Gardening Basics

how to do it

TM

House & Home

Gardening Basics

published by Barnes & Noble

Go ahead and get your hands dirty.

Whether you’re growing sunflowers, orchids, or cacti, solid gardening techniques will help you plant and maintain a lush and bountiful landscape—and make it look like you hired a professional. Here’s the dirt on how to: • Choose the right plants for your climate and the best tools to care for them • Test and improve your soil and dig perfect garden beds • Defend your garden against pests, disease, and other common problems

Gardening Basics Ready to grow a garden? First, you’ll need to decide what you want to grow—trees, shrubs, herbs, vegetables, or flowers. If you decide to grow a flower garden, there are many different types of flowers that you can incorporate into your landscape. These include annuals, perennials, bulbs, roses, and orchids.

The right planting and growing techniques to use depend on the plants you choose for your garden. For more detailed instructions on growing specific types of plants, see the Quamut guides to Growing Annuals, Growing Perennials, Growing Bulbs, and Growing Trees & Shrubs.

common hoe

scuffle hoe • Lawn rake: This rake, which has flexible metal, plastic, or bamboo tines that are spread into a fan, is useful for tidying up grass, leaves, and other clippings.

•

• Spading fork: With its long, D-shaped handle and tines at one end, a spading fork is used to dig, break up, turn, and aerate soil. Spading forks may have three or four tines, and the tines may be thin or sturdy—spading forks with four sturdy tines are ideal. Don’t get a pitchfork, which lacks a grip on the handle and has tines that are too thin for digging.

Basic Gardening Concepts No matter what type of garden you decide to grow, this guide will help you get familiar with fundamental gardening concepts, including: • • • • • • •

How How How How How How How

to choose the right gardening tools climate affects gardening to care for your soil properly to fertilize your garden to water your garden to groom and prune your garden to fight off garden pests and weeds

Gardening Tools Before you start gardening, stock your toolshed with the following supplies: • Gloves: Basic cotton or cotton/polyester gloves are enough for most gardening chores, but if you’ll be handling fertilizer or other chemicals, it’s a good idea to get chemical-resistant gloves as well.

• Hose: A good garden hose is flexible and easy to coil, doesn’t kink, and is long enough to reach from the faucet to all corners of your garden. Look for a hose that comes with a lifetime guarantee. If you live in a climate with winter temperatures below freezing, be sure to disconnect your hose from the faucet, drain it of water, and store it indoors before winter arrives.

• Hoe: A hoe is used to weed garden beds. A common hoe, which has a straight blade attached at an angle to a long handle, is used in an up-and-down, chopping motion. A scuffle hoe is easier to use than a common hoe because its head design lets you move it horizontally through the top layer of soil.

Pruning shears: These are used to trim, prune, and groom flowers and shrubs.

Bypass shears, which bypass shears work like scissors, are generally better than anvil pruners, which work by closing a blade against a flat metal surface.

• Garden shovel: This shovel, with a concave blade and pointy tip, is used primarily to move earth (rather than to dig holes).

• Tarp: A tarp can help keep the garden clean as you work. For instance, you can lay a dug-up plant on the tarp to keep dirt from the plant’s roots from going where you don’t want it, or you can use a tarp as a staging area from which to shovel potting mix into the soil.

• Trowel: This small, shovel-like hand tool has a metal blade that’s scoop-shaped and pointed at its end.

Trowels are used to dig small- to medium-sized holes and to weed. A good trowel has a continuous blade and shank (the part that connects the blade to the handle) and a plastic handle.

Motorized Gardening Tools • Soil rake: This rake’s stiff metal tines make it easy to level and shape soil as well as to mix soil amendments (additives, such as fertilizer or organic matter) into soil.

• Garden spade: A spade differs from a shovel in that it has a D-shaped handle and its blade is parallel to the shaft (rather than set at an angle, as a shovel’s blade is). Spades are used to dig up plants and slice through sod. They come with blades that are either pointed or flat at the tip.

Unless the area that you’re gardening is larger than a quarter of an acre (about 35×35 yards or 32×32 meters), you’re probably better off working with hand tools than investing in motorized gardening tools. If your garden is very large, though, you might want to consider getting a motorized tiller or mini-tiller, which can save you a lot of time when weeding, cultivating soil, mixing amendments, and doing other gardening chores that involve working with soil. Motor­ized tillers can be electric or gas-powered and range in cost from a few hundred to more than a thousand dollars.

