How to Plant a Vegetable Garden?

[theprez9]

Greeting all!

I am about to start my first garden. I've helped my mom while growing up with a veggie garden, but I handled more of the manual labor.

I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and my wife has picked up some Burpee seeds of what she would like (me) to grow.

She got:

* Cucumber - Sweet Burpless Hybrid
* Tomato - Super sweet 100 Hybrid
* Carrot - Sweet Salad Hybrid
* Spinach - Baby's Leaf Hybrid
* Pepper - California Wonder
* Cantaloupe - Hearts of Gold
* Strawberries (still have to buy)

I have a few questions that I would greatly appreciate any insight.

I am planning to put the garden in the corner of our fenced in backyard which will have sun about 80-90% of the day. It was become shaded towards the evening as the sun sets.

Here is a picture of the backyard (pic was taken prior to fence being completed). I am thinking of making a longer and narrower garden.

[img]https://i41.tinypic.com/24myexk.jpg[/img]

The backyard is complete with irrigation system but I may run a dedicated hose/sprinkler to the garden to better isolate the watering.

Question #1) I am not sure how wide and long to make the garden for starters. I'd like to plant the seeds in row(s) by veggie so that they are together. Probably would have the tomatoes at the end of the garden by the tree line so the sun wouldn’t block the other veggies.

Question #2) Any recommendations to laying down a raised wooden border around the garden? I know it would make grass cutting a little easier, and also give me the option of adding some good soil and till it up. I have a 26â€

[tomhath]

You're going to have three parts to your garden. Perennial (strawberries), cool season vegetables (spinach, carrots), warm season vegetables (everything else you have).

I'd till up at least two separate beds. One for the strawberries because they'll be there for a few years, and at least one for the annual vegetables. Some people like to have long narrow beds with paths between them, four to five feet wide so you can reach the middle and about twenty feet long. Better too small than too big at first so you can stay ahead of the weeds and get a feel for how much it produces.

But first, contact your county extension agent and ask about getting a soil test. It doesn't cost much and it'll tell you if you need lime and how much of the other major ingredients (potassium and phosphorus). They can make recommendations for the lawn too.

Up against the woods like that you'll probably see more wildlife than you like (especially rabbits), just part of the game.

[Lupinus]

Size depends entirely on how many plants you want. You can do short rows of a couple plants, or bigger for more plants. Bigger still if you want several rows of the same plants. Decide how many of each plant, and multiply by the recommended space.

[quote]Question #2) Any recommendations to laying down a raised wooden border around the garden? I know it would make grass cutting a little easier, and also give me the option of adding some good soil and till it up. I have a 26â€

[theprez9]

Thank you very much for the replies!!

Appreciate any other thoughts out there.

[Burnet]

You mention "rows", so I wanted to make a comment. If you already know all of the below, please ignore me. :)

In a raised bed garden, I wouldn't do classic rows with a lot of space between them. I'd instead do...er...is it intensive gardening? French Intensive Gardening? Square Foot gardening? Is there a single generic term that just refers to spacing?

Whatever it's called, what I mean is: plant at the recommended seed or plant spacing in all directions, in as wide a band as you can reach across for tending and picking. Ignore the row spacing. This avoids wasting water and fertilizer and weeding time and just plain space, on a lot of unused area.

So, for example, I have a seed packet for peas here that recommends 2 inches between seeds/plants and 18 inches between rows. If I have, say, a two foot comfortable reach, and I'm going to be reaching in from both sides, I would plant a band four feet wide, with the seeds planted in the band two inches away from each other in all directions. This gives me many more plants in the space. The effect is less dramatic for larger plants, but it's still usually worthwhile.

I'm not saying, though, that tighter spacing is better in general - I think that when you do this, it's especially essential to thin to the recommended between-plant spacing to ensure that things aren't overcrowded.

For a raised bed garden, I'd make the beds as wide as you can reach, with mulched or gravelled or grass paths between them, or perhaps one really long bed running against your back fence and the grass going right up to it, so that the paths aren't bare dirt that needs a lot of weeding. In this case, the bed would be a bit narrower, because you can only reach into it from one side. You can also try setting a stepstone in the bed at intervals, so that you can lean one hand on that stepstone and extend your reach.

Our permanent beds have a line of paving (in our case, stepstones set in gravel and sand) between them and the lawn, flat with the lawn, so that when we mow we can put one wheel of the mower on the stones and avoid the whole edging issue altogether. These beds don't happen to be raised, but the same thing would, I'd think, work with your raised beds. That's a lot of infrastructure for the first year, but if the garden becomes a really permanent fixture, it might end up being worth it.

Burnet

[cynthia_h]

John Jeavons' methods--detailed in his book How to Grow More Vegetables-- were (ancestrally) based on 19th-c. French Biointensive methods. Mel Bartholomew (Square Foot Gardening) also uses a form of intensive gardening.

Neither uses traditional rows, except perhaps between separate beds/containers.

But they're both "intensive" methods of horticulture.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9