The basics of growing food
So, growing food sounds very intimidating, and in reality, itâs something people knew how to do thru all history, and itâs made even easier by new methods of âno tillâ and âno digâ garden. I didnât know almost anything about it until 3 years ago, when I got a plot in a community garden and started growing food with no experience. Still it went good! Hereâs what I learned:
The basics are as simple as 'if you put a seed underground and keep it wet, itâs going to come out.â If you start off from that, even if you know nothing else, eventually you will succeed. The additional stuff is done to ensure success. The biggest actual issue of gardening isnât how, but when. When are you supposed to put all the seeds underground to get good harvest? For most of the plants, it can be as simple as 'Springâ. For others, itâs very important just when in the spring you plant it.
Letâs say you want to start your first garden, you want to plant some onions, lettuce, peas, green beans, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. All of these can be planted in the spring! But these plants are sorted in 2 categories: Those who can survive a frost, and those who cannot. We call these 'frost hardyâ (those who survive the frost) and frost-tender (those plants will die if theyâre exposed to lower than 0 temperatures). From the ones I listed, onions, lettuce and peas are frost hardy! It means you can plant them very early in spring, such as February and March, and they can be hit with snow and ice and be just fine. They can also be planted in autumn, and they only really start growing in the spring.
Green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini are frost-tender, meaning you absolutely canât grow them before the chance of freezing temperatures is gone. This is known in gardening as 'the last frost dateâ. Every area has a different last-frost date, so itâs good to google yours to be sure youâre planting these when itâs safe to do so. For me itâs mid-April.
Now, since itâs a long time to wait for your plants to grow if youâve only planted the seeds in mid April, people have found a way around it by planting the seeds in little containers inside of their house, or in a greenhouse, so they grow in a nice warm place on a windowsill, and are moved out in the ground when itâs warm and safe. This is a very fun thing to do as you will have bunch of little plants growing in your home. Important thing to know about it is to use really light and airy soil, not garden soil, (you can use forest soil!) and to make sure youâre not over-watering them and you give them as much light as possible.
Soil is another big thing in gardening, the grass grows so easily from it, but you canât exactly plant your seeds into the grass; they will get suffocated. For a long time people have tilled the ground to make it empty of all the weeds and easy to handle; however this isnât healthy for the soil, because it ruins the quality of top-soil, exposes it to sun and wind erosion, and it dries up very easily. Here are some beneficial methods of gardening: mulching and no-dig. Mulching means adding stuff like hay, straw, tree leaves, woodchips, pine needles on top of the soil. Youâre protecting your soil from sun, wind, erosion, drying out, and if your mulch is thick and dark enough, no weeds will grow in your garden. You are gardening by science.
So what does this mean for you, when youâre standing before a patch of grass, thinking of turning it into a garden? You need to do this months before the actual planting, using time to your benefit is the smartest thing a gardener can do. You pick a patch of land and bring in everything you can on top: cut grass, hay, tree leaves you raked or found, straw if you have any, woodchips, anything that will stop the grass from growing. If you really want to build up your soil you can bring in compost too! All that organic material will eventually turn into compost and fertilize your garden as it degrades to soil. Itâs important to not mix it with the soil, and to only keep it on top of the plants. Mixing it will deplete the soil of nitrogen, and you need nitrogen to grow anything green. If you keep bringing in organic material for years of gardening, and on top of that put some compost as well, in 3-5 years your soil will become so rich and soft you will no longer have to use tools to plant in it.
But, hey, if itâs your first time, you donât need to aim for perfection. If you didnât prepare your soil in the fall, whatever! You can still pull the weeds, dig around a little to make some clear soil, and plant your stuff! Iâve done this last-minute planting and it works just fine. Mulching and adding organic material is only the easiest, most scienc-y way to garden.
The next big thing in gardening is spacing and depth: how far apart should your plants be? And how deep to plant them? For depth, the rule of the thumb is 'twice as deep as the seed is tallâ. But Iâve seen people pull various shit in this area and succeed so do what you want. As of spacing, I would also say, try out what fits for you. It takes a year of gardening to get a sense of just how big the plants get, and what would be ideal spacing for each of them. I decided only on my third year to plant tomatoes VERY far apart, because I realized in this case, one plant will give me more than 8kg tomatoes and itâs much less work than planting 3 times as many plants that are close together. Peas seem to like to grow close tho, for some reason. Sometimes you can decide you want a bunch of tiny plants because youâll eat them young, so you donât space them on purpose, people do that with lettuce, leeks, spinach. If you want your plants as big as possible with as much yield as possible, give them half a meter and see what happens.
Fertilization is another big thing in gardening; if you add a lot of compost and mulch your garden consistently, you wonât need a lot more; however thereâs a cool free trick you can do (if youâre not currently sick): you can mix your urine with 10x water, and water your plants with that. And I really mean mix it with 10x water! Plants can get very fried by it and start to wilt if theyâre bombed with too much fertilizer at once! There are rules for this: use it when you want your plants to grow a lot of greenery, not if you want them to flower or produce fruit. This fertilizer is rich in nitrogen, and nitrogen inspires plants to grow more leaves! If you wanna fertilize them later in their growth, put a lot of nettle plants in a big container with water, leave it in the sun for 10 days; when it starts to smell real bad, itâs ready. (you can also do this with comfrey). Also dilute it with 10x water! Donât use these fertilizers on bean or pea plants, or any legume, they donât like it.
Now Iâve given you so much info at once, youâre probably struggling to take it all in, so hereâs a good youtube channel where I learned all I know: Roots and Refuge. If you watch this lady garden for long enough, she will tell you all of the secrets.
I remember being a first time gardener overwhelmed with worry; what if I fail, what if nothing grows, what if I kill all the plants, what if I have a black thumb, what if the plants die because I am stupid, what if I put all of this work in and get nothing, what if people make fun of me, what if I run into problems I wonât be able to solve. Here are some of the answers to these!
A part of what you grow will DEFINITELY DIE. I can guarantee it, it happens to everyone, every single garden in the world has had plants die, sometimes for no reason at all, but in no case will EVERYTHING die. We all count on a part of our plants dying, becoming slug food, not doing well in general, and we always plant 30% more than we absolutely need. Even if you are personally responsible for killing the plants, the plants will not hold it against you! Plants appreciate you spreading their seed regardless of success, they understand that by trying multiple times you will eventually succeed and they absolutely want you to learn thru occasional failure. The answer is again to plant a lot, and it never ever happened that nothing came out of it. Most often, itâs not going to be your fault at all. Sometimes the year will be good for tomatoes and carrots, and bad for peas. Itâs all okay! Because you just planted extra peas, and youâll get more tomatoes than you expected to have.
If you have the desire to plant food, you do not have a black thumb; the green thumb is in the heart that yearns to grow. Youâre not stupid if your plants die, plants die for everyone. And people are likely to come at you with million advice; listen to no one, try everything yourself. If they make fun of you, theyâre gonna look real stupid when you have home-grown food. Any problem you might run into while gardening is google-able! Or you can join a page of gardeners and theyâll be happy to identify the issue.
The real main issue with gardening are slugs and bug-type pests, and that is a problem for another day because all I know to do is to yeet those away by hand and shake my finger very sternly at them. Hope this helps!
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