Do you think it may be time for you to plant your first food garden? Good! It probably is. Here’s some advice from a pair of organic gardeners just a little farther along on the learning curve about what’s key, what’s not, and how to get started.
Here are some basics, for example – and keep in mind some of this is specific by climate:
- Get started organically; eventually we’ll all be growing that way.
- Learn how to do it from research, not just from seasoned gardeners. (In our experience, about half of what seasoned gardeners “know” is just plain wrong.)
- Start small, but even as you do, think big.
- Grow close to where you live.
- Demand full sun.
- Know how you’re going to water
- Start with really good soil.
- Keep something growing year round.
- Use mulch, cover crops, and companion plants to keep the soil covered. Bare soil is never a good thing.
- Grow only what’s proven to grow well in your area, and grow only what you enjoy eating.
Listen – 22:03
Amanda is checking on the sweet lupin winter cover crop growing in #8. It’s small now, but by late February it will be stout and hearty. It will build biomass in our soil, set nitrogen, and keep the weeds down. Behind Amanda are the windows of our little home in the pole barn, from which she looks out every morning to see how her garden is doing.
Here are some of the publications we talked about during our conversation: