Maintenance And Care Of Your Vegetable Garden
The success of the Vegetable garden depends on the maintenance and care it gets throughout the year. Plants don’t just grow they are grown. You or somebody else has to be the care taker. This requires hands on involvement to insure proper watering, proper spacing, weed control, staking, and constant observation of what is taking place. It is fascinating to see how fast things grow and change on a daily basis. Weather plays an important role. When there is too much rain, we need to make adjustments in our watering schedule. We need to be conscious of fungal problems. Each day can present a new problem and it is up to the people attending the garden to make good and timely decisions. A vegetable garden can be rewarding and yet sometimes discouraging. It is a learning process and you get better with time. Many scientists have researched the fact that there is a bond that humans develop with their plants. My father would whistle and sing to his plants each morning when he watered them. He grew great plants. When you end up with great yields, you are elated and usually end up giving food away. Your family and your neighbors are proud of you. Gardening requires hard work and dedication to achieve success. If you involve your children and other family members, you will expose them to a learning experience that only Mother Nature can teach. Those who love plants learn to love and those who battle the storms of nature grow up to become stronger people with a strong work ethic. Gardeners know what it takes to achieve success. In a divisive world the one uniting force we can all look up to is Mother Nature.
I am going to try to cover some important maintenance items to be aware of.
ADD MYKE AT PLANTING TIME:
Myke is a product that should be applied to the roots of the plant at planting time. It has mycorrhizal fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with the roots of the plant. This relationship develops a deeper root system and leads to healthier plants and higher yields.
SPACING
On a small plot spacing can be a very tricky situation. There are many guidelines on seed packets and other charts that provide ideal spacing for all vegetables that are grown. The problem is we can’t follow these guidelines in all situations. These guidelines are good for the large vegetable garden with lots of space. In the small plot we would be very limited to the amount of varieties and quantity we would be able to grow. With increased production and limited space we need to be very creative with space. With raised beds we don’t need to space cucumbers as far apart if we let them hang over the side. Lettuce can be planted closer together and leaf types harvested by removing every other one twice before you reach your ideal spacing. Tomatoes on the other hand will find reduced production if planted too close together but other crops can be under planted in this area to save room. Peppers can be crowded a little bit closer than their ideal spacing and staking of some vining crops can save valuable planting area. You are going to have to work out these problems and adapt them to your situation. Experience is your best teacher. Record your layout and tweak it each year. The empty pages in my book notes and observations gives you space to record information. Try to rotate crops by not planting the exact same thing in the exact same position each year.
WATERING
Water is probably the most important factor in growing a healthy plant. Too much of it or too little of it is detrimental to a plant. Oxygen is essential to growing a good plant and when the ground is saturated the roots of plants will die from lack of oxygen. This is the reason why it is so important to have a well drained soil and create an organic soil filled with porosity. Plants require water in their cells to grow and survive. On hot sunny days they will absorb what moisture there is in the ground and will transpire water into the air. When transpiration exceeds water absorption, wilting takes place. Temporary wilting can be taken care of by adding enough water to the soil so that the plant will revitalize itself. Permanent wilting usually takes place when this problem is not corrected quickly enough and the plant dies. The deeper the root system the greater the chance the plant will survive as the roots go deeper to find water. When new seedlings are just started in the garden, the root system is very shallow and the plant is very vulnerable to drying out. This is something you need to be conscious of and need to take particular care at this stage in their development. Growing plants outside in a garden is different than growing plants in a controlled greenhouse environment. Outdoor conditions affect your judgment on a daily basis. Windy conditions, temperature, rainy periods, sunny or cloudy days present a different adjustment that need to be made. Most plants can adjust to minor adjustments of these conditions but lengthy durations can be detrimental and extremes need to be dealt with if your plants are going to survive and thrive.
WEEDING
Weeds are direct competition for the food, space and water of your existing plants. War needs to be declared on weeds from the start. Small weeds are easy to pull large weeds are difficult and very disruptive to the rest of the plants in the bed when being pulled. Corn Gluten is a pre-emergent organic weed control that will prevent new weed seeds from germinating. Corn meal not only prevents weed seeds from germinating but adds organic fertilizer to the soil as it breaks down. Adding mulch to this procedure can give you very good weed control. The few weeds that may break through after these applications can easily be handled. Some gardeners like to use straw on the ground as mulch where fruit or vegetables lie on the ground to avoid rotting. There is a wide variety of organic mulches that can be successfully used.
