C
BEGINNING GARDENING
For those pondering the first time creation of their own Eden on earth, we offer some beginning gardening advice.
“I farm the soil that yields my food. I shared creation. Kings can do no more.” — Ancient Chinese Proverb
By Susan Sides
P
erhaps you spent a dreamy winter day among the sweet promises of seed catalogs, or maybe you’ve been seduced by the memory of granny’s tomatoes. It could be that the latest ticker tape of grocery receipt provided the trigger. Or was it the wholesome fantasy of
Soil testing is the map to any good fertilization program; it tells you how to “get there from here.”
trading jogging shoes for a hoe? At any rate, you’ve decided to plant your firsttime-ever garden. Congratulations! And welcome to the 44 percent of American families that share an addiction that we euphemistically call a hobby. Oh, you’ll hear the same old rationalizations from most of us: We’re gardening to save money, to keep fit, to put good food on the table, or to spend time outdoors. And those reasons might have provided motivation when we were at the same beginning gardening stage as you. As you’ll come to know, though, what makes us pull out our tools year after year is the sheer wonder of sticking that pinhead-sized little ball of a broccoli seed into the ground and — ta-da! — eventually harvesting something that holds up the hollandaise. Big crop, little crop — it doesn’t matter really. As much fuss is made when just one fine head ripens as when we cart off bushels. In short, it’s being smack-dab in the middle of a real-life miracle that makes this pastime pretty hard to resist. Who can get enough of it? Building a cabinet or piecing a quilt just aren’t quite the same. Only gardening (and having children) lets you stand so close to the miracle of life that, like the ancient Chinese quoted on this page, you feel as if you’re sharing in creation. Yes, welcome to gardening. None of us can ever claim to really know the territory. We’re all learning as we grow. Each year’s a mystery — a renewed challenge — during which you’ll reap plenty of mouth-watering vegetables at the very least. What’s more important, you’ll occasionally have the opportunity to feel like the only person who ever saw a honeybee wake up after spending the night on a morning-glory, or the only soul who’s seen the wind rattle a corn leaf, making the plant appear to be scratching its own back. And like a brand-new parent, you’ll be blind to the beauty of any broccoli other than your own.
Getting Started When learning to ride a bicycle, you don’t read up on aerodynamics, physics, gravity, and inertia. Instead, you simply ask someone how to start, steer, and stop
the thing, then hop on and give it a go. And you keep hopping on until you’re pedaling vertically. The same goes for gardening. You might want to find at least one neighbor who’s gardened in your area awhile and pester him or her to death (the odds are great that most gardeners won’t mind at all). Then simply go get your fingernails dirty. To get you started, I offer the following basic advice. (You’ll have to find the neighbor yourself.) 1 Learn your climate zone: It’s on that little map you’ll see in seed catalogues or comprehensive gardening books. Climate zones are bands where weather conditions (average rainfall and temperature) fall into the same range, and seed catalogues will list (by number) which ones are suitable for certain plants. 2 Memorize your first and last frost dates: Planting times for everything from radish seeds to fruit trees depend on when frosts occur in your location. 3 Know your soil’s make-up: Have a soil test done. (See “Fertilization” below.) 4 Be aware of available warm-and cool-weather crops: Some vegetables grow best in warm weather and some in cool. 5 Look into local clubs: Check the library or chamber of commerce for a list of garden-related clubs, organic growers’ organizations, and native plant societies in your area, and their members will be more than willing to help you get started.
Soil Fertilization Soil testing is the map to any good fertilization program; it tells you how to “get there from here.” It’s all too easy to waste money and risk nutrient imbalances by guessing at what your soil needs. Labs whose personnel are not chemically oriented will give custom-tailored recommendations in terms of compost and such natural amendments as rock powders and animal bone and blood by-products that are dried, ground, and bagged. These additives break down more slowly than synthetic fertilizers, are gentler to plants and soil, and are much less likely to be leached away. Best of all, “natural” soil testing firms speak a language you can understand. Granted, the local agricultural extension PLANNING • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 7
6-11 Beginning Gardening.indd 6-7
7/31/18 12:30 PM
I C
I
C
I
C
I
C
10 Fascinating Facts About
That said, some gardeners overfertilize, which can be just as damaging as not applying enough. Use your eyes as your guide to judge the health of your crops, and regard the directions on any fertilizer package as a starting point, but not a set rule.
