GETTING THE MOST
FROM YOUR BACKYARD GARDEN

Free and Open to the Public

Experienced Backyard-Gardeners Share Their Growing Tips for Saving Money and Healthy Eating

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our four-session series this spring!
Please check back in the early Fall for information about a one-day session on
PREPARING YOUR GARDEN FOR WINTER.

See below for useful links and detailed information about the topics we discussed this spring, including planning, preparing, planting, and preserving.

FOURTH SESSION
How do we use what we harvest?

As each plant comes ready for harvest, we have many options for making the most of our garden’s bounty. Countless cookbooks line local library's shelves with recipes for everything you could grow and more. The most useful cookbooks to backyard gardeners, however, are those that are arranged seasonally or that are written by cooks who also have gardens. (Too many recipes these days are created without the garden in mind, throwing together vegetables like asparagus and eggplant or snow peas and bell peppers that any gardener knows don't come ripe at the same time in the same place.) Barbara Kingsolver’s excellent book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about feeding her family on home-grown food for a whole year, has an entire chapter dedicated to zucchini and what to do with this backyard favorite when it's overrunning your kitchen in the heat of summer. Alice Water's new book, The Art of Simple Food, provides a small number of basic recipes and then builds upon them with the flavors of different seasons.

Most vegetables, when garden grown and freshly harvested, need little more than sautéing in butter or oil with a dash of salt to taste delicious. However, those of us with an interest in cooking can find countless ways to prepare whatever we have grown in our gardens. In addition to simple sautéing or steaming for a side dish, here are a number of basic suggestions for how to add your backyard vegetables to things you already make (doubtless making the dishes healthier in the process). Using whatever vegetables happen to be ripe, you might chop or slice them and

add them to pasta dishes (this works with just about anything)
cook them into spaghetti sauces
add them to casseroles (lasagna benefits tremendously from a few layers of sprinach)
scramble them with eggs or add them to omelets
add them to strata, frittata, and quiche
add them to soup (this is an especially good way to use winter greens like chard and kale)
turn them into dips (blend with sour cream, crème cheese, mayonnaise, or whatever dip base you like)
add them to salad (raw or cooked)
turn them into pesto (this works not only with basil but with just about any herb, especially if you supplement non-leafy herbs like rosemary with spinach as a filler. You can experiment with different oils and nuts as well—for example: cilantro, peanut oil, and peanuts, make a wonderful pesto blended with a dash or cayenne and salt)

One way to preserve the delicious tastes of summer is to can what you grown. People used to survive our long New English winters primarily on foods they preserved in the summer and fall, and our own winter plates can benefit greatly from this tradition.

Canning is easier than it looks, requires on a little easily available equipment (big pot with rack, tons, jars), and is quite safe a long as you follow the recipe’s directions carefully. Most fruits can be cooked and preserved in sugar as jams, many vegetables preserve very well in salt and vinegar (cucumbers aren’t the only things worth pickling!). A great many things can be frozen if you have the freezer space to keep them, though one of the beauties of canning is that those jars of cherry sauce and pickled asparagus will sit blithely on your kitchen shelf when the first big storm knocks our the power and all of your frozen goods begin to melt.

There are basically six methods for preserving food:

Water bath canning
Pressure canning
Pickling
Freezing
Preserving in oil
Curing and smoking

Rather than go into any of them in depth here, I will recommend an excellent book that was recently published on canning: Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting Up Small Batches of Seasonal Food by Eugenia Bone. One of the most useful features of this book or the backyard gardener is that it is focused on small batch canning, so that the process is actually manageable for one person in an ordinary kitchen, and the quantity produced is actually consumable by a single family. Ms. Bone not only includes information on the hows and whys of food preserving, but she also pairs her canning recipes with cooking recipes. What exactly does one do with six half-pint jars of cherries in wine? She will tell you, and your dinner guests will be delighted.

Food also makes wonderful gifts, and Christmas cookies aren’t the only thing worth giving. A bag of homegrown vegetables has solidified many neighborly relationships, and a basket of produce with a “please take!” sign is a welcome sight beside most any office water cooler or church coffee hour table. Jars of preserved foods nestled in a basket or trimmed with a cloth skirt make excellent, always ready gifts.

