Starting your own edible garden

Starting your own edible garden? Never fear with these easy-to-grow crops

Lettuce  :

 These leafy greens are a cinch. They prefer the cooler temperatures of spring or fall. Loose-leaf varieties can be trimmed down multiple times for repeated harvesting. We love that!
A short browse through a seed catalog, seed display rack, or selection of nursery seedlings will reveal enough variety to keep your salad bowl crisp and colorful throughout the growing season.

There are four principal types of lettuce: crisphead, butterhead or Boston, loose-leaf, and romaine.


Crisphead is the most exasperating for home gardeners to produce. Heads form best when monthly average temperatures are 55°–60°F/13°–16°C. In mild climates, this type of lettuce does well over a long season, but in hot summer areas, timing of planting becomes critical. Best varieties include ‘Great Lakes’, ‘Summertime’, and ‘Nevada’.

Butterhead or Boston type has a loose head with green, smooth outer leaves and yellow inner leaves. Good varieties include ‘Bibb’ (‘Limestone’), ‘Buttercrunch’, and ‘Tom Thumb’. ‘Mignonette’ (‘Manoa’) stands heat without bolting (going to seed—a process        that causes the leaves to become bitter).

Loose-leaf lettuce makes a rosette rather than a head. It stands heat better than the other types. Choice selections include ‘Blackseeded Simpson’, ‘Green Ice’, and ‘Oak Leaf’ (all with green leaves); ‘Salad Bowl’ (with deeply cut green leaves); and ‘Prizehead’ and ‘Ruby’ (red-tinged leaves).

Romaine lettuce has an erect, cylindrical head of smooth leaves. The outer leaves are green; the inner ones are whitish. It stands heat moderately well. Try ‘Medallion’, ‘Olga’, or ‘Parris Island’.

Lettuces with bronzy to pinkish red leaves add color to a salad. ‘Freckles’, ‘Marveille des Quatre Saisons’, and ‘Perella Red’ are butterheads; ‘Lollo Rosso’, ‘Red Oak Leaf’, ‘Red Sails’, and ‘Ruby’ are loose-leaf varieties; ‘Rouge d’Hiver’ and ‘Sierra’ are romaines.

Various loose-leaf and romaine lettuce varieties are typically included in mesclun mixes—mixtures of fast-growing, tender salad greens (usually some mild and some tangy)—that may include mustards, arugula, cress, chicory, radicchio, and/or mizuna.

All lettuces need loose, well-drained soil. Sow in open ground; barely cover the seeds. Loose-leaf lettuce can be grown as close as 4 in. apart; thin all other types to 1 ft. apart. Grow mesclun in blocks 4 in. wide and don’t thin.

For prolonged harvest, sow at 2-week intervals. In cold-winter regions, begin sowing seed for all types after frost, as soon as the soil is workable; where summers are very short, sow indoors, then transplant seedlings outdoors after last frost.

In mild-winter, cool-summer regions, sow in early spring for spring and summer harvest, then make further sowings in late summer or early fall for winter harvest. In mild-winter, hot-summer areas, grow only as a winter and early spring crop.

Feed plants lightly and frequently. Control snails, slugs, and earwigs. Harvest when heads or leaves are of good size; once lettuce reaches maturity, it rapidly goes to seed, becoming quite bitter.

With loose-leaf lettuce, you can clip off just the outer leaves as you need them. Likewise, snip off young leaves of mesclun mix for salads.

How to set out your plants

Annuals and perennials in 4-inch nursery pots are inexpensive alternatives to bigger plants in gallon cans. And the smaller plants will catch up soon.

Before planting, amend the soil with organic matter and dunk the plant, still in its pot, into a bucket of water to soak the soil.

Step1

 1. Dig a hole for each plant, making the hole about the same depth as the container and an inch or two wider.

2. Knock each plant out of its pot. Gently separate any matted roots. If roots are coiled at the bottom of the rootball, cut them off so new roots can grow.

3. Place each plant in its hole so that the rootball's top is even with the soil surface. Fill in with soil around the rootball, water with a gentle stream, then press the soil lightly t

How to make good planting beds

When you're getting ready to dig, the soil should be neither too wet nor too dry: a handful squeezed in your fist should form a ball that crumbles apart, yet still feels moist.

If you dig into soil that's too wet, you'll compact it (making it difficult for air to penetrate throughout the soil once it dries) and destroy beneficial microorganisms.






You can't work amendments evenly into wet soil, either.Garden beds are of two basic types. Some are dug directly in the ground, while others (raised beds) are located in frames that sit on the soil surface.

