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| Green & Growing: Don't make an Ogre's bed out of your garden (Spring 2008) |
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By Bob Tracinski
Fit your garden to your schedule
There’s an ancient myth about an ogre who owned an inn and made his customers fit the beds by cutting off part of the guests or stretching them. Ouch! Some gardeners turn a seedbed into an ogre’s rack by tilling too large an area and then lacking time to take care of a large vegetable garden. To avoid that trap, start
small. Begin with a modest garden plot. Here are some work-saving tips to help you.
Choose a spot: A location with good drainage,
6 to 8 hours of direct sun, and close to a tap for watering. Your garden will need 1.5 inches of water a week.
Measure the bed: Using wooden stakes and string, cordon off an area you can weed. It helps to draw a diagram by thinking of the kinds of crops you want, how much space they’ll take, and where you’ll plant them.
Remove the sod: The easiest way to do this is to spray the area with a herbicide that stays active for only four to six weeks such as Roundup or Kleenup. You want to kill the
grass to reduce weeding chores later.
Prep to till: After waiting six weeks for the herbicide to dissipate, cover the seedbed with organic matter (peat moss in the north, pine straw in the south) and 1.5 pounds of 10-10-10 fertilizer for every 100 square feet.
Till without tilt: When using a walk-behind tiller, put the depth bar at a shallow setting for the first pass to just break up the surface. To keep your tiller from leaning to one side, leave a strip of untilled ground between passes. Till in an elongated S pattern from one side to the other, then go back and finish the untilled strips. When the entire bed has been loosened, then set the depth bar at a
deeper setting and till in a different direction.
Set the depth bar at its deepest setting and
till in yet another direction. Mix the soil
thoroughly, but don’t pulverize it. Powdery
soil sets hard after a rain and keeps shoots
from breaking through.
Think plastic: To reduce weeding, use plastic
sheets for tomato and pepper plants, cantaloupe,
squash, and other plants that vine.
The sheets come in solid varieties, and mesh
that lets water through. Spread the sheets out
and use rocks or bricks to hold them in place.
Sow wide: For radishes, carrots, and other
vegetables started by distributing little seeds,
consider wide-row gardening. Instead of casting
the seeds down a narrow trench for a long
thin row, toss them around in a broad band
so that their foliage will shade out weeds.
Fence it in: Since your garden may attract
hungry varmints, it’s a good idea to put up a
fence. Bury the bottom of the fencing so that
burrowing animals can’t tunnel in. Chicken
wire keeps most critters out. Now you’re ready
to put in transplants and sow seeds, but don’t
overdo it. Don’t make an ogre’s bed that will
take all the fun out of backyard gardening.
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