Canning, like gardening, does take time, but done one batch at a time it is not overwhelming, and when done in the company of a friend or family member it is a fun way to spend an afternoon. Having preserved food on hand also makes cooking healthy meals quicker and easier even when we haven’t had time to go to the store, and keeps the fruits of our labors on the table even when our gardens have gone to sleep for the winter.

THIRD SESSION
How do we plant a garden?

In planting a vegetable garden, once we know what we want to eat; once we have measured the sunniest part of our available space; and once we have we created a bed for our seeds and young plants, then we are ready to plant them.

Planting techniques differ slightly for seeds, tubers or bulbs, or young plants, but whatever needs to be planted, the following small tools will be useful, and have been discussed in our classes at St. Andrew’s:

Spading Fork
Small Shovel
Trowel
Rake
Hoe

String and pegs
Ruler or yardstick
Dibble
Row markers
Wooden or bamboo stakes
Terracotta pots

Gardening gloves

A dibble is a carrot-shaped tool made of wood or metal that makes planting some seeds and many small bulbs easier. Sometimes an old pencil or knitting needle will work better than a dibble. You might also want to add some metal or wooden basins or bowls to your garden equipment (these hold seeds nicely while you are outside). If you have room for a large tool, then a

wheelbarrow

can reduce the heaviness of the work, in many circumstances. Even wheelbarrows can be purchased at yard sales for relatively small sums of money, though of course your local hardware store will be glad to sell you a new one.

No matter what you are planting, either flowers or vegetables, one of the goals should be the creation of a beautiful garden. This is surprisingly important for vegetable planting. You will have to look at your vegetables for an entire growing season. If your rows are crooked or if the plants are not nicely laid out, then some of the pleasure of having a garden will be lost (or at least, that has been our experience). One hundred years ago, serious gardeners used to `bed out’ and make patterns with their flowering plants and lettuces, so that gardens resembled old-fashioned quilts in their complexity. While that level of attainment may be beyond most of us (though this remains the standard, especially for herb gardens), then what we should strive for is neatness. Neatness in the garden helps the plants to grow, and it helps us to keep down weeds. Neatness also leads to beauty, and beauty is one of the great joys of gardening.

The easiest way to make your rows straight in the garden is to use string and a peg. Sometimes you can obtain reels or string-winders that will make this part of the job go faster, but if your garden is small, then it is a simple matter to unwind some string where you wish to plant a row of any crop. Unwind the string and peg it in the bed. Is the string straight? Will your rows be parallel? If you are planting many rows at once, you may need several lengths of string to set out the pattern all at the same time. A few moments of care now will ensure a satisfying effect all year long.

With the dibble or the end of a trowel, make a mark in the soil of the bed under the string. This mark is called a drill, and making a drill really is like drawing a picture on the earth, for this is where your plants will grow in a straight line.

If your garden is small, and your soil is rich, you can plant rows of vegetables closer together than your seed packets recommend. In a small, well-tended garden, you can plant rows only one foot or eighteen inches apart, especially for root crops (like carrots or beets), beans, or salad foods.

You will also want to leave some space where you can walk between some of the rows to weed, harvest, or otherwise tend your plants. A little path like this need only be about a foot wide.

PLANTING SEEDS

After you make the drill, you can remove the guiding string, and you are ready to sow the seeds. Follow the directions on the seed packet for the depth to plant the seeds. Small seeds usually need to be planted ¼-1/8th of an inch deep, and larger seeds may need to go deeper. Once you have placed the seeds in the drill, gently draw soil over them to the recommended depth. You can use a trowel, a dibble, or a hoe for this task. If the weather is windy, it is a good idea to press down gently with the flat part of a hoe using a light stamping movement. This ensures that the seeds will stay where you put them, and it will mean that all parts of the seed will touch the particles of soil. Therefore they should germinate more easily.

Some seeds are easier to handle than others. Beans and corn fit easily between the fingers, but carrot seeds and others are often too fine to be sown comfortably. Some gardening catalogues offer small tools like giant eye droppers than can help, but it may be easier to use the crease of the seed packet as a guide in sowing small seeds into the drill.

