Category: Ask a Gardener

Just starting a garden? Here are eight quick answers to questions that often arise.

Tip

A vegetable garden needs a minimum of 6 hours, preferably 8 per day.
Have less sun? Consider focusing on lettuces and leafy greens instead of fruit-bearing plants like tomatoes.

Tip

There is no need to put landscape fabric or other weed barrier under the bed if placing on grass. The soil will kill the grass. But if you want a barrier, try a thick layer of newspaper.

Tip

A typical mix of soil for raised beds if 50% top soil and 50% compost.
Vermiculite is a great addition to keep the soil fluffy.

Tip

Mulch around the bed instead of letting the grass grow right up against it, which would be hard to trim. A weed barrier would be helpful here.

Tip

If setting up more than one bed leave four feet between them if possible.
That leaves a generous space for a wheelbarrow.

Tip

Do you tend to be very orderly and structured? Try square-foot gardening:
https://squarefootgardening.org/

Tip

Do you tend to be free-form and spontaneous? Go for it!

Tip

Enjoy your garden!

A customer recently asked what soil is best to fill her new raised bed and whether it’s good to use yard-waste compost she and her husband have built up over the past few years.

An essential question and a great reason to return to garden educator Dorothy Mullen for the second in our series that I’m calling “Ask Dorothy.”

The first thing Dorothy noted is that there’s no point in having a raised bed if you don’t take advantage of the opportunity to enrich the soil from the typical clay-heavy soil you’ll find in yards around here.

The simplest way to do that is buy some from a supplier, such as Belle Mead Coop, that has already made a mix meant for gardening. As Dorothy says:

The Belle Mead mix is ready to use.  It is not as light as the square foot gardening mix, but much less expensive.  I’d recommend it.

If you’re going the do-it-yourself route:

The high clay content around here requires lots of compost or amendments to make it light and rich.

It’s controversial, but I was taught that compost from leaves is actually not very nutritious, but it’s wonderfully light and excellent for the texture.  It brings up the one disadvantage of raised beds which is that the nutrients in the soil mix drain out quicker than they would in conventional in-ground beds, so raised bed gardeners should plan on using some kind of fertilizer.  I use Espoma Garden Tone and sometimes fish emulsion.

The Square Foot Gardener swears by this formula: 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 blend of compost, which you can buy until you are making your own compost.  It’s expensive at first, but remember that a raised bed will grow more than twice the vegetables of the same space in a regular bed.

Peat moss is not a renewable resource so I use some but not nearly as much as I used to.  I like it in the first year to get a new garden off the ground.

If you use your own compost, it may be filled with seed, particularly if you compost weeds.  Leaf compost won’t have this problem.  Use mulch to suppress weeds if you use seedy compost.

In short, the experts disagree on the best method.  Personally I use lots of my own compost in subsequent years, but the first year I set up a bed I buy materials to make my soil mix.  I skimp on the vermiculite which is horrifically expensive and I use oodles of compost and a little fertilizer.

I was glad Dorothy put in her strong plug for raised beds and followed up by asking why she says a raised bed will be twice as productive as the same space in a regular bed. Again it’s a matter of soil:

Raised bed soil is perfect. Jersey clay is not.  You get twice the productivity because the roots don’t have to work and you add nutrients.  The downside:  hairy carrots.  Some plants LIKE heavier soil.

There is rarely a perfect answer.

 

From time to time I’ll be asking a timely gardening question of master gardener Dorothy Mullen. To start off our series, today’s question is: What are some simple things to consider in choosing a spot for a garden bed?

There is some guess work involved in selecting a location because you have to predict where the sun is going to shine for at least six hours (for leafy greens) and preferably eight hours (for anything that fruits, like beans and tomatoes).  For crop plants, you want as much south-facing, uninterrupted light as you can get.  You need to be sure you have a water source near by.  That’s pretty much it if you’re doing a raised bed.  You don’t need a soil test because you are bringing in a growing medium.  The deer pressure is way less in my neighborhood than it used to be, but if you have to protect against deer, you’ll need a 7-foot-high fence.  You can get steel posts and netting at Obal’s or Belle Mead Co-op.

As for putting the bed down in your chosen spot, Dorothy added:

You want to lay thick whole sections of newsprint under the soil to suppress weeds for a year or two, and I put the newsprint around the bed and covered with mulch too to create a walkway.

Don’t let the grass grow right up to the bed or it will be a headache to mow around it.

Speaking of gardening tips: Dorothy will be leading Lawn-to-Food tours and workshops on the second Saturday of every month from April to October. Each session will start at 9:30 a.m. at Riverside Elementary School. The workshops are free, but participants are required to register in advance by emailing Dorothy. The first workshop, on April 14, is a great way to get started:

Bring a paper egg carton; we’ll have starting mix and seeds to share.  Take home a dozen different seeds to start.  Also learn to direct sew seeds into raised beds, starting with plants that tolerate some frost: kale and collard greens.  Take home raspberry bushes.

 Please check back for more gardening tips!