Gardening Basics

www.quamut.com How to Choose the Right Plants for Your Climate Not all plants are right for all regions—a plant’s suitability to your garden depends on several climate-related factors, including: • • • • •

3–8” can tolerate those zones only—not the colder zones below zone 3 or the warmer zones above zone 8. Once you know the USDA hardiness zone of your area, you can be confident choosing plants that will be able to survive the winter in your garden. To find the hardiness zone of the place where you live, visit www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html.

Sunset Zone Map

High and low temperatures during the summer and winter Length of the growing season Amount and timing of rainfall Humidity Number of daylight hours

• Consult zone maps • Consider the length of the growing season in your area • Ask local gardeners and nurseries for advice

Many gardeners, particularly in the western United States, prefer the Sunset Zone Map to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map for determining plant suitability. The Sunset Zone Map was created by Sunset magazine (www.sunset.com) and divides the United States into 45 climate zones. These regions are more precise than the USDA zones because they take into account climate factors beyond just winter temperatures. To see why this is important, consider the case of Austin, Texas, and Gainesville, Florida. Both cities are in zone 8 of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map because their winter low temperatures are similar. But Gainesville’s climate is much wetter than Austin’s—which means that the specific plants that are likely to thrive in each region are quite different. The Sunset Zone Map captures this difference.

To access the Sunset Zone Map and find out which climate zone you live in, go to www. sunset.com/sunset/garden and look for the link to “Sunset Climate Zones.” Keep in mind, though, that most seed catalog and plant encyclopedias mark their plants with the USDA zone number and not the Sunset zone number. To use the Sunset Zone Map, you’ll have to do a little research and trial and error to figure out how your Sunset zone matches up with your USDA zone.

Zone Maps

Heat Zone Map

In gardening, a zone map is a map that divides a country or continent into zones based on climate factors and the types of plants that grow best in those zones. In the United States, a number of different organizations have developed zone maps, each of which uses different climate factors to determine its climate zones. The zone maps you’re most likely to encounter are covered in this section.

The American Horticultural Society has developed a Heat Zone Map, which is similar to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map except that it separates the United States into 12 heat zones based on the number of days that an area experiences temperatures over 86°F (the temperature above which plants may suffer damage from heat). The heat zones are numbered from 1–12, with 1 being the coolest and 12 the hottest. A growing number of garden centers and suppliers now code plants for heat zones as well as USDA hardiness zones.

Unlike the USDA map, the Heat Zone Map applies not only to year-round plants, such as perennials, shrubs, and trees, but also to annuals, vegetables, and herbs as well.

Some of these factors apply more to some types of plants than to others. For instance, cold winter temperatures aren’t as important for annuals and vegetables, which live only through the summer. But climate in general is a crucial factor to take into account when you’re considering what plants to grow in your garden.

Resources for Choosing the Right Plants for Your Climate To help select plants that will thrive in your region, you can:

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has developed the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which divides North America into 11 hardiness zones based on the average low temperature of each zone’s winter. The zones are numbered from 1–11, with 1 being the coldest and 11 the warmest. Because it’s based on winter low temperatures, the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is used primarily for year-round (permanent) plants such as perennials, trees, and shrubs—not for annuals, which are meant to live only one season and aren’t expected to survive the winter.

WA AK

VT

ND

MT

MN

OR ID NV CA HI average minimum winter temperature °F °C Zone 1 below –50° below –46° Zone 2 –50° to –40° –46° to –40° Zone 3 –40° to –30° –40° to –34° Zone 4 –30° to –20° –34° to –29° Zone 5 –20° to –10° –29° to –23° Zone 6 –10° to 0° –23° to –18° Zone 7 0° to 10° –18° to –12° Zone 8 10° to 20° –12° to –7°

AZ

CO

KS OK

NM TX

NY MI

PA OH IN IL WV VA MO KY NC TN SC AR GA MS AL LA

IA

NE UT

WI

SD

WY

ME NH MA

RI CT NJ DE MD

FL

Zone 9 Zone 10 Zone 11

20° to 30° 30° to 40° above 40°

–7° to –1° –1° to 4° above 4°

Seed catalogs, plant encyclopedias, and nurseries label permanent plants with a number that indicates the zones in which they are hardy (can survive). For instance, a zone 5 perennial could survive the winter in zone 5 and all warmer zones, whereas a plant marked “zones

Length of Growing Season The growing season is the period between the last frost of winter/spring and the first frost of summer/autumn. Knowing the length of your region’s growing season is important when deciding what annuals and vegetables to buy. The growing season helps you decide: • What to grow: If a region’s growing season isn’t long enough to support the full growth and maturation of a single-season plant, then the plant probably won’t reach full maturity before the first autumn frost comes along.

