grab your pardner (or a spade) 1..2..3.. and lets go square dancin’!
Doin’ the sq ft gardening shuffle
But first a teensy bit of strenuous preparation. Build your garden first (the no-dig method naturally) using a solid boundary, such as planks, logs or tyres, around the edges.
Make your square foot garden beds long and narrow, or make a U-shaped bed, allowing for cultivation from either side without having to step on the garden. If your garden is against a wall, make it your arm’s reach wide.
On the outside of the planks or edge, knock in short upright stakes. If they get a bit skewed sometimes, sort them out but no need to be too fussy. The inside is then divided by coloured tapes or string into roughly 12-inch (30cm) squares.
This size seems to be not too big, not too small, but just right... sorry Goldilocks! Really these sq ft garden plots mean no wastage, and make it easy to use the minimum of seed, thus a minimum, if any, of thinning.
Per square you can plant one cabbage, or two cucumbers, three marigolds, or four lettuces, 4 parsley, or eight beans, or 16 carrots, and so on.
As with all gardens, planning your square foot garden should take into account the usual rules, like north/south aspect for sun, water availability, and prevailing wind.
And because this neat little box gardening method is so suitable for the less-than-agile gardener, make the site as near the kitchen or living room as possible so you can easily nip out for some garnish, a lettuce leaf, or spot of maintenance.
After harvesting one square, add a trowel of compost, maybe some mulch and rotate with different plants, You can see that sq ft gardening is not at all daunting as you do it square by square over time if necessary.
Most work can be done seated, though some people prefer to kneel. You can lean down from an ordinary plastic chair, but don’t strain your back. You may find a low bench seat with back support the best. Use an adjacent light chair to help yourself to rise by putting a hand on its seat.
Straw Bale Gardening
Limited space? No soil? Toxic or rocky ground? Spare corner? Edge
of drive or yard? Here’s bales of advice for you on the
straw bale gardening way.
Especially good for those with dickey backs, straw bale gardening needs only someone to lug the jolly bales into place and with a minimum of effort you’ll have a marvel of bounty and beauty indeed.
We can learn from others here. There are timely tips on straw bale gardening that will save you angst. Here’s the hoedown:
The bale is the garden. Put it on your balcony or path if you want to.
Use one or umpteen bales as you need and in any pattern. Because straw bale gardening is raised, it’s easy to work with, so make sure you allow for handy access.
Wheat or oat straw is best as it’s the stalks left from harvesting grain with very few seed left. Hay bales are less popular as they are made of whole plants with mucho seeds and often other weeds in. Use what you can get locally — it may even be lucerne or pea straw bales.
Put the bales in the exact place, because it’s too hard to even nudge these monsters once you’ve got your little straw bale garden factory in full swing. You’ll get one good season out of a bale and usually two, albeit with a bit of sag. It makes for great compost or mulch when finished with. Straw bale for garden
Lay them lengthwise to make planting easy by just parting the straw. Make sure the string is running around each bale and not on the side touching the ground in case it’s degradable twine. Keep the twine there to hold it all in place and if it does rot, bang some stakes in at both ends.
Starting off with slightly aged bales of about 6 months is best, but if they’re new, thoroughly soak with water and leave for 5 or so days whilst the temperature rises and cooks the inside, then they will cool and be ready for planting. They won’t be composting much inside yet, that takes months, but you don’t want that initial hot cooking of your plants.
Some sneaky people speed up the process of producing microbes and rot by following a 10-day pre-treatment regime of water and ammonium nitrate on the top of each bale. But, hey, organic gardeners are a patient lot aren’t we, so let’s follow nature?
Keep watered. That’s going to be your biggest task. Straw bale gardening uses more water than a normal garden, so set up a system now. It may be that swilling out the teapot on it each day is enough in your area, or you may need to keep the hose handy.
Straw bale gardening — plants to plant
Annuals of vegetables, herbs or flowers will love it. Remember your bales will be history in 1-2 years. Young plants can go straight in. Pull apart or use a trowel and depending on the state of the straw, put a handful of compost soil in too, then let the straw go back into place.
Seeds can be planted on top if you put a layer of compost soil there first.
Top heavies like corn and okra, are not so good, unless you grow dwarf varieties. With straw bale gardening it’s hard to put solid stakes in so big tomato plants are out, although they will happily dangle over the edge.
Each bale should take up to half a dozen cucumbers, trailing down. Squash, zucchini, melons — maybe 3 plants, or a couple of tomato plants per bale with one or two herbs and leafy veggies in between. Four pepper plants will fit or 12-15 bean or pea plants.
There’s no limit and why not poke in around the side a plant or two of some flowering annual for colour and companion if you like.
Once every 1-2 weeks water in a liquid organic feed, such as compost tea or fish emulsion. Tip some worms on top if you want to use your bales only one season.