Some seeds will sprout quickly, in a week or less. Others will take longer. The technical term for sprouting is called germination. In order to germinate, the natural coat or husk of the seed must swell and split in the damp ground, and the seed must send out its first delicate root. Once the root is established, the embryonic plant that has been waiting inside the seed will shrug out of the coat and push its way up through the surface of the soil. When you can see the young plant with its seed leaves, then we say that the seeds have germinated. Most common vegetables and flowers have their own germination rate that will be specified on your seed packet (the germination rate is known, because the seeds have been tested to see how well and how fast they sprout). Those rates are guidelines: if the year has been rainy or warm, germination may happen more slowly or more quickly than you expect. Prolonged cold and rainy weather may prevent your seeds from geminating properly. If the weather is harsh and your seeds do not sprout in a reasonable frame of time, you may have to replant.

Some seeds, like carrots, are notorious for being slow to germinate. You can make this into an advantage. When you plant carrots, plant radish seeds with them in the same drill. The delicious radishes will be in your salads by the time the carrots are fully starting.

Larger, coarser plants, like corn or squash, might do better in hills than in rows. A hill is a grouping of seeds, usually four or six, that have been arranged in a circle, so that the mature plants form their own group in the garden. The idea of the hill was developed by the people who lived in this part of the world before the settlers arrived from across the ocean. They planted corn, beans, and squash together in hills, so that the beans grew up the stalks of corn, and the squash leaves filled out under the corn. Hills are still useful, but we recommend that you plant your hills in straight rows.

It is a good idea to mark the beginning and end of every row so that you remember what you planted and where you planted it, even as you follow your garden plan. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is not: once the rains come, the marks of drills will disappear, and you may not know where you planted your seeds until the young plants germinate. Many hardware stores or nurseries will sell plastic row markers, and while they are useful, they are also unsightly. Some people use wooden ice cream sticks to mark the ends of their rows. Whatever you use, you should find them attractive.

Germination is one of the great miracles of the garden. No matter how small the seeds are, every healthy seed carries inside its husk the embryo of a plant. Plant embryos have one or two seed leaves (depending on the species). The seed leaves of plants look different than the more mature leaves that the plant will grow once its roots are established. The seed leaves are temporary. Once a young plant will have its real leaves, the seed leaves will wither and fall away. Probably you will not notice this, but it is a natural part of the life of the plants in our gardens. The shape and appearance the leaf of every different type of plant is unique. Young beans will look different than beets and tomatoes will not look like lettuce. With experience, you will be able to tell the difference at a glance of even the youngest rows of crops. Then markers will no longer be necessary.

PLANTING TUBERS AND BULBS

Onions are usually planted as marble-sized bulbs called sets, and it is best to plant them as early as possible, as most onions will not want to grow larger after the longest day of the year (June 21st). After you make the drill, you can remove the guiding string, and make a small hole in the ground with a pencil or dibble about every three to six inches. Press one onion set into each hole and cover.

Garlic is best planted in the autumn (garlic is a type of lily) and it can be planted with other flowering bulbs then. They like full sun. Plant garlic as you would onions. Each clove of garlic should make one full bulb. The tops will sprout before the winter sets in, and they will grow again in the spring. Using a spading fork, dig up the mature garlic bulbs when the tops begin to turn brown in the summer, usually in June. The bulbs should be cured in the sunshine in the open air for a day or two (on a tarp or in a wheelbarrow) before they are stored.

For the backyard gardener, potatoes (and dahlias) are best planted as tubers, which is a special underground organ that some plants have developed where they store starchy resources that they will need for growth. The roots and the stems of the plants will grow out of the tubers. In potatoes, the growing places are called eyes. Specialists do grow potatoes and dahlias from seeds, and it is a rewarding hobby to do so. Those of us who are more interested in flowers and in dinner make our start from tubers.

Some people have found good success in planting potatoes that have been cut into segments. They cut the potato so that every eye in the tuber will be able to start its own plants.

In our experience, in a small backyard garden, it is even simpler to plant a whole potato.

After you make the drill, you can remove the guiding string, and you are ready to plant the potatoes. With a trowel, dig a small hole deep enough to bury the potato. Potatoes should be planted eight to twelve inches apart in the row. Rows can be planted about a foot or eighteen inches apart.