Digging a planting bed in the ground

When making new in-ground beds, some gardeners always raise them, even if just by a few inches, using decorative stones, bricks, or bender board as an edging. They'll tell you that by time they amend the bed's soil, it's "fluffed up" higher than its original boundaries anyway. The raised soil gives plant roots a few more inches of growing room, and the edging keeps the soil in place.

Other gardeners make mounds as they dig. In this case, the bed's edges are close to the original soil surface, while the center is elevated; plants can grow both on top of the mound and on its sides.

You may want to create several mounds, adding large decorative stones for accents; in this case, the mounding forms part of the landscaping. As is true for the slightly raised beds just described, the mounded soil ensures plenty of depth for root growth as well as excellent drainage.

In the vegetable garden, such mounds are convenient for scrambling, vining plants such as melons and squash. You'll also see various types of raised or mounded rows in vegetable gardens; in most, the seedlings are planted at the top to maximize root growth and drainage.

When you dig, start by clearing most of the debris from the soil. Then use a sharp, square-bladed spade or a spading fork to break up the soil to a spade's depth--typically 8 to 12 inches.

Don't turn each spadeful completely over; if you do, roots and debris remaining on the soil surface may form a one-spade-deep barrier that cuts off air and water. Instead, turn the loosened spadefuls of soil only onto their sides. Once you've broken up the soil, change to a round-point shovel for mixing in amendments and evening the surface.

If you're digging a large bed, consider using a power-driven rototiller. If the soil hasn't been worked in a long time, go over it first with the blades set to a shallow level. Spread amendments over the surface, then rototill again with the blades set deeper into the soil.

Once a bed is ready for planting, don't walk on it. Following this rule will be simpler if you can easily reach all parts of the bed from its borders; if it must be wider, add board paths or stepping-stones to control foot traffic.

Making a raised bed

Raised beds have many advantages. Their soil warms earlier in the spring and drains well; and because it's usually free from foot traffic, it remains loose and easy for roots, air, and water to penetrate.

Orient raised beds in an east-west direction so they'll receive as much sun as possible. Construct them of wood, cinder blocks, or other materials at least 2 inches thick, and make them 3½ to 4 feet wide; you should easily be able to reach the center of each bed from its edges.

The bed's height depends on several factors. If the existing soil is healthy, the bed need be no higher than 8 to 12 inches; deep-rooted plants will grow down into the native soil. If the existing soil is poor, however, you'll probably want to make the bed higher to give roots more room. The maximum height is usually about 1½ feet.

Fill the bed with well-amended soil; you can use soil from another part of the garden or purchased topsoil.

Amendments should include well-rotted manure and compost or soil conditioner. The soil surface should be 2 to 4 inches below the rim of the completed bed.

How to Make Soil Organic

overview
"Organic" is more than just a trendy buzzword. In commercial agriculture, soil and produce may be called organic only if the farmer does not use GMO seeds, does not spray synthetic chemicals on his or her fields and follows other USDA organic standards. Backyard gardeners generally use the word organic to denote a garden bed that is free of toxins and is rich in natural material. Organic gardening is environmentally friendly, since it does not cause air or water pollution and it adds fertility to the soil.



Step 1
Build a compost pile to recycle your kitchen and yard waste. Save vegetable peelings, fruit rinds, coffee grounds and other plant-based trimmings from your kitchen. Pile them in your backyard, or contain them in a compost bin, barrel or tumbler. Cover the kitchen waste with dried grass clippings, leaves, straw or other dry, brown material. Continue building the pile as you accumulate waste, alternating layers as you go, and aerate the compost pile occasionally by turning it with a pitchfork. Add enough water to keep the compost pile as wet as a wrung out sponge. In 3 to 12 months, your kitchen waste and yard trimmings will have decomposed into rich, black compost, which you can add to your garden's soil to increase the fertility.

Step 2
Apply a few inches of mulch to your garden to keep down weeds and help regulate soil moisture and temperature. Good mulch choices include leaves, shredded bark or straw. As the mulch decomposes, it will add nutrients and rebuild topsoil.

Step 3
Start new garden beds with a technique known as "lasagna gardening." Instead of tilling, which is labor intensive and damages the integrity of the existing soil, lay down several sheets of newspaper or a single layer of corrugated cardboard directly over any sod or weeds that you would like to convert to a flower or vegetable garden. Cover this with a thin layer of compost, then a layer of mulch, then a layer of organic topsoil. Repeat these layers until you have built up the soil by about 6 inches. You can plant directly into the new garden bed, digging through the newspaper if need be, or you can wait 6 to 12 months for the mulch and paper to decompose.

Step 4
Choose natural, organic pesticides instead of synthetic chemicals. Organic pesticides are usually plant-based, and are generally safer for the environment and for you and your family. You could also remove insect pests by hand or release beneficial insects such as lady beetles or praying mantis into your garden to eat the pest bugs.