It’s simple to pull out any wayward grain seeds with straw bale gardening, but with hay bales you may need to occasionally give them a haircut rather than try and pull the tenacious new sprouts out.
One of the neatest ideas ever, it’s not too late for you to give straw bale gardening a go somewhere around your place.
Lasagna Gardening
Another practical and natural short cut to digging and tilling, lasagna gardening follows the same guidelines as other no dig methods.
You know those barren, sloped, stony, weedy, sandy, clay compacted places where you look at aghast and wonder how you could ever get a garden going there? That’s where lasagna gardening proves its worth.
Just toss down layer upon layer - that’s what a lasagna garden is - layers.
Start with old leaves, then 5-10 layers of newspaper, or some thick cardboard, then some grass clippings, next some compost, then straw. Soak it well with water.
OR... start with cardboard, then old grass, straw, compost, then coffee grounds, more grass, prunings, fruit peelings, veggie scraps, wood chips, seaweed... just keep piling it on.
Honestly you can do any topsy-turvy way you like with whatever material is at hand. It will eventually all rot and provide a great home for your plants.
Obviously there are tried and true materials and the order they are layered, that speed up the process, but lasagna gardening is just like other no-dig methods, whether done by gardeners, or in the wild... layers of whatever nature happens to whirl around in the environment then drop on the ground, covered with something from a passing animal, then some leaves fluttering down, a dead branch or two, and soon the worms and crawlies find a home there. Then a few seeds decided to set up home and grow, and so the cycle continues.
With lasagna gardening - as with all no-dig methods - using newspaper or cardboard, or your old school reports if you want to, suppresses any greenery underneath and decomposes well. Equally important, earthworms love paper and stampede towards it, nicely aerating the soil.
To plant small plants or seeds in your layer garden, use some compost or potting mix. For shrubs, or any plants that need some soil around their roots, you will need to dig a hole and put some compost in first.
Raised Vegetable Garden
What is a raised vegetable garden?
Often called raised bed gardening, it is a method that includes no-dig, no-till, lasagna, straw bale, and square foot gardening.
Raised gardens can be as high as a kite, as low as you can go and as many layers as you want to stack on.
Toy blocks for raised vegetable garden layers
A raised vegetable garden is loved by gardeners’ backs, because there is less stooping and digging.
So, phooey to all that seriously wicked waste of energy and let’s get onto the perennial argument over which raised bed gardening method is best.
I know what way works for me, and I can tell you it’s more than one way! I successfully tried:
* Layers of old natural carpet instead of paper or cardboard.
* Mushy kitchen scraps slopped straight onto tangled weeds and grass, sprinkle of lime, wet newspapers, topped with piles of fallen leaves and grass clippings... then planted seedlings in with small handfuls of soil or compost.
* Bulldozed pile of cleared backyard mess (just moved there) with mostly branches, giant weeds, even old washing machine parts, and the odd cannabis plant... planted zucchini and pumpkin plants each in a good dollop of compost in the pile... and watched as the pile shrunk and the zucchini and pumpkins took off!
And so on... the point being, is that there are hundreds of ways to make a raised vegetable garden, and there’s no digging involved and they are built up from the ground, sometimes in boxes, tires, crates, or just natural mounds.
Step 1. Lay out your garden area. Leave the grass it will die, or cut it if you wish. The garden beds can be any height needed. I’ve previously built ones for community groups of about 1m (3ft) high to allow for wheelchair access. It’s a matter of layering to get things to the height you want.
Step 2. Lay out old cardboard. Try your local supermarket for this... recycling again...love it...
Step 3. Wet your newspaper before your spread it out—it will stick together when you overlap it.
Step 4. Spread WET newspaper OVER cardboard making sure that it overlaps by about a quarter to one third of its size. By doing it this way you are cutting out the sunlight and the grass will die and it, as well as the cardboard and paper, will all rot back and feed Mother Earth.
Step 5. Next comes a layer of Lucerne Hay (more food as it breaks down).
Step 6. A thin layer of Manure (in this case “Moo Poo”) is then laid out...
Step 7. Finally this is all covered with a layer of straw (I use Pea Straw as it adds more nutrient as it breaks down) and it also works as a mulch for your plants keeping them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
raised vegetable garden Les 8 Step 8. From here it is just a matter of making a small hole in the top layer of straw and adding a handful of potting mix or compost and planting into it. You can see the results of this one that I prepared earlier.
I hope that this inspires you to build your own raised vegetable garden and to get out into your yard and smell the
roses (or cabbages).
No Till Gardening
No till gardening really should be called no till farming, because it is referring to the elimination of conventional farming ways of plowing, compacting, degrading and eroding vast areas of farmland by the use of machines.
Some readers may have quite large plots of land or grow vegetables in a small commercial way, in which case the following information will prove invaluable.