Once the potato starts to send stems and leaves above the ground, it is a good idea to heap more soil around it. This task is called hilling, and it encourages the plant to set more potatoes than it would do otherwise.

By mid summer, eager gardeners can carefully remove some of the soil of a hill from around a potato plant to take some of the new potatoes, which are especially tender and delicious. New potatoes need to be only lightly washed before they are cooked, and they are particularly delicious with butter and herbs.

Even in this day and age when potatoes are cheap, it is worth your while to grow a row of fancy potatoes of a sort that may be difficult to find in the market. Potatoes are a new world crop originating in Central and South America and there are many hundreds of different varieties (including blue and purple potatoes) the vast majority of which are not sold in US supermarkets. Some of the best kinds are available through mail order catalogues, and they are worth your efforts.

For the flower bed, dahlia tubers should be planted in the same manner as potatoes, except that the stakes that the growing plant will need for support should be pressed into the soil at the same time that you plant the tubers. This means that you will not inadvertently injure the tubers by impaling them later with your stakes (potatoes need no staking). Dahlias grow quickly and some of the “dinner-plate” varieties can have flowers that are larger and heavier than sunflower blossoms. As a rule, dahlias will need stakes.

Potatoes can be dug at any time after mid-summer, but especially when the plants begin to look tired and brown. They should definitely be dug before frost, and the plants will likely be dead before the weather cools sharply. Using a spading fork or a shovel, dig down at the edge of the hill and carefully dislodge the potatoes from the soil. It is a great satisfaction to see the golden or red (or even blue) potatoes emerge from the dirt every year. It is an easy matter to put them in a wheelbarrow and let them air in the sunshine for a day before putting them in storage. They do not need to be washed until you wish to eat them. Store potatoes as you ordinarily do.

Dahlias will blossom until frost. They are one of the great joys of the autumn garden. Cold weather will kill the plants immediately (frost is definitive in New England, alas), and many old-time gardeners used to lift their dahlia tubers after frost and store them in their cellars for the next year. This is a fiddly business, as we have never had any luck in storing dahlias so that the tubers do not shrivel and die. If you have a method that brings you success, please let us know. Even experienced dahlia growers can be challenged by the reluctance of the tubers to be stored. We buy ours from year-to-year, and we regret that the tubers will not over winter in the ground outside.

SETTING OUT PLANTS

Many backyard gardeners plant their tomatoes, pepper plants, egg plants, and many other flowering plants as young plants that they have purchased at the nursery, garden center, or supermarket. This means that someone else has started the young plants as seeds in a greenhouse. Most seeds today that are started commercially are planted in a type of plastic tray or cell-pack that has four or six growing compartments to a pack. Sometimes young plants will be sold in fibrous grow-pots. Or, larger and more mature plants that are almost ready to bear are sold in plastic buckets.

In selecting plants, be certain that they look healthy. Their stems should be fairly straight. Their top-most leaves should be green. Avoid plants that are bent, broken, crushed, or bruised. Look for signs of insect infestation, like white fly, which will rob your young plants of their strength. Avoid buying packets of plants that are weedy. Tomato plants should smell like tomatoes.
Egg plants should have downy leaves and be ready to bear their purple blossoms. Peppers should have glossy smooth leaves.

After you make the drill, you can remove the guiding string, and you are ready to plant. Water the young plants. With a trowel or a small shovel, dig holes along the length of the drill one foot or more apart (peppers and eggplants can be planted closer together at eight to ten inches). Each hole should be large enough to bury a soft ball. Fill the holes with water. Every hole should be heavily watered.

The following process is called transplanting, and young plants do better if they are transplanted on cloudy or damp days, because their roots suffer less shock. Gently remove the young plants from their containers. With cell-packs, the young plants can be pressed out by pushing up on the bottom of the pack, or by cutting off the plastic. We recommend that you remove young plants from even from the type of fibrous grow-pots that are supposed to provide nutrition for growing plants, for in our experience they retard healthy growth by the roots.

Place one plant in each of the holes you have dug and bury the roots. You can hill the soil around the stems, and this is especially good for tomatoes.