• When to grow: Instructions for growing plants often refer to the last frost rather than to a specific date—for example, the instructions might tell you to plant a flower two weeks after the last frost. It’s hard to follow these directions correctly unless you know when the last frost is.

Growing-Season Length and USDA Zones The following table lists the average last and first frost by USDA hardiness zones and also provides the average length of the growing season in each zone.

Hardiness Zone

Last Frost

First Frost

Growing-Season Length

1

June 15

July 15

30 days

2

May 15

August 15

90 days

3

May 15

September 15

120 days

4

May 15

September 15

120 days

5

April 30

October 15

165 days

6

April 15

October 15

180 days

The information contained in this and every Quamut guide is intended only for the general interest of its readers and should not be used as a basis for making medical, investment, legal or other important decisions. Though Quamut makes efforts to create accurate guides, editorial and research mistakes can occur. Quamut cannot, therefore, guarantee the accuracy of its guides. We disclaim all warranties, including warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, and must advise you to use our guides at your own risk. Quamut and its employees are not liable for loss of any nature resulting from the use of or reliance upon our charts and the information found therein.

Photo Credits: Page 1: Corbis Photography/Veer (photo 1), Comstock Images/Jupiter Images (photo 2), Vincent & Jennifer Keane/Lucence Photographic (photo 3), Image Source Pink/Jupiter Images (photo 4), alle/Shutterstock (photo 5), Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Jupiter Images (photo 6), Image100/Jupiter Images (photos 8-9), Ewa Brozek/Shutterstock (photo 10); Page 3: Courtesy of the USDA (illustration 2); Page 4: Scott B. Rosen/Bill Smith Studio (all photos); Page 5: Jason Smalley/Wildscape/Alamy; Page 6: Image Source Pink/Jupiter Images. All other illustrations by Precision Graphics.

www.quamut.com Copyright © 2008 Quamut All rights reserved.

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Gardening Basics

www.quamut.com 7

April 15

October 15

180 days

8

March 10

November 15

245 days

9

February 15

December 15

265 days

10

January 20

December 15

335 days

11

No frost

No frost

365 days

When buying seeds for vegetables or annuals, pay attention to the days to maturity or days to harvest number listed on the seed package. Look for annuals or vegetables that reach maturity within the window of your growing season.

Soil Texture Soil contains air, organic matter, and an array of mineral particles. A soil’s texture depends on the proportion of the three basic types of particles—sand, silt, and clay—that it contains.

Clay particles are very fine, silt is a bit coarser, and sand is even coarser than silt: Particle

Size (mm)

Soil Characteristics

Sand

0.050–2.000

Individual particles of sand are visible to the naked eye and gritty to the touch. In sandy soil, water drains quickly, drying out the soil and stealing its nutrients.

Silt

0.002–0.050

Individual particles of silt are visible only with a microscope and feel slippery to the touch, especially when wet.

In silty soil, water drains slowly, which can drown plants.

Clay

below 0.002

Individual particles of clay are visible only with a microscope. When wet, clay is sticky and moldable. Water drains even more slowly in clay soil than in silty soil, making it even easier for plants to drown.

Local Nurseries and Gardeners If you’re not interested in poring over zone maps or researching growing season length, talk to experts at your local nursery or to nearby friends and acquaintances who garden to find plants that will grow well in your garden.

• Local gardeners: They’ve learned from experience the kinds of plants that work in their garden. Plus, you may be able to visit their gardens to see what you like.

• Nurseries: In general, if a plant is being sold at your local nursery, it’s probably hardy to your climate. Local nurseries generally sell only plants that will do well in the region.

Local nurseries and gardeners can also provide expert advice, opinions, and anecdotal knowledge that go beyond what any zone map can offer. Though zone maps can give you a general sense of your region’s climate, they can’t give you specific details abut the micro­ climate of your garden (see below).

Microclimates A microclimate refers to the specific climate of a very small area. Your garden’s microclimate can be affected by all sorts of factors—a nearby pond that keeps the air a little cooler and more humid, a building or tree on your block that throws shade across your garden for part of the day, or even a storm gutter that’s positioned so that part of your garden gets a lot of water when it rains. Because plants differ in their water and temperature needs and preferences for direct sun or shade, the microclimate in your garden will affect both the plants you choose to grow and the specific spots in which you plant them.