EDIBLE PLANTS
2 Seeds vs. Transplants
Dig into the intriguing world of plant science to harvest knowledge that you can apply to cultivating a bountiful, successful garden.
3 Counting the Hours The plants at any garden center entice growers to head home with a Some edible plants are referred to full load of transplants. But, just beYou can sow most crops, including squash, directly in the as “day-length sensitive,” although garden, which will save you money at the garden center. cause one can buy peas, dill, and cuday length is a misnomer because cumbers as transplants, or start them these plants are actually sensitive to indoors at home, doesn’t mean it’s necesreally need the extra growing time are the the number of hours of darkness. Some sary — seeds of most plants can be sown longer-season crops, including tomatoes. crops are short-day plants, typically those directly in the garden. The $3 you’d spend You may also choose to transplant brasgrown in spring and fall, and some crops sicas, such as broccoli, to take advantage on one dill seedling, for example, would are long-day plants, which require more of windows of cool weather. Most other be better spent on a packet of 50 dill seeds. than 12 hours of light to flower. Daycrops will grow successfully if you sow seed I recommend shelling out money for neutral plants flower regardless of day directly outdoors. Many crops will actually transplants — or spending time to start length. For general information on how produce better when direct-sown — parseeds early indoors — only when you day length affects many different plants, ticularly root crops. Follow the timing need to give certain crops a head start and to determine the number of sunny directions on your seed packets for best on the weather or to make plant spacing hours at your garden’s latitude, refer to results. easier. In most regions, the only plants that goo.gl/xHteBR.
By Rosalind Creasy
P
lant breeders, seed companies, professional farmers, and veteran gardeners possess specialized knowledge that would greatly benefit the average home gardener. I’ve spent countless hours working with such specialists during my more than 30 years as a landscape designer, and I have grown numerous edibles in my trial garden. Thanks to this research, I’ve come up with my Top 10 List of edible-plant facts that will increase your plant-growing expertise. Some cover plant basics, some touch on scientific technicalities, and some are crop-specific, but all will help you grow an even better garden next season.
Some crops, such as cilantro, are especially day-length sensitive. Try growing papalo (center pot, back), a long-day, heat-tolerant herb with a related flavor. FROM LEFT: ROSALIND CREASY; BOTTOM: ROSALIND CREASY; TOP: ISTOCK/SANDDEBEAUTHEIL
1 Nitrogen Needs Nitrogen is as important to plants as protein is to animals. Nitrogen-starved plants look paler than normal, and their lower leaves start to yellow, which is especially evident on squash, peppers, broccoli, and other heavy-feeding annuals. When I mention that a plant needs nitrogen to a gardener, I often hear, “But I followed the directions on the fertilizer package!” The dosage suggested on the package is only an average, however; many factors influence how much nitrogen you should actually apply. Your soil may be sandy and allow nutrients to quickly leach away, in which case you should be diligent about building soil quality by adding organic matter. Or, perhaps the bag of chicken manure you applied was sitting at the nursery too long and the nitrogen volatilized into the air before you bought it. Or, maybe a particular plant variety is an especially heavy feeder.
When you do decide to purchase transplants, choose strong plants that aren’t too much bigger than the pot they’re in. Garden centers like to sell bigger plants at higher prices, but these plants are often stressed and root-bound, and they usually won’t grow as well after transplanting as smaller, younger plants would.
12 MOTHER EARTH NEWS XXXX/XXXX XXXX
12-15 Edible Plant Facts.indd 12-13
Tomatoes: istock/funwithfood
7/31/18 12:31 PM
Best Tips for
STARTING SEEDS INDOORS
Save money and grow superior varieties by starting your own seeds. By Barbara Pleasant Illustrations by Elayne Sears
I
began growing my own vegetable seedlings more than 30 years ago, and I still remember my sad first attempts. Many seedlings keeled over and died, and some seeds never germinated at all. Experience has taught me how to prevent these problems, and every year I deepen my garden’s diversity, save money and share favorite varieties with friends by starting seeds indoors. Thousands of superior crop varieties are rarely available as seedlings in garden centers, and the same goes for wonderful culinary crops, such as red celery and seed-sown shallots. If your gardening goal is to fill your table and pantry with an array of homegrown organic food, then starting plants from seed can help you achieve that goal. Starting seeds indoors under controlled conditions, with no aggravation from weeds or weather, allows you to get a prompt start on the season, whether you are sowing onions in late winter, squash in summer, or lettuce in early fall. And where growing seasons are short, some crops require an indoor head start to later reach maturity.
