Tips for Small/Urban Gardens

At the moment I’m afraid I don’t have time for an in-depth article on square foot gardening, maybe sometime soon though. In the mean time, you can get some of the details from the Square Foot Gardening Website.

This post is to help me (and all you readers out there) remember the recommended spacings for various types of vegetables in each square foot patch of land. In general, the following amounts of each vegetable will maximize (but not overcrowd) your use of a well fertilized one square-foot patch of ground: (more…)

Unfortunately, in most urban areas it is pretty much inevitable that there will be some nasty little rodents of some kind lurking about. In my case, there seem to be plenty of squirrels and a few rats around, which I’m hoping won’t be too much of a problem once growing season comes around this year. Just in case, I’ve looked into many possible solutions, and here is what I have found:

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I’ve recently been planning my own small garden, and have been developing a list of things to keep in mind as I go about my planning. Some of these items are common sense, and some of them didn’t occur to me until I started really thinking about my design. I’m finding the trick with a small urban garden is to find a balance of all of these items.

Don’t Over-Crowd

The first rule is to be realistic about what you are putting in your space. It may be unrealistic to think that you can fit a large seating area, a vegetable garden, an herb garden, a rose garden, 5 peony plants, a water feature and a couple nice shade trees all in a 200 square foot patio. The first step in planning should be to prioritize what the things are that you would like in your outdoor space, then work out a plan for getting them in there. Start out with your top priorities and then expand if you find you have the room, that’s a lot better than putting too many things in place only to have them fight each other for the available sunlight and soil.

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Often when I’m picking out plants the instructions will say to prepare the soil with a 5-10-10 fertilizer or some other combination of numbers X-Y-Z.  These are easy enough to find in the stores, but what does it mean?

These types of fertilizers are sometimes referred to as N-P-K fertilizers, where the N-P-K stands for Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium.  There is a much more detailed chemical analysis of this at wikipedia, but the important things to know for most small gardens are:

• Most city soil is probably lacking in a lot of nutrients, so something should probably be done to amend it a bit before planting.
• If a plant calls for a “nitrogen” fertilizer you want something of the N-P-K variety where the “N” is the largest percentage (i.e. 50-10-10).
• These types of fertilizers are a no-no if you want your produce to be “organic”.  Heavy use can also degrade your soil quality over time, so don’t go overboard with these in a small garden.

Personally, I try to stick with more organic soil ammendments like coffee grinds and composted remains of vegetable waste, with the occasional batch of wood ashes from my charcoal grill.  Not only does this reduce the amount of waste that I’m throwing out in the garbage, but it can be better in the long-term for my limited supply of soil.  It also means that I don’t have to keep several different types of fertilizer on-hand in the very limited outdoor storage space that I have.  There are some disadvantages of this method too though:

• the nutrients in these organic fertilizers are more dilute than the inorganic variety, meaning a lower yield of produce unless I really pile a lot on.
• my piles of coffee grounds and composted veggies is very inconsistent, so there is no way for me to match up plants with their ideal soil conditions.

One of these days I’d like to start a real composting system, or even a vermicomposting system so that I can get a nice rich consistent organic compost to fertilize with.  But, that’s another topic for another day!

In a small garden it really helps to get the most out of your limited space by taking advantage of all the verticle space that is available.  Lots of great flowers and vegetables can be trained to grow vertically, as long as they are provided with the proper type of support.  Here is some information about the various types of climbing plants out there that I have summarized from an article by Kathy LaLiberte: (more…)

Because my garden is so small, I try to pick plants that will look nice for as long a season as possible in the limited space that is available.  Given that, I’ve decided to try out the “Endless Summer Hydrangea”, which is relatively new…or newly available at least. 

The endless summer is a breed of Hydrangea that is able to bloom on new growth (typical hydrangeas bloom only on the growth from the year before), making for more flowers over the course of the year.  In addition, the endless summer is resistant to powdery mildew, which can be a big problem in my area where the summers are quite humid.  The standard “Endless Summer” hydrangea will grow from 4 to 5 feet tall and flowers in pink, blue or shades in between depending on the soil chemistry.