How to Clear a Garden Bed If you’re starting a new garden from scratch, you need to establish a garden bed—a prepared area of soil where your plants will grow. Before you begin planting or working with the soil, you have to clear each garden bed of any sod, plants, rocks, or other objects that might be covering it. To clear a garden bed: 1. Mark off the garden bed(s): Define the area(s) of your yard that you’d like to use to grow plants and flowers. To mark off straight lines, plant stakes and wrap twine around them. To mark off curves, lay down a rope or garden hose.

2. Clear the surface of the site: Remove rocks and unwanted plants. Make sure to pull out the plants’ roots as well as their stalks. Mow the site if it’s overgrown.

The ideal soil texture is a mixture of about 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay. This soil structure, called loam, lets water drain quickly enough so that the plants won’t drown but without letting the water steal nutrients from the soil.

How to Test Soil Texture You can test the texture of your soil using a simple technique called the jar test: 1. Take a soil samples from the area where you’ll be growing plants. Rather than take a sample from the surface, dig down 4–6" to take a sample from the layer of soil where the plants’ roots will grow.

2. Sift the soil through a sieve to remove pebbles and other matter. Then let the soil dry.

3. Place 2" of dry, crushed soil in a tall, clean, straight-sided, empty jar, such as a tall jelly jar. You must have a snug cap for the jar.

4. Fill the jar two-thirds of the way to the top with water.

5. Add a teaspoon of table salt to the jar.

6. Cap the jar, then shake it vigorously for 2–3 minutes.

7. Place the jar on a flat surface and let the particles settle over the course of a few days.

Sand will settle first (within a few minutes), then silt (within a few hours), and then clay (over the course of a few days), leaving three distinct layers of particles.

8. Once all the particles have settled and the water is clear, measure the height of each layer. Then divide the height of each layer by 2—that will give you the percentage of each particle type in your soil. For instance, if you have 0.8" of sand, 0.8" of silt, and 0.4" of clay, then you have the ideal 40% sand, 40% silt, and 20% clay.

9. Determine the type of soil you have by using the USDA soil texture triangle. Each side of the triangle lists a percentage amount for one of the three types of soil particles.

The percentage of sand is along the bottom of the triangle, the percentage of clay is along the left side, and the percentage of silt is along the right side. Make a dot for the percent on each side that corresponds to your soil, then make a line from each dot straight through the triangle. The point at which the lines intersect in the triangle indicates the type of soil you have.

How to Strip Lawn or Sod

100

best gardening soil

If the planting site is covered in grass or sod, you have to strip off this cover. To do so:

90

60

pe

rce

nt c

lay

40

30

silty 50 clay

50 sand 40 clay

clay loam

sand clay loam

20 10

60

silty clay loam

70 80

loam

silt loam

sand loamy loamy sand 90 80 70

ilt

The characteristics and quality of the soil in your garden play a big role in determining which plants will grow best there (or whether any plants will grow well at all). You can get a good sense of the quality of your garden’s soil by testing it for four main properties: soil texture, soil structure, soil pH, and soil nutrients. It’s a good idea to test your soil in the fall, before you start planting your garden. This will give you time to improve the soil if necessary.

30

clay

s nt

How to Test Your Garden’s Soil

70

rce

Continue this process until you’ve cleared the area in which you’d like to plant.

20

80

pe

1. Water the area: Watering the area loosens the soil, making it easier to dig and remove the sod, roots and all. Give the area a gentle watering about two days before you plan to strip the sod, so that the ground is moist but not muddy.

2. Strip the sod: A spade is the best tool for stripping sod. Holding the spade at a shallow angle, slip its blade just beneath the grass. Be careful to slide the spade no more than 1–2" into the soil—the goal is to cut just beneath the roots of the sod but no deeper.

3. Remove the sod: To remove the sod, turn your spade to the side. You may have to slice stripping sod around the edges or at the bottom of the sod to separate it completely from the surrounding earth. Discard the sod you’ve removed by putting it in your compost pile, where it’ll decompose into fertile topsoil.

acceptable gardening soil poor gardening soil

10

silt

sand

60

50

40

30

20

10

90 100

percent sand The bright green circle indicates soil texture that’s ideal for growing plants, while the pale green circle indicates soil that isn’t ideal but can support plants and be improved. Soil in the white area probably won’t produce terrific results even if improved, though you may still be able to grow in that area by building a raised bed from store-bought soil (see How to Make a Raised Garden Bed).