fully formed embryos. The carrot family is at a disadvantage, however, because most Umbelliferae seeds (think parsley, fennel, and dill) need time for their underdeveloped ovaries to grow before they can sprout. Other slow sprouters — spinach, for example — have compounds that inhibit germination in their seed coats. These compounds have to break down in the soil before the root and sprout can burst forth into the world. Oxygen is vital to the germination process. Until seedlings
have leaves to enable them to use solar energy, they rely on the food reserves in the seed combined with oxygen found in the soil to grow new cells. This is why you should always use a light-textured potting medium to start seeds, and why overwatering can cause seeds to rot instead of grow. Appreciating the hard work that seeds must do during the germination process will likely enhance your seed-starting experience. You can watch time-lapse videos online of fastgrowing bean seeds germinating, but watching them in person is even more amazing. The seeds that impress me most are squash. By the time the seedling leaves shed the seed coat, the little plant is already supported by a small mountain of roots.
so crucial. Quality seed-starting mixes are formulated to discourage common soilborne pathogens that cause seedlings to rot, and to retain both water and air with ease. You can make your own seed-starting mix by using either peat moss or coir as a base, and then blending it with compost that has been heated to 150 degrees Fahrenheit to kill any pathogens and weed seeds. Small amounts of vermicompost can be a beneficial addition when added to a seed-starting mix, but use no more than 10 percent by volume. As a 2005 study from North Carolina State University revealed, it’s not the precise mixture but what’s on top of the soil that counts most. Differences almost disappeared between
Seed-Starting Mixtures From the day they germinate, vegetable seedlings face challenges from fungi and bacteria in water, soil, and air. The fewer troublemakers they face, the better they can grow, which is why using fresh seed-starting mix each winter is
With a proper setup and some determination, you can start your own vegetable seedlings indoors.
The Germination Process All seeds contain specialized cells that mobilize and grow when the germination process is triggered by moisture, temperature, and sometimes light. Moisture and stored nutrients energize the embryo, which contains the latent structures for a plant’s root, stem, and leaves. Most vegetable seeds that germinate quickly (such as cabbage and tomatoes) enter their dormant state with mature, 32 MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • ORGANIC GARDENING
32-35 Tips Starting Seeds.indd 32-33
PLANNING • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 33
7/31/18 12:33 PM
Maintain Healthy Garden Soil With
CROP ROTATIONS
You can increase soil fertility and cut down on plant disease by rotating the vegetables in your garden plots on a three-year cycle. By Barbara Pleasant Illustrations by Elayne Sears
O
ne of the rules of good organic gardening is to rotate plant families from one season to the next, as best you can, so related crops are not planted in the same spot more often than every three years or so. The purpose of crop rotation is to help the soil maintain a healthy balance of nutrients, organic matter, and microorganisms. Of these three, the invisible world of soil-dwelling micro-creatures is the one that most benefits from crop rotations. Take potatoes, for example. In the course of a season, the fungi that cause scabby skin patches may proliferate, along with root-killing verticillium fungi (which also damage tomatoes and eggplant) and tiny nematodes that injure potatoes. If you plant potatoes again in the same place, these pathogens will be ready and waiting to sabotage the crop. Rotating the space to an unrelated crop deprives the potato pathogens of the host plant they require. Most pests and diseases can damage plants of the same botanical family, but cannot hurt unrelated crops (see “Rotate Your Families: The Nine Main Groups,” Page 38). What if you don’t follow a crop rotation plan? Field trials in Connecticut and Europe indicate that your potato production will quickly fall by 40 percent, mostly due to disease. According to a seven-year study from Ontario, you could expect similar declines if you planted tomatoes in the same place over and over again. Compared to eight different rotations with other vegetables or cover crops, continuous tomatoes consistently produced the lowest yields. Snap beans that are not rotated will turn into paltry producers, too. In a study from Cornell University, snap bean production doubled when beans were 36 MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • ORGANIC GARDENING
36-38 Crop Rotation.indd 36-37
In addition to interrupting disease cycles, rotating crops prevents the depletion of nutrients.