Several varieties of “Endless Summer” are available, including Penny Mac, Oak Hill, Decatur Blue and Blushing Bride.  There is also a dwarf re-blooming variety called the “Mini Penny” which is what I am planning on trying out as a space saving measure.

The hydrangeas are distributed by McCorkle Nurseries; you can go to their website to find a distributer near you.  They are also carried at most Home Depot and Lowes Garden Centers, and will most likely be available in September and October, which is the proper time to plant them on the east coast.

The hydrangeas are hardy in zones 4-9 and prefer partial shade with moist (but not wet) soil.  Blooms will generally be pink in alkaline soil and blue in acidic soil.  Removal of spent flowers will encourage reblooming of the plant with this variety of hydrangea.

Here’s a great article about growing peonies by Leonard Perry that I found on the University of Vermont Website.  I think it provides a great summary of the information needed to grow peonies, so I’ve quoted the whole thing here:

One of the most outstanding perennial flowers that is grown in the garden is the peony. Even though this plant seems to have been grown forever, it still remains very popular today. Of course, there are reasons for this and even though there are those gardeners who do not use this plant in their gardens, they certainly should. There are few perennials that can offer beautiful flowers in the spring and provide good foliage throughout the summer.

The peony is a hardy perennial that, once it becomes established, will flower for many years with little care. They are extremely hardy and easily withstand the winter conditions in Vermont. Peonies are considered by many gardeners to be the backbone of any perennial border because they do produce good foliage and flowers. The plants have long supplied cut flowers for use in the home or on cemetery plots.

The plants are either planted as single specimens mixed among other plants or in clumps or masses. They may be planted in rows forming a background for smaller plants. There are basically two forms of peonies: Herbaceous (Paeonia officinalis), and Bush or Tree (Paeonia suffruticosa). The herbaceous type grows to a height of 2 to 4 feet and the tree form reaches a height of 4 to 6 (more…)

 

I’m finally settled down in a house where I plan to stay for several years, so this coming spring I will be attempting to grow some asparagus for the first time.  A few quick facts about asparagus:

• Asparagus can be grown in most parts of the United States
• They take about 3 years to begin yielding a crop
• Although they prefer full sun, they will tolerate partial shade

From what I can gather based on my research (haven’t tried it yet), here are the steps for planting asparagus: (more…)

Although I’m lucky enough to have at least a small patch of land at my current house, I spent the last couple years with a 100-square foot balcony as my only outdoor space.  Don’t be discouraged by a lack of land though, just about anything that you can grow in a traditional garden will work just as well, or sometimes better, when grown in containers.

Here are a few tips that I learned over the last few years with my container gardening:

• If you are on a balcony, mix a good amount of peat into your potting soil to reduce the weight of your container garden.
• Dirt in containers will warm up more quickly than the ground in the spring and will cool down much more quickly in the winter.  If you have perrenial plants in containers year round it is a good idea to find them a sheltered place out of the wind during the winter time so that they will be as warm as possible. (more…)
   

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed a system of zones that help us to determine which plants are best-suited to which areas of the country (sorry, I only have a map for the US here).  As this system of zones is pretty central to my plant selection process I’ve provided a link at the top of the page labeled “Zones” for quick reference.

The map of zones is divided into regions determined by their average low temperatures.  Within the lower 48 states we generally have zones 3 - 10, which are defined as follows:

• Zone 10 - Low temps 30 to 40F
• Zone 9   - Low temps 20 to 30F
• Zone 8   - Low temps 10 to 20F
• Zone 7   - Low temps 0 to 10F
• Zone 6   - Low temps -10 to 0F
• Zone 5   - Low temps -20 to -10F
• Zone 4   - Low temps -30 to -20F
• Zone 3   - Low temps -40 to -30F