Water the young plants heavily. Water them at any time in the next few days if the soil looks dry. The roots of young plants must grow in order to supply the leaves, the flowers, and the fruit with water and nutrients. Water is essential for all plants in the back yard garden. Plants will need water all summer if the weather is dry.

PLANTING IN CONTAINERS

Not everyone has enough space for a full garden, but if you have a sunny spot, you can still have a tomato plants, or peppers, or some other vegetable that will grow in a container.

A container can be a large terracotta pot, or a metal can, or a ceramic tile, or even a large plastic bag that is filled with soil. Many people in apartments in New York and other cities have large “grow-bags” for plants that they raise on their balconies or roof-tops (which must be strong enough to support the immense weight. One pint of water weighs one pound. A gallon of water weighs eight pounds. One large potted plant will weigh much more than eight pounds with its container and moistened soil. Roof-top gardeners are warned).

Ideally, containers should have some drainage so that the soil does not become water logged and sour.

Terracotta (or the familiar unglazed red ceramic pots) is best for almost all ordinary growing plants. If you only have a small space, obtain the largest pot that will suit your circumstances.

Small stones or other objects should be placed in the bottom of the pot to help drainage. Also, if your pot is to sit on wood or another surface that might be spoiled, you should have a waterproof saucer or a metal container under the pot to protect the flooring. Container gardening should never be allowed to rot the wood of a deck or a floor.

After you have put a layer of stones or objects in the bottom of the container, fill it with a good quality potting soil (hardware stores or nurseries sell potting soil inexpensively), then transplant your tomato or other plant into the pot, watering heavily as suggested above. One healthy cherry tomato plant, transplanted into a large container and set in a sunny place with adequate water, can provide a family through an entire summer.

Gardening catalogues and web-sites now offer an astonish array of pots, grow-bags, ceramic vessels, and other containers to help the gardener who has no actual space for a traditional garden. Some people report excellent success growing tomatoes or other vegetables in some surprisingly small spaces, or unusual places.

Even if conditions are challenging, do not be left out of the satisfaction of growing your own.

SECOND SESSION
How do we start a garden?

In starting a vegetable garden, once we know what we want to eat, and once we have measured the sunniest part of our available space (see FIRST SESSION, below), we have to create a bed for our seeds and plants.

The bed is the place where the plants that we want to cultivate can grow. We can have vegetable beds, flower beds, or mixed vegetable and flower beds.

A bed is created when the grass or turf of a lawn is removed (either by being plowed in or stripped away). Then the fresh dirt is dug to make it ready to sustain young plants.

Large beds on farms are plowed with tractors and heavy equipment. Before the Second World War, backyard gardeners used to ask their farming neighbors to bring their horses and a plow to prepare their vegetable beds.

We will assume here that you are going to make a smaller, backyard bed, something that would range from the size of a table top to a small plot, like our 10’ x 12’ example.

There are several different methods for starting a small vegetable bed. One of them will work for you.

• In the fall, pile a deep layer of leaves or other compost over the bed. As the winter goes on, the leaves will smother the turf, and make the bed easier to turn. Or,

• In the spring, you can rent (or buy) a rototiller to turn the turf and soil. A rototiller is a miniature tractor that you walk behind and direct (like a lawn mower) that will dig up the grass and pulverize the soil using its machinery. It will require relatively little exertion on your part. It runs on gasoline like a lawn mower, and it is a serious piece of equipment. This works best if you have a larger plot, or if you cannot do really heavy work, or if you like to use machines. Many garden supply stores or rental shops will rent rototillers. One or two afternoons will be enough to do your job. Or,

• In the spring, you can hand dig a bed with simple tools. This works best if you have a smaller vegetable bed, and if you wish to do the heavy work of digging.

Not everyone wants to hand dig, and many people cannot do so. Digging a bed is at least as much work as shoveling a sidewalk after a heavy snow fall. If you are not supposed to shovel a sidewalk, then you yourself should not hand dig. Someone else should help you.

There’s no right way or wrong way to start, and no one way that is best overall. The point is that you should do whatever is best for you in your particular case.

What tools will we need to start a garden?

You will need some tools that will help you with the job. Even if you use a rototiller to start your bed, some small tasks will require the use of hand tools.