soil than they replace, and their presence stimulates the growth of beneficial soil microorganisms. But in some situations, the “rotation effect” defies easy explanation. For example, we don’t know precisely why potatoes tend to grow well when planted after sweet corn, but they do. The subject of crop rotation can get complicated fast—it’s no wonder we are tempted to cheat. What if your garden is like mine, a collection of a dozen permanent beds that are planted with 20plus different crops in the course of a growing season? Not using rotations would be unwise. When researchers at Pennsylvania State University tracked early blight of tomatoes grown in the same place for four years, early-season infection rates (measured when 5 percent of fruits turned red) went from 3 percent in the first year to 74 percent in the third. When they tried the same monoculture
maneuver with cantaloupes, symptoms of alternaria blight appeared earlier and earlier with each passing season.
Questioning the Rules
Some organic gardeners point out that crop rotation guidelines developed for farmers don’t really fit home gardens. On farms, crop residue is either plowed under or left on the surface to decay, which means the soil receives large infusions of a single type of plant material. Gardeners are more likely to pull up and compost spent crops, and to dig in compost or other soil amendments between plantings, which replenishes nutrients and invigorates the soil food web in an extremely diversified way. Biodegradable mulches introduce more considerations: If you heavily mulch your potatoes with straw, shredded leaves, grass clippings or all three, certainly it makes sense to
planted after corn rather than after snap beans. In addition to interrupting disease cycles, rotating crops prevents the depletion of nutrients. For example, tomatoes need plenty of calcium, the same way beans and beets crave manganese. But the exact benefits of effective rotations vary with crop sequence. Broadleafed greens are great for suppressing weeds, and the deep roots of sweet corn do a good job of penetrating compacted subsoil. Nitrogen-fixing legumes often take no more nitrogen from the You can plan your crop rotations by using a paper template to map your crops and growing areas.
There’s ample research showing that crop rotation results in better harvests for potatoes, tomatoes, beans, and many other crops. PLANNING • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 37
7/31/18 12:39 PM
GROW GREAT
By Roger Doiron
I
LETTUCE
Liven up your salad greens with fresh, edible flowers, such as nasturtiums.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DREAMSTIME/JOKIHAKA; FOTOLIA/SHANE MORRIS; FOTOLIA/GUIDO MILLER; JASON HOUSTON; DREAMSTIME/RAINER; PAGE 64: ROGER DOIRON
This reliable crop is a top choice for any food garden.
f you could grow only one vegetable for your own consumption, which crop would you choose? For me, the choice would be easy: lettuce. You could make a good case for growing other crops instead: a highly caloric crop (potatoes), a more flavorful one (tomatoes), or a better keeper (carrots). But I would pick lettuce because it’s easy, reliable, requires little space, and enjoys a long growing season, allowing for multiple and continuous harvests. Lettuce also offers a nice mix of nutrients in a compact package, including iron, folate, and vitamins A and C. It’s for these reasons that I recommend to new gardeners that lettuce be the first step in their journey to delicious, homegrown self-reliance.
Lettuce Types While “iceberg” is the bland poster child for store-bought lettuce, it’s part of a larger, diverse, and better-looking family than people may realize. Gardeners can choose from hundreds of lettuce varieties, all falling into six groups (see “Six Lettuce Types: Which Will You Try?” below). For beginners, I recommend starting with loose-leaf varieties, also known as “cut and come again” lettuces (meaning you can cut a harvest, then harvest again in a few weeks). These varieties are not only the easiest to grow, but they come in many seed mixes, offering a balance of colors, textures, and flavors. To add some extra color and zing to your salad bowl, I suggest planting a row of spicy mesclun mix for every row of lettuce you grow. Most seed companies
Branch out beyond produce-aisle lettuce! Try some crunchy romaines (top left, top right, and lower left), red and green butterhead (middle right), and beautiful ‘Oak Leaf’ loose-leaf lettuce (bottom right). Salad night will never be the same.
offer mesclun mixes of arugulas, kales, and mustard greens, which, with the addition of some cheese, chopped walnuts, and a couple of edible flowers, can turn a ho-hum salad side dish into a memorable main course.