Gardening Basics

www.quamut.com Soil Structure Soil structure refers to the way that the mineral particles are arranged in soil. For instance, though two soils might contain the same percentage of clay, the clay particles in one of the soils might be equally distributed, while the particles in the other might be packed in a solid layer, called hardpan, which traps water and blocks root growth. The best soil structure for gardening is an even distribution of sand, silt, and clay throughout the soil.

How to Test Your Soil Structure You can test your soil with the following percolation test: 1. In your garden, dig a number of holes that are 1' deep and 2' wide.

2. Cover the holes with plastic and allow the soil to dry.

3. Fill each hole with water, then time how long it takes for the water to drain out of the hole.

Soil with good structure will drain in 10–30 minutes. Soil that drains in 30 minutes to 4 hours will support plants, but you‘ll have to water it slowly to avoid drowning the plants. Soil that drains in less than 10 minutes will dry out too quickly after watering to support good plant growth. Soil that takes more than 4 hours to drain likely either contains too much clay or has a layer of hardpan.

Soil pH pH is a scale that measures how acid or alkaline a substance is. The pH scale ranges from 1–14, with 1 being the most acidic and 14 the most alkaline, or basic. Most (though not all) plants grow best in soil with a pH of 6.0–7.0.

How to Test Soil pH To test the pH of your soil, you can buy a soil pH test kit from most home or garden stores for less than $5. If your soil falls close to the pH range of 6.0–7.0, it will support most plants. If the pH falls outside that range, you can often improve it.

Soil Nutrients Plants absorb a variety of nutrients from the soil that are vital to plant life. These include the three main nutrients— nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium—as well as a number of other trace elements. Most soils contain at least some of the elements that are crucial for plant life, but it’s never a bad idea to either test your soil for nutrients or keep an eye out for signs that the soil may be nutrient-poor.

How to Test Soil Nutrients As with pH, it’s possible to test your soil for nutrients using an inexpensive, store-bought soil test kit. These kits test only nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. If you’d like a more detailed test, use a professional soil tester from a private lab or contact your local cooperative extension office, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Either of these services can give you a detailed assessment of your soil’s nutrients and recommendations for ways to improve it. Both a lab and extension office will provide you with any instructions you need for providing soil samples. Extension offices usually charge $6–10, whereas private labs are likely to cost more.

If you don’t want to go through the effort of testing your soil’s nutrients, you can still get a sense of whether it’s nutrient poor by observing your plants.

• Plants lacking nitrogen have yellowing leaves.

• Plants lacking phosphorous are stunted and have very dark green, red, or purplish foliage.

• Plants lacking potassium have brown-edged leaves.

How to Improve Your Soil If your soil tests as only mediocre, putting in the effort to improve it will have a huge impact on the success of your garden. And improving soil that’s already good will only make it better and ensure that it stays nutrient-rich.

How to Improve Your Soil Texture You can’t actually change the texture of your soil—for instance, you can’t remove some of the silt while leaving the sand behind. But you can improve the performance of soils of different textures by using soil amendments, additives that you work into the soil. In particular, organic soil amendments improve water retention in sandy soils while loosening up silty and clay soils and improving drainage. Popular types of organic soil amendments include: • Compost: Compost is produced when naturally occurring bacteria break down organic matter, such as leaves and other dead plant material, over the course of time. You can either make your own compost or buy bags of compost at gardening centers. Sometimes you can even get free or inexpensive compost from your town or city. A 40-pound bag of compost is usually enough to improve about 1 square yard of soil.

• Aged manure: Aged manure is animal waste that has been put through a composting process. Animal wastes from different sources can have very different potencies, so always read and follow the instructions on the packaging to know the amount to add. Aged manure is sold at nurseries and garden stores. Never use fresh manure or manure from pets in your garden.

• Peat moss: This spongy plant matter is sold at nurseries and garden stores and is particularly beneficial in sandy soils.

Though you can improve soil by laying just 2–3" of organic matter on top of the garden bed, the best way to add soil amendments is to dig the organic matter into your soil with a hoe or tiller to a depth of 2–3". If possible, add the organic matter to your soil in the autumn so that it has time to work itself into the soil before you start planting in the spring.

How to Improve Soil Structure Improving soil structure means physically loosening up the soil to promote drainage and root growth, as well as breaking through hardpan (if any is present). In most gardens, the process of digging the bed (see How to Make Garden Beds) is all you need to do to improve the soil.