STAKING
There are a lot of plants as they grow that will need staking or training. The Tomato is a typical example. Weekly care needs to be taken to keep the growth compact and full and to allow maximum light for ripening and keeping fruit off the ground. There are many plants that can be staked that are vining in nature and space can be saved by using vertical space instead of horizontal space. There is lots of room to grow plants vertically and limited room to grow them horizontally. There are a lot of creative ways to deal with plants like this in the garden and it is worthwhile to observe options that could work for you
FEEDING
If you follow a program of organic feeding throughout the growing season, you can greatly increase yields and the nutrient value of the product you grow. I like to mix the organic fertilizers that I use by alternating them in my feeding schedule. In my book 12 Steps To Natural Gardening I have a calendar to follow helping you with a list of products to add on a monthly basis. When you follow such a schedule, it makes a huge difference on not only production but on nutrient value of the vegetables you produce.
HARVESTING
You need to visit your garden frequently to determine the best time to harvest your produce. You want it to ripen on the vine in and harvest it in its prime. You do not want it to be over ripened so timing is very important and almost requires daily observation.
PUTTING YOUR GARDEN TO BED IN THE FALL
Once the crop planted in your garden is finished producing or is killed by a heavy frost remove the dead plants and add them to the compost pile. As weeds germinate remove them before they go to seed. This is very important and a step used by many gardeners as a weed reduction method reducing the seed available in the ground that are likely to germinate during the growing season. Organic layers of additives should be added to the soil and will help condition the soil for the following year.
I would like to add a story here as related to me by one of my customers. It impressed me as the ultimate loving relationship that had developed between a woman and her plant. A woman who worked in Manhattan lived in an upscale apartment and owned a beautiful Ficus tree. The Ficus tree was her pride and joy and she tended to it daily. She gave it just the right amount of water and fed it twice a month with an organic fertilizer. She talked to it daily and interacted with it as she went about her daily chores. She played her favorite music and the plant thrived in her house. There was a bond that built up between the too of them. Her job required that she move to California for a three year period to head up a new department. She told her younger brother he could use her apartment if he took especially good care of her Ficus tree which she had grown so attached to. Her brother was elated with this deal and said he would be glad to take very good care her plant. He went over the maintenance requirements with her and followed the care instructions very carefully. About a year later the Ficus tree was not doing very well so he called his sister only to learn she was also not doing very well. He tried to bring the plant back to good health but it was getting worse. He called his sister again and she said she was getting worse. After several months he called again and said the plant is dying only to learn that his sister was also almost dying. He stayed in close contact with his sister after that and as she started to get better her the plant started to get better. When she made a full recovery the plant was lush and full again. He said it was the most unbelievable thing he had ever witnessed. This story was related to me back in the eighties when there was a lot of experimentation that took place by Backster and others about the relationship that plants developed with humans. Using a seismograph machine Backster was able to determine plants liked the same music as their owners and acted in fear when fire was close to them.
I would like to end my vegetable garden series by leaving you with these thoughts. An investment in a vegetable garden will pay off. This year food may be scarce due to the drought in California. Prices will be high and imports will be inferior. Almost all of our processed foods in today’s market contain GMOs. There are no labeling requirements and we the consumer are left in the dark. . Agriculture has taken a sad turn spiking profits over health. Marketing is big business and our super markets are filled with ready food to meet the fast pace of modern life. We need to take healthy living as a priority. We have developed a system of cures instead of prevention. There is lots of money invested in developing cures but very little money in prevention. We need to guide our children’s destiny by understanding what is taking place in our Agriculture Community. It is a complex problem that was created by a false premise that we could solve the worlds hunger problems by using cheap chemical fertilizers. By growing your own vegetables you will begin to understand the difference and understand what we need to do to influence the production of healthy foods. The answer too many of today’s problems lies in the message that we receive from our gardens. The organic world is the right course we must follow. Only an educated consumer can change the collision course we are now on. I know because I have lived and am living both sides of this argument.
