01
Mar
When you are planning your garden, be it container garden, raised bed, or backyard patch, what are the most important items to consider?
Here are the top three details that we believe you should ruminate when garden-planning:
Motivation
Why are you planning a garden? Are you looking to scratch items from your shopping list each week? This is a reasonable purpose as we take a huge gulp each time the cashier hits “total” at the grocery store. It’s no secret that the food prices are soaring; according to Canada’s Food Report, rising bread, meat, and vegetable prices are expected to lead the to the overall food price increase of three to five percent in 2021. Are you looking to decrease your environmental footprint? Creating self-sustainability around your dinner table, lunchbox, and winter freezer are exceptional reasons to establish a garden. When I started my first garden it was intending to have whole, healthy snacks on hand for when my kids were hungry. Knowing where the food was grown, how it was treated, what was in its soil and fertilizer- these were all of the utmost importance to me as a mom and should be important to us as its consumers. Your motivation could be the personal challenge of seeing if you can achieve the growth of your salads, or to see how much you can stock in your pantry. One of the best ways to learn to garden is to keep trying and learning; hopefully from others who have done it before so that they may teach you a trick or two. Make a list of your goals for your garden and let that lead you. It’s important to be intentional about how you would like your garden to work for you!
Location
To quote most realtors I know, “Location is key”. The same goes for your garden. The majority of the vegetables and fruits you will plant enjoy full sun, so you’ll want to make sure they receive at least six to eight hours of light per day. South-facing gardens tend to be most successful with light exposure, so if you can achieve this then that’s half the battle. If this is going to be a challenge, then invest in a grow light. They are worth their weight in gold if they can help you to grow the food you’re striving for.
Ensure that you have a water source nearby. The last thing you’ll want to have to do each morning is schlep gallons of water to your thirsty transplants. A dripline with a timer is an incredibly efficient tool for those who cannot commit to the daily watering, but I usually find that the morning watering is a great time to observe your garden as well.
The convenience of a garden starts to diminish the further you place it from your kitchen. If you are a forager by heart, then perhaps the harvesting of your yield from a half kilometre away works for you; but to step out your backdoor to your kitchen garden- now that’s expediency for you. Think practically about how you want to access your plants at the end of a long day.
Preparation
If you are planting in a raised bed or a container, you are the lucky ones who know exactly what is in your growing medium right off the hop. However, if you have a location where plants are going to lay their roots down in the ground, it will be an excellent time to perform both a pH and a textural soil test (also known as the Jar Shake Test). These tests will tell you what you are looking to amend, what your soil needs may be, and how you can get the best yield by making your garden work for you!
Do your research around plants that benefit one another; by the nutrients they bring up from the soil, their growth habits, and/or the beneficial insects they attract. The act of placing these plants together to allow them to grow from the other’s success is called companion planting. Before you decide on what you would like to plant in your space, pull out a little literature, phone a friend, ask around. What plant works best with that strawberry basket? Why do onions and green beans dislike one another? There’s a follow-up blog on the way about companion planting, I can feel it.
In our incredibly biased opinion, growing your produce is one of the most rewarding experiences we can have. Your garden is an incredible tool in personal nutrition, food budgeting, self-sustainability, and excitement around the act of placing something YOU grew on the dinner table. Success is all in considering the details first.