If your garden has a layer of hardpan, you may be able to break through it by using a spade or another digging tool to dig a number of holes through the hardpan and then fill those holes with good, store-bought soil. These holes provide drainage and also give plant roots a place to grow. If digging through the hardpan doesn’t seem to help, consult a gardening professional for help.

How to Improve Soil pH If your soil is slightly more alkaline (pH a little above 7.0) or acidic (pH a bit below 6.0) than it should be, you can usually improve it as follows: • To improve slightly alkaline soil: Add compost, which is slightly acidic.

• To improve slightly acidic soils: Add fertilizer, which is somewhat basic.

You can also amend very alkaline soil by adding sulphur and very acidic soil by adding limestone. Adding either sulphur or limestone is a severe measure that can have serious side effects, though, so discuss your plans with a gardening professional before deciding to add either of these amendments. Also, bear in mind that over the course of time, soil tends to return to its natural pH, so it’s a good idea to test and improve your soil’s pH on an ongoing basis.

How to Improve Soil Nutrients To improve the nutrients in your soil, you can add fertilizers, which can be either synthetic or organic: • Synthetic fertilizers: These manmade nutrients come in a dizzying array of types, from granular fertilizer mixed into the ground to liquid fertilizer piped into watering systems to fertilizers designed to be applied to a plant’s leaves. In addition, synthetic fertilizers may release their nutrients at different rates and need to be reapplied either more or less often. Many synthetic fertilizers are complete fertilizers, meaning that they contain nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

The relative proportion of these three nutrients in a complete synthetic fertilizer is shown as a three-digit number (such as 5-10-5) on the package. This number tells you the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (respectively) in the fertilizer.

• Organic fertilizers: Some gardeners, for personal or environmental reasons, avoid using synthetic fertilizers and instead use organic fertilizers derived from plant, animal, or mineral sources. Organic fertilizers are gen­ erally more expensive than synthetic fertilizers and tend to act more slowly, so they need to be applied to the soil a few months before planting. Also, no single organic fertilizer contains nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, so you’ll likely have to use more than one.

The type of fertilizer that’s right for your garden depends on your particular soil and on the type of plants that you want to grow. So your best bet for choosing the right fertilizer is to get your soil tested for nutrients (or observe how your plants do) and then ask the advice of an experienced gardener. When fertilizing, always follow the instructions on the fertilizer bag and be very careful not to overfertilize.

How to Make Garden Beds Garden beds are the prepared areas of soil in which you’ll grow your garden plants. There are two techniques you can use to dig garden beds: single-digging and double-digging.

The method you should use depends on the quality of the soil in the bed, the type of plants you want to grow in the bed, and how much time you have.

• Single-digging: Single-digging involves digging to a depth of 8–10". It’s generally used for garden beds in which you want to grow annuals and vegetables, as those plants live through only one growing season and don’t develop deep root systems. You should single-dig the bed each time you plant new annuals or vegetables in it. If you have soil with excellent texture and struc­ ture, you may be able to single-dig all your beds regardless of what you plan to grow in them.

• Double-digging: Double-digging involves digging to a depth of 16–20". Though it’s essentially twice the work that single-digging is, it can be useful if your soil is less than perfect and you’re growing perennials, bulbs, or other year-round plants that develop deep root systems. The good news is that perennials and other year-round plants live for many years, so you generally have to double-dig a bed only once.

Some gardeners, when they’re preparing a bed for annuals or vegetables, double-dig when they’re establishing the bed for the first time and then single-dig in subsequent years.

How to Single-Dig a Garden Bed To single-dig a garden bed, follow these steps: 1. At one end of your garden bed, dig a trench the depth and width of your spade. Keep the removed soil on a tarp or in a bucket or wheelbarrow.

Gardening Basics

www.quamut.com 2. Using the spade, push the strip of soil next to the trench into the trench. Then the edge of the bed where you made your first trench will be filled, and a new trench will be one spade’s width from the garden’s edge.

garden bed

trench (width of spade)

tarp with dirt

• Water and air: Raised beds generally get very good water and air circulation in their soil.

• Growing season length: Because it’s above ground, a raised bed tends to get warm earlier and stay warm later than the ground, extending the growing season.

How to Build a Raised Bed 3. Continue steps 2–3 until you’ve moved all of the soil in the garden over one space, then take the first batch of soil that you removed and place it in the final trench.

garden bed

new trench

Building a raised bed involves four basic steps: planning the bed, preparing the ground beneath the bed, assembling the frame, and filling the frame with soil and amendments.