And just a mention for first timers into no till gardening. If your land has not yet built up a good layer of compost with all the necessary soil activity, then it may be necessary to aerate the soil yourself.
Plants need sun, air and water to thrive, and if the earthworms aren’t there yet, the soil will need to be broken up deep down for you to get a decent crop in the beginning.
For a large plot of land, run a machine over it with prodder type spikes, and for a smaller plot, get yourself a long prodding garden fork and off you go. You don’t want your plants to come to a full stop when their roots reach a hardpan layer.
Don’t turn the soil, just poke holes in it. It’s no till gardening, not no poke holes, so don’t feel guilty because it’s not as though you’re turning the soil layers over or compacting the soil, (which is what conventional farming does.)
When no till farming first became popular, many farmers used chemicals or burning to get rid of their crop remains and weeds instead of plowing them under. Oops, that created more problems with chemical run-off into lakes and streams, and poison residues. Was plowing still a better option?
No... plowing or rotary hoeing is terrible for the land in the long term. There are many complex reasons, and you may like to read further information on this by soil experts. But for now here are a few simple points.
Firstly tilling creates soil erosion, because it breaks up the structure of the soil and fine particles are then easily blown or washed away, or washed down into the porous gaps in the soil and over time this actually clogs up the soil.
This can cause any one of the following depending on the clay and sand composition of the soil: Loss of soil; water-logging; too much aeration; compaction — made worse by heavy equipment; and formation of a hard topsoil pan which hinders seed germination and stops water infiltrating.
Secondly, although tilling initially makes crops produce abundantly because of sudden aeration, this is often excessive and abnormal for the plant.
In the meantime organic matter, bacteria, fungi and earthworms are all destroyed by tillage and not able to maintain the fine balance of harmony by providing nutrients to plants in a timely cycle. Eventually more and more fertilisers have to be used to maintain production.
No till gardening is natural and the soil ecology is NOT sent topsy turvy. Tilling damages and exposes earthworms and fatally buries other beneficial organisms including some that would normally help control invaders — such as plant-eating nematodes.
Tilling releases CO² into the air, whereas if there was a rich organic soil layer, this carbon would be in the plant remains and thus retained in the soil. You can read more about how in no till gardening sequests CO².
Not only that, but the reduced use of heavy farm machinery with the no till gardening method, decreases emissions of CO².
What farmers, market gardeners and small plot owners are doing now is either total no till farming or “conservation tillage.” This means leaving the ground and any cover undisturbed, but using, if necessary, less damaging machinery to open up enough of a furrow or hole and in many cases do the sowing or planting with the same run.
Some of the popular implements used are harrows, cultivators and chisel plows. These land friendly machines only lift and moderately break the soil and prepare the surface for seed sowing or planting.
In poorer countries of course, hand or oxen tillage is done by armies of farm workers. But for small scale gardeners anywhere, a fork and rake with occasional spade use for planting are adequate.
The longer no till farming is practised and the sooner compost is added or plant remains left to decompose in the field, the better the soil structure becomes. Over time, the yeilds have proven to be higher with this method.
The golden rule with no till gardening is to avoid inverting the soil and tread lightly or not at all on your planting area.
http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com
Straw Bale Gardening<<<
I have used this method, when the Bermuda grass was so thick, from many years of growth and I wanted vegetables.
Maybe about 1965 Organic Gardening had an article on it, said it was used every 7th year in Israel to allow the land to lie fallow and recharge.
As I recall, I put manure on it and started the watering for several days. Let the goodies from the manure mix down in the hay, then added a layer of peat moss and topped that with sand and planted, as I recall it all grew.
Bill took scrap lumber and built a simple box around the bales and that helped to keep the moisture in them.
All your methods in the article are good ways to garden..
Interesting post. The link doesn’t give enough info for larger gardens-maybe not practical for large gardens. Hubby has made his annual pronouncement “ no garden this year-too old-can buy what we use cheaper.” Maybe he really means it this year. I can sneak cukes, tomatoes, squash and watermelen into my flower beds, but green beans and especially sweet corn are my two favorite veggies and it’s real hard to plant these two in flower beds. It seems that I would need a lot of material for the top of the ground for no till to work. Have plenty of manure with a lot of shavings mixed in from daughter’s two miniature horses, but afraid it is not rotted sufficiently to use exclusively. Plenty of seaweed locally but read somewhere that it should be washed-probably because of the salt-never have washed it, but have never used it as a large percentage of the mix.
It’s a real quandry. Never been without a vegetable garden in our 60+ years of marriage. The no till method appeals to me as I have always maintained that these big tillers do more harm to the soil than good and the soil dries out faster when you fluff it up with a big tiller. Hubby’s tiller is awaiting a new bearing (what else is new).
Maybe I will just go ahead and start some tomatoes and he will change his mind as he does every year and we will wind up with a garden big enough to feed the whole neighborhood.