Preparing to Plant As with any crop, delicious salad
greens start with the soil. Lettuce does best in sandy loam soil with a high level of moisture-retaining organic matter, but don’t be discouraged if you don’t have those conditions. Lettuce grows all around the world in all types of climates and soils, including your own. There’s no ideal climate for all lettuce types, but most grow best in cool
Six Lettuce Types: Which Will You Try? Butterhead: A soft, buttery texture characterizes these varieties, which form loose heads. Chinese: Chinese varieties generally have long, pointy, non-head-forming leaves and a bitter flavor better suited to stir-fry than salad. Crisphead: Varieties in this type (which includes iceberg) form tight, dense heads resembling cabbage. They are generally the mildest of the lettuces and are appreciated more for their crunchy texture than their flavor or nutritional value.
Loose-leaf: These varieties grow as leaves instead of tightly formed heads, and they have a delicate texture and a mild flavor. The most healthful choices are red loose-leaf varieties, followed by green loose-leaf varieties with a brown or reddish fringe. Romaine, aka “Cos”: This heat-tolerant type grows a long head of sturdy leaves with a firm rib down the center. Summer Crisp, aka “Batavian”: Think of this group as an intermediate between crisphead and loose-leaf types.
SPRING • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 65
64-67 Lettuce.indd 64-65
7/31/18 12:40 PM
PHOTO CREDITS (Clockwise from Top Left): Dreamstime/Jokihaka, Fotolia/Shane Morris, Fotolia/Guido Miller, Jason Houston,
In the Kitchen
Fresh, lightly chilled chunks of melon need no further accompaniment on a hot summer day, but they do mix well with a variety of flavors. Melon salads often include mint, although oregano and basil also marry well with melon. Salty proteins — such as sardines, cheese, cured meats and smoked fish — work wonderfully with melons’ sweet juiciness. Making smoothies and other liquid concoctions is a refreshing way to use a bumper crop of melons. Muskmelons with firm flesh can be candied and dried, and try pickled watermelon rind for an old-fashioned delight. The deeper the orange of a melon’s flesh, the richer it is in vitamin A. All melons are good sources of vitamin C and fiber.
MELONS By Barbara Pleasant Illustrations by Keith Ward
D
elicious and packed with nutrition, melons have delighted gardeners for about 2,500 years. Their rambling vines grow best in warm weather, and fruit flavor and texture improve if watering becomes less frequent as the fruits mature.
Types of Melons Watermelons prefer hot, humid climates — they won’t grow well or taste good without plenty of warmth and sun. Watermelons tend to be the easiest melons to grow in organic gardens because of their pest and disease resistance. American cantaloupes are properly called muskmelons because of their fruity fragrance. Some varieties have smooth rinds, but the most popular and nutritious varieties have orange flesh beneath heavily netted rinds. Honeydew melons have smooth rinds over white or green flesh. Most varieties
need about 100 days of warm weather to make a good crop. Casaba and crenshaw melons are oblong, with wrinkled rinds and juicy, salmon-pink flesh. Specialty melons vary in size and maturation time, and some are much sweeter than others. Asian melons are fast-growing and productive, but aren’t as sweet as European or Middle Eastern varieties.
When to Plant Sow muskmelons, honeydew and other Cucumis melo varieties in prepared beds or hills after your last frost has passed, or sow seeds indoors under fluorescent light and set the seedlings out after three weeks. Direct-sow watermelon seeds in late spring, when your soil feels warm. In short-season climates, plant watermelon seedlings started indoors to get a jump-start.