Here’s the list that we talked about at St. Andrew’s:

Spading Fork
Spade
Small Shovel
Trowel
Rake
Hoe

Gardening gloves

All of the tools we mention here can be purchased in a hardware store or gardening shop. It’s a good idea to go and see the types of shovels, forks, and other tools that are offered for sale. It’s also fun to lift the tools, and find one that is the right size for your height and your build. A good tool is worth the money you will pay for it, if you use it for a long time: and the best digging tools ought to last a lifetime. Still, no one ever has enough money, so some of the best tools can be bought at garage sales. Good shovels and forks can be bought for $5 or less ($2 is a fair price for a small used spading fork or a hoe). Everyone can afford to garden at these prices.

A spading fork is a digging tool. Instead of having a blade like a shovel, it has three or four flat teeth. It is used like a shovel, but it breaks up the soil more easily than most shovels can. You can use a spade fork to lift the turf from the area that you wish to make into a vegetable bed.

The best time to dig in southern Connecticut is at any juncture between late March and late May, after the ground unfreezes and it is not too cold to work outside. The worst time to dig is when the ground is frozen, or if there is standing water on the ground. Then you will have to wait until the ground has melted or drained, and the soil is ready to be worked. As a general rule, the soil should be slightly damp, because it is easier to manage then, but not sodden with water. Before you begin, wait a day or two after a heavy rain and the soil is almost dry.

If you are using a rototiller, the machine will chew up the grass into tiny pieces and mix it into the soil automatically. It will also lift and fluff the soil for you. Usually, you will need to pass over each section of the bed only once to complete the task. Drive it over your plot of ground like a lawn mower in long, straight rows.

If you are hand digging, push the tines of the fork deeply into the soil. Pull back on the handle and lift out the grass by the roots. Shake the dirt from the roots. The grass that you remove can be put on your compost pile. Remove all of the grass from the area you wish to plant.

Once all of the grass is removed, push the tines of the spading fork as deeply into the naked soil as you can, and pull back to lift and shake the soil. This procedure is called cultivating the bed, and it is one of the oldest of all human activities. Lift the soil and turn it back onto the bed. Lift and turn all of the soil of the bed. For a 10’ x 12’ bed, this process takes four hours or less every year (the same amount of time, more or less, that it would take to drive to a rental shop, rent, fuel, use, and return a rototiller).

As you dig, if you live in New England, you will find stones. Here in Stamford, they range in size from large marbles to something approximating a large potato (and often much larger than that), and they are what remains from the sequence of at least four periods of glaciations that New England suffered in its pre-history. The glaciers stripped the topsoil from the continent and deposited it into the Atlantic Ocean, making Long Island and Cape Cod (as a result, Long Island is a gardener’s paradise, and it is justly famous for the quality of its vegetables) The glaciers scraped and broke the underlying bedrock and distributed it in pieces across New England. Running water afterward shaped and smoothed some of the broken stones. Ever since the glaciers melted, the land in New England has been trying to recover through building its forests. Lawns and fields must be mowed, or else the trees will reclaim the land. Where we create our vegetable beds today, the people who lived here before the settlers arrived had established orchards and fields of strawberries, and they were growing corn, squash, and beans, as well as other crops. In many parts of Connecticut, the land you live on has been inhabited and cultivated for thousands of years. We are latecomers in making our vegetable beds here.

Because you will find stones, you must plan to do something with them, for even small stones get in the way of growing plants. Small stones arranged in a thick layer make an excellent mulch to keep down weeds in out-of-the way places (like under a bay window). Large stones make good material for building walls, like the stone walls that we still see along roadsides of what was once open farm land.

Once all of the turf has been stripped away from the bed, and the soil has been dug deeply (and the stones removed as they are uncovered), then the dirt should be raked smooth with the type of heavy toothed rake that is made of iron or aluminum and has a flat profile (the fan type of rake that you use for gathering leaves in the fall is not the kind we mean).

