Annie Spiegelman's Dirt Diva tips:
- Find an area of your yard that gets 6-8 hours of sun a day. If this is a new plot of soil that has never been amended, you might want to do a soil test first. This will tell you the pH of your soil. Most vegetables grow best in a ph of 6-7, which is a bit on the acidic side.
You can find a simple soil test kit at your local plant nursery. If your soil test shows a very low pH (acidic) you can amend it with limestone. If your soil test shows a very high pH (Alkaline) you can amend it by adding sulfur. Both of these amendments are available at your local nursery.
- Before you add any amendment, first weed the area by hand, as if your life depended on it. There are many new weeding tools on the market that are shaped like a claw and can make weeding fun! (Sort of.) After it's weeded, loosen the soil a bit if it's compacted.
Then rake in any pH amendments and add a 2-3 inch of compost to the top. If your soil has been neglected for years, you can also rake in an organic fertilizer at this time. E.B. Stone's 'Sure-Start' is one that I like. It's effective and is pet & kid-friendly.
- Now you're ready to plant. For some helpful planting designs visit my favorite local place to buy seeds, www.reneesgarden.com. She has some vegetable plot spacing information on the website as well, that's useful and clear. You can also plant some herbs and flowers like nasturtium, Shasta daisy and yarrow, nearby your food. This will help to invite beneficial bugs to eat up any pests that come to visit your vegetables.
- If planting from seed, straight into the ground, make sure to mist your seeds every day lightly till they come up as seedlings. You'll want to do some thinning once the plant is a few inches tall. See directions on the seed package. If you're planting a 6-pack of vegetables (seedlings) using a drip system of a soaker hose is ideal. This way you're not getting the leaves wet and spreading fungal spores to your plants.
- If your crop develops a pest or disease problem, find some garden-geeks at your local Master Gardener office. (Look up local offices nationally at the American Horticultural Society's website. wwwAHS.org) Take a specimen in to be diagnosed. They'll recommend the most environmentally sound way to approach it. Safer, cleaner gardening product recommendations can be found at ourwaterourworld.org
Annie Spiegelman is a Master Gardener and writes the "Dirt DIva" garden column in the Pacific Sun newspaper. You can visit her at www.dirtdiva.com
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