96 MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • ORGANIC GARDENING
96-97 Melons.indd All Pages
1 inch deep. Ten days after sowing, thin plants to three per hill. If planting seedlings, set out three for each hill. Try installing protective row covers after you finish planting melons to raise soil surface temperatures, tame wind and exclude insects. Remove covers a week after plants begin to bloom for pollinators.
sounds deep and solid if thumped. Pecking from birds often indicates ripeness. Keep muskmelons at room temperature for a few days after harvesting to help bring out flavors, and then move them to a refrigerator. Always keep honeydew and Asian melons in the refrigerator. Watermelons stored at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit will keep for several weeks.
Harvesting and Storage
Saving Melon Seeds
Most muskmelons naturally separate (“slip”) from the vine when ripe, which means you can pick these melons with just a gentle tug. The rinds of some melon varieties change color upon ripening, a cue that it’s time to pick. Watermelons are ripe when the curled tendril nearest to the melon dries to brown, and when the melon
To keep seed quality high, select a perfect fruit from the densest part of a planting of open-pollinated melons and mark the fruit for seed saving. You can set aside seed from all melons as you eat the fruits, then rinse the seeds and allow them to dry at room temperature for about three weeks. Select the largest, plumpest seeds
and store them in a cool, dry place. Melon seeds can stay viable for at least five years.
Pest and Disease Prevention Tips Melons often face challenges from insects, namely aphids and squash bugs. Cucumber beetles also pose a threat by spreading bacterial wilt. Watermelons are resistant to bacterial wilt, but other types of melons are susceptible. Your best defense is to use protective row covers. Powdery mildew robs melon plants of their energy, which in turn reduces flavor and nutrition. In addition to growing resistant varieties, you can prevent powdery mildew with a spray made of 1 part milk to 6 parts water, applied every two weeks through the second half of summer.
Melons at a Glance How to Plant Fertile, well-drained soil is essential to growing great melons. Prepare raised planting hills within wide rows or along your garden’s edge. Space 3-foot-wide hills 5 to 6 feet apart. Loosen the soil in the planting sites to at least 12 inches deep. Mix in a 2-inch layer of compost and a light application of organic fertilizer. Melons love composted manure, which eliminates the need for supplemental fertilizer. Shape the hills into 6- to 8-inch-high, flat-topped mounds, and water well. Plant six seeds per hill to
Type
Description
Recommended Varieties
Watermelons Citrullus lanatus
Need summer heat, but otherwise easy to grow. Small-fruited varieties that mature quickly make great homestead crops. (80 to 100 days to maturity)
‘Crimson Sweet’ (OP) ‘Orangeglo’ (OP)
‘Moon and Stars’ (OP) ‘Sugar Baby’ (OP)
American cantaloupes (Muskmelons) Cucumis melo
Most varieties slip from the vine when ripe. Choose varieties resistant to powdery mildew for top flavor and productivity. (75 to 85 days)
‘Ambrosia’ (F1) ‘PMR Delicious 51’ (OP)
‘Hannah’s Choice’ (F1) ‘Sweet Granite’ (OP)
Honeydew and other greenfleshed melons C. melo
Less fragrant and nutritious than orange-fleshed muskmelons, but their flesh tends to be sweeter. Dry weather enhances flavor. (70 to 100 days)
‘Haogen’ (OP) ‘Sakata’s Sweet’ (OP)
‘Passport’ (F1) ‘Venus’ (F1)
Casabas and Crenshaws C. melo
Long, hot summers bring out the best in these melons, which have smooth flesh with hard rinds. Not for shortseason climates. (80 to 100 days)
‘Crenshaw’ (OP) ‘Lilly’ (F1)
‘Early Crenshaw’ (F1) ‘Twice as Nice’ (F1)
Specialty melons, including Asian and novel hybrids C. melo
Interesting variations in shape and flavor, including some varieties that grow well trellised and others you can grow for both fragrance and flavor. (Time varies)
‘Brilliant’ (F1) ‘Honey Yellow’ (F1)
‘Early Silver Line’ (OP) ‘Savor’ (F1)
SUMMER • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 97
7/31/18 12:42 PM
EASY DIY GARDEN SHED PLANS
Build the Floor
By Steve Maxwell
A
lmost all of us need a little place to store outdoor stuff — garden tools, recycling bins, the lawn mower, bicycles or other outdoor gear — and building a shed is one of the
best ways to create additional storage space. Our garden shed plans are simple and require only basic carpentry skills. A garden shed can be strictly functional, but it can also be a decorative focal point around which you design your garden or yard. These plans will help you build a ba-
102 MOTHER EARTH NEWS COLLECTOR SERIES • ORGANIC GARDENING
102-105 Garden Shed.indd 102-103
sic shed, but don’t stop there! To customize your shed, create a combination toolshed and greenhouse, put a martin house on top, or use part of the shed for a chicken coop or rabbit hutch. If you’re feeling even more adventurous, you could create a living roof of moss or succulent plants.
