It’s time to start the vegetable garden!
Lydia Constantini | For The Sun — We’ve had a bit of a slow, wet start, but here we are at the jumping off point for our spring and summer vegetable gardens. Let’s get going!
Soil Preparation
This is perhaps the single most important exercise in the success of your garden. To enrich your soil, use your own compost, or add a good, high quality garden product to your native soil. The addition of well composted mulches and manures will enrich and enhance your garden for greater growing success.
Fertilizing
Plan to use a good start up fertilizer when planting your garden, we prefer E.B. Stone brand ‘Sure Start’. Always choose a fertilizer containing beneficial Mycorrhizae bacteria along with multiple organic products to help create the relationship between soil and roots. In addition to the Mycorrhizae bacteria, the fertilizer in Sure Start gives your plants the immediate boost they need to get them through the first crucial weeks after planting. Thereafter, a well-balanced fertilizer, organic or standard, your choice, used monthly, will help to keep your plants healthy and producing for as long as possible throughout the season.
Watering
Daily watering of your new plants, especially the first 4 weeks after planting, will be necessary. This will help with root growth and enable the plant to grow and produce in the future as it should. After the first month or so, depending on the weather, change to watering 2-3 times per week. Water more in hot weather. Remember to use your water wisely. For instance, corn is a very thirsty crop. Do you really need to use your precious water on a vegetable that is very inexpensive to purchase during the season? Grow what you like to eat and what will give you a good return for your water investment.
Successive Planting
Beans, carrots, lettuce, radishes, corn and the like mature quickly and then they are finished, leaving you with an empty vegetable bin. Plant successively every 2-3 weeks for continuous yields throughout the summer.
Perennials
Save room for horseradish, artichokes, rhubarb, berries and asparagus.
Finally, everything will look like what you do to it. So if you don’t water or fertilize your plants, they will look like that. A few well-spent minutes a day will reward you with a bounty of delightful homegrown vegetables year ‘round.
Lydia Constantini operates Sonoma Mission Gardens, 851 Craig Ave. 707.938.5575. Sonomamissiongardens.com
More from The Sun Gardening Issue:
14 Tips for Sustainable Gardening
Under the Sun: Steve Carara, volunteer farmer