When the bed is ready it should really look like a bed: smooth and comfortable enough to lie down on. Ideally, the soil itself should resemble chocolate cake, and look dense and crumbly and dark. There are technical terms for the quality of the soil: for crumbly, the word is friable, which means that the individual particles of the soil will not clump together, as it will do it if is too wet. To test to see whether your soil is friable, pick up a handful and squeeze it. Release your hand, and the dirt should trickle out between your fingers. If the soil makes a lump in your hand, it is too wet or too heavy. If it is too wet, wait to dig and wait to plant. If it is heavy, you will want to dig some organic matter (like aged compost or manure) into it to give it some lift. Small plants with growing roots will be discouraged in soil that is too heavy. Because friable soil is dense yet crumbly, it is said to have good tilth, an ancient word that means that the soil is ready for planting and for growing food.

FIRST SESSION
What do you like to eat?

In starting a vegetable garden, this is perhaps the most important question.

Few have ever had enough money, and no one ever has enough time.

Therefore, we have to be clear: what do we enjoy eating? What are our favorite flowers? And can we grow them here, ourselves?

Even in Connecticut, we can grow more types of food and more varieties of flowers than perhaps we realize. Our classes on Getting the Most from Your Backyard Garden are meant to show us how.

What do you like to eat? The place to start is by making a list of the foods we enjoy most. Here’s the list that we have started to think about at St. Andrew’s:

Beans
Cabbages
Carrots
Corn
Garlic
Herbs
Lettuce
Melons
Onions
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Winter Squash
Zucchini

Your list may be different, but many of these are all-time favorites. All of them can be grown in your backyard. Many of them can be grown on your deck, and some of them can be grown on a windowsill.

Few have ever had enough space, and no one ever has enough sunshine.

Therefore, we have to be clear: how are we going to grow what we enjoy eating? Is There Space for a Garden?

First we start with space for the garden. Where will our garden go?

If you have the space for vegetables, your garden should go in the sunniest part of your backyard.

Measure your potential growing space with a tape measure or yard stick. Then get out some graph paper to make some plans about where your vegetables and flowers will go. Take note of where the sun will fall, and any large obstructions that might block the sunlight from falling on your garden.

Below is an example of a garden plot that is about 10 feet by 12 fee. This garden is only 120 square feet in size, and it suffers from shade in the afternoon, but the amount of food that can be grown in such a small space every year is phenomenal. On the small backyard scale, rows of vegetables can be planted about one foot apart. Six zucchini plants, for example, can produce at least 75 squashes in one growing seasons (that’s over 225 servings). Six winter squash plants can produce enough food to keep anyone in pumpkin pie over the winter.

Once you have measured your space, then you can draw in some plans to get an idea of where your vegetables can fit.

- - - - - - - - - - - - hedge - - - - - - - - - - - -

carrots & carrots & onions
lettuce radishes parsley sunflowers flowers

	û	P		û	o	Rose- bush	*
	û	O		û	o		*
	û	T		û	o		*
	û	A		û	o	Zuc- chini	*
	û	T		û	o		*
	û	O		û	o		*
	û	E		û	o	Zuc- chini	*
	û	S		û	o		Corn
	û			û	o		Corn
Zuc-chini Nasturtiums	Zuc-chini Nasturtiums		Zuc-chini Nasturtiums		Zucchini Nasturtiums		Runner BeanTeepee Nasturtiums

- - - - - - - - - - - - lawn - - - - - - - - - - - -
NORTH

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Can you plant flowers with vegetables?
Yes. In fact, planting flowers among or beside your vegetables can help your vegetable garden thrive. Flower attract pollinators, as well as beneficial insects like ladybugs and lacewings, and some flowers repell pest insects. Click here for specific suggestions.

How much time does having a vegetable garden take?

Once a garden is planted, the garden will have to be mulched or weeded. Young plants will need to be watered in dry weather. No one ever has enough time, but as a minimum, you should plan to spend about the same time on the garden every day that you would spend in walking a dog.

What if I only have a sunny deck? Can I still grow something?
What if I only have a shady yard? Can I still grow something?

The answer to both is yes, and we will post some suggestions shortly. Watch this space.

Saint Andrew's Church

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR BACKYARD GARDEN

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Gardening Resources

Cooking and Recipes

Local Farmers Markets

GETTING THE MOST
FROM YOUR BACKYARD GARDEN