ELAYNE SEARS ILLUSTRATION
Anyone can build a small, simple and sensational shed!
The best spot for a shed is level, welldrained ground close to where you work in your garden or yard. The location doesn’t need to be perfectly flat; the foundation design shown in the plans on Page 104 allows for adjustments to make the floor level. Small sheds require only a top-of-soil foundation, even in locations with freezing winter temperatures. Precast concrete deck blocks work perfectly for this. To eliminate the need for any kind of floor beams, you’ll need a deck block at each corner, with two more blocks equally spaced along the 8-foot sides and one in the center of each 6-foot side. If you expect to store particularly heavy items, consider installing three deck blocks between each corner on the 8-foot walls, instead of two. Deck blocks include a central pocket sized to fit the standard 4-by-4 vertical posts that typically hold up a deck. In the
case of this shed, pressure-treated 4-by4s function in a similar way, but in short lengths — just enough to compensate for any variation in the shape of the ground (see illustration above). Start by setting deck blocks on the ground, positioned as shown in the plans. While the area doesn’t have to be perfectly level, you should make the ground roughly level where each block will rest. Temporarily place some straight 2-by-6 lumber on edge in the top grooves of the blocks to orient the blocks in a straight line. Arrange two rows of four blocks parallel to each other to form both long walls, then measure diagonally across the outside corners to determine how square the arrangement is. If the two long walls are parallel, and diagonal measurements taken across corners are equal, then each corner is guaranteed to be 90 degrees. Finish up by placing one deck block in the middle of
each 6-foot wall after you have aligned and squared the 8-foot walls. Remove the 2-by-6 lumber guides, then put a 12-inch length of 4-by-4 lumber into each deck block, positioned vertically in the central recess. These 4-by-4s will be slightly too long right now, but that’s exactly what you want. The 2-by-6s that form the outer perimeter of the floor frame rest on the outside top edge of the deck blocks, tight to the outer faces of the 4-by-4 posts. Use a 4-foot level and an 8-foot 2-by-6 to determine the highest deck block in the group, then use this as your starting point for installing the floor frame. Use a single galvanized 31⁄2-inch deck screw to lock the 2-by-6 to the 4-by-4 on the highest deck block, then raise the other end of the 2-by-6 so it’s level before locking the other end of the 2-by-6 to its 4-by-4. The 2-by-6 won’t rest on all the blocks, but should rest on at least one. Continue working all around the floor frame in this manner until all perimeter 2-by-6s are in the same level plane. Trim all excess 4-by4s flush with the top of the 2-by-6s using a chain saw or reciprocating saw, then add 2-by-6 floor joists running between the two 8-foot walls. Make sure each joist fits tightly within the outer edges of the floor frame, and then fasten the joists to the side of the 4-by-4s with screws. Complete the floor frame by driving three 31⁄2-inch deck screws per joint, then custom-cut spacers out of 11⁄2-inch-thick construction lumber to fill the gap between the underside of the 2-by-6s and the top of the deck blocks. You can’t rely on screws alone to hold up the floor frame in the long term. Finish up by installing a pressure-treated, five-eighths-inch-thick plywood subfloor on top of the floor frame, secured with 21⁄2-inch deck screws driven every 6 to 8 inches.
Frame the Walls This shed’s walls are built in the same way that the walls of most full-size homes are built. The plans show how 2-by-4 top plates and bottom plates extend horizontally around the perimeter of the building, with vertical studs defining wall surfaces. Notice that the two short walls fit inside the two longer ones, fastened together at SUMMER • WWW.MOTHEREARTHNEWS.COM 103
7/31/18 12:43 PM