Planning the Raised Bed Pick a sunny spot on your lawn to place the raised bed and calculate the dimensions of the frame. Frames can be all sorts of shapes, though 4' × 8' rectangles are among the most practical—the 4' width allows you to reach all areas inside the frame without having to step onto the soil. Most frames are 12–16" high.

Preparing the Ground Beneath the Frame 4. With a digging fork, mix in amendments and fertilizer through the top 8" of the bed.

5. Use a soil rake to even out the surface of the bed and break up any big clumps of soil.

How to Double-Dig a Garden Bed

Strip any sod and remove any objects from the area where you want the raised bed to stand. It’s also a good idea to single-dig the area to improve soil drainage and aeration.

Building the Raised Bed Frame You can build the frame yourself or use a store-bought raised-bed frame kit:

When to Dig Garden Beds The best time to dig garden beds is in the fall, after the gardening season has ended. Frost and cold during the winter will break up clods and help the soil to settle. Digging in the fall also means that you’ll be ready to start planting right away when spring comes and you won’t have to dig first.

How to Make Raised Garden Beds Raised beds are garden beds that are built above ground level. Many gardeners prefer to build their own raised beds.

Raised beds have a few advantages over regular beds: • Good soil: If the soil in your yard isn’t particularly good, you can simply fill a raised bed with good, store-bought soil and amendments.

• Easier on the body: A raised bed reduces the amount of bending or kneeling that you have to do.

• Better access: You can locate raised beds so that you can walk all the way around them, making them more accessible, particularly if you have a physical disability.

• Less maintenance: As long as you don’t regularly step on the soil in a raised bed, the bed should require less effort to maintain once it’s built—you generally don’t have to redig it before you plant each year.

How to Know When to Water Your Garden There’s only one foolproof way to know when your garden needs watering: feel the soil. Check the soil at specific areas of your garden, including sunny spots, shady spots, and spots sheltered by buildings or trees. To test each spot: 1. Use a trowel to dig 2–3" into the soil. Don’t feel just the surface of the soil.

2. If the soil 2–3" down is moist, no watering is necessary.

If the soil is dry, it’s time to water.

Don’t wait until your plants start to wilt to water them—but if you do spot wilting plants, water them immediately.

How to Develop a Garden Watering Schedule

Double-digging is like single-digging, with one extra step: 1. Open a trench (as in step 1 of single-digging).

2. Use a digging fork to break up the soil at the bottom of the trench to a depth of an extra 8" while mixing in amendments and fertilizer. Don’t remove this soil— instead, twist the fork to loosen and mix the soil.

3. Fill the trench with the adjacent soil (as in step 2 of single-digging).

4. Repeat steps 2–3 across the garden bed, filling the last trench with the soil from the first trench.

5. With a digging fork, mix in amendments and fertilizer through the top 8" of the bed.

6. Use a soil rake to even out the surface of the bed and break up any big clods of soil.

• Weather: Even if you grow plants that are suited to your region’s climate, year-to-year fluctuations in weather can affect how often you should water. In a particularly rainy year, for instance, you won’t need to water as often. In a dry year, you’ll need to water more often.

• Microclimate: The particular microclimate of your garden can also affect how much you should water and may require that you water different parts of your garden to differing degrees. In particular, the parts of your garden that are in direct sunlight need more water than those that get a lot of shade. If an area of your garden gets significantly more wind than other areas, that part of the garden may also need to get more water, as wind increases water evaporation.

• Soil type: One important reason to test your soil is that different types of soil vary in their ability to retain water. Sandy soil drains quickly and needs to be watered more thoroughly than silty soil, which retains water so well that you have to be very careful not to overwater and drown your plants.

• Building the frame yourself: If you want to build the frame, be sure to use a nontoxic building material such as pressure-treated wood, bricks, or cinder blocks.

If using wood, make sure to bind the corners using wood screws or metal braces. If you use only nails, the corners are likely to split once the frame is filled with soil. Also, if you’re building a wood frame with sides that are 20' or longer, place stakes along the outside at 10' intervals to stop the boards from warping.

• Buying a raised bed frame kit: Nurseries, garden centers, and online retailers sell bed frame kits that are easily assembled—they snap together—and can be made into a wide variety of shapes. The kits are time-saving, high-quality, and attractive—but also expensive, generally starting at about $200.

