Green Living
Start Small — My Best Advice for Beginning Gardeners
The days of growing up on a small organic farm in New Jersey were far behind me when I dug my first garden as an adult. It was only five or six feet square and done at my wife’s behest so she could have some home-grown tomatoes. We crowded in half a dozen tomato plants and a couple of short rows of potatoes using spuds from the store that had sprouted. We then neglected the patch pretty much until harvest. Amazingly we got tomatoes and potatoes.
For the gardener with a small plot like my first one, all you really need is a spading fork. It may seem like an awful lot of work if you look too far ahead, but it is really the best way for the soil life. It’s also excellent exercise. One forkful at a time is turned. The first row is the hardest. I suggest shaking the soil loose from the roots as you go along and removing the plant material to the compost pile.
A six by six garden is really a pretty good way to start. You can get some lovely salads from one or two tomato plants, lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi and scallions. Pole beans or a few potato plants might suit you better.
If you feel pretty sure you want to be serious about raising a substantial amount of your own food, I suggest you not go much larger than my first serious garden which was about 450 square feet. Even with a garden this size, the only tools you’ll need are a spading fork, garden rake, and a hoe.
If you’re still new to sustainable gardening, I suggest you don’t go much larger than 450 square feet so you’ll have a happily successful experience. There is a lot to learn about how the plants perform, the weather, weeds, insects, water needs, how long it takes to tend the garden, how to be a self-starter, and how much your body can take.
In my next article, I’ll have some advice on how to start a garden that can grow a substantial amount of food to feed your family for a year.
[Ed. Note: Mort Mather has been gardening organically for 35 years. He is the author of Gardening for Independence and has founded two non-profits -- one saved a farm on the Maine Coast and the other saved the historic Ogunquit Playhouse. Mort is a certified organic farmer supplying vegetables for his family-run restaurant (http://joshuas.biz) in Wells, Maine. To learn more, click here.]
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