If you live in an area with burrowing animals such as moles or gophers, you can protect the plants or vegetables you’ll be growing in the raised bed by buying a sheet of chicken wire, cutting it to the dimensions of your raised bed frame, and then stapling the wire to the bottom of the frame. Roots can get through the wire, but rodent pests can’t.

Filling the Raised Bed Fill the frame with lightweight soil mix from a garden center.

Buy enough soil to fill the frame to a depth of 10–12", and mix in plenty of store-bought organic matter as well. Then you’re ready to start planting.

How to Water Your Garden Giving your plants the right amount of water is crucial to growing a healthy and vibrant garden. But there’s no “right amount” of water for every garden. The amount of water that suits your particular plants depends on a few factors: • Plant type: Though all plants need water to survive and bloom, some require more water than others.

Whenever you buy a new plant for your garden, make sure you know its water needs.

When you start your garden, get a sense of how fast the soil dries out. If you garden’s microclimate is varied, keep track of the time it takes for the soil to dry in various areas. Once you know how long your soil will retain water, you can set up a schedule to make sure your plants get the water they need without you having to check the soil every time.

Keep your watering schedule flexible depending on the weather. For example, if it’s usually mild and rainy in your area, but at a point during the summer you experience a significant heat wave or dry spell, go ahead and give your plants more water rather than just continue on with the same rigid watering schedule.

Tips for Watering Your Garden Professional or avid gardeners often set up intricate furrow or drip irrigation systems, which involve either shaping the soil into furrows to carry water to the plants or snaking specialized hoses through the garden. But most gardeners rely on more traditional watering methods: sprinklers, handheld hoses with a sprayer nozzle, and watering cans.

Though it might seem pretty straightforward to use a sprinkler or watering can, the following tips will help you water your plants more effectively while also cutting back on water use: • Water where it’s needed: If your garden has a varied microclimate, not all areas of the garden will need water at the same time. Rather than spray your entire garden indiscriminately with water, either check the soil in each area of your garden before deciding whether it needs watering or develop a schedule that takes into account the different areas of the garden.

• Water more deeply and less often: Instead of just moistening the top 1/2–1" of soil very often, it’s better to get the soil wet down to a depth of 8–10" less frequently. This kind of watering allows less water to evaporate from the top layers of soil. It also promotes deeper root growth in plants, which helps establish the plants and makes it easier for the plants to survive should very hot or dry weather hit.

Gardening Basics

www.quamut.com • Water in the morning or the evening: Watering during the sun and heat of midday results in more water loss to evaporation and can also make plants more vulnerable to getting scorched.

• Remove weeds: Weeds can steal water from the plants you actually want in your garden. So by removing weeds you’ll reduce the amount of water your garden needs.

• Set a timer: If you’re using a sprinkler, get one with a timer so that you won’t forget to turn it off. Leaving a sprinkler on both wastes water and can damage your plants by overwatering.

How to Mulch Your Garden Mulch is an organic or inorganic covering placed over the soil in your garden. It both benefits your plants and reduces the amount of time you’ll have to spend working on your garden. A layer of mulch:

How to Prune Your Garden Pruning refers to the process of cutting away branches or stalks from a plant. Pruning improves not only the appearance of your garden but also your plants’ health: • Appearance: A well-pruned garden will look neater and place the focus on your plants.

• Performance: Proper grooming benefits plant growth by ensuring that your plants aren’t competing with one another.

Specific pruning techniques depend on the type of plant that you’re growing—annuals and shrubs, for instance, require different pruning techniques and even different tools. For softer plants, such as annuals, perennials, or vegetables, you can generally prune away stalks or stems simply by pinching them off with your fingers or by using bypass shears. Woodier shrubs or trees require hardier tools, such as saws and loppers.

• Prevents moisture from evaporating from the soil, reducing how much you have to water • Makes it harder for weeds to sprout • Reduces pests Mulch also protects against unseasonable heat or cold by insulating the soil, and some mulches also provide an attractive ground cover.

Organic Mulches There are a wide variety of organic mulches available, many of which have the added bonus of enriching your soil as the mulch breaks down over time. However, certain organic mulches may actually contain the seeds of weeds, and should be avoided. Popular organic mulches include: • • • • • •

Wood chips Shredded bark Shredded newspaper Shredded leaves Grass clippings Pine needles (for plants that prefer acidic soil)

Other, less common organic mulch options include redwood bark, buckwheat hulls, ground corncobs, cottonseed hulls, evergreen boughs, hops, peanut hulls, and sugarcane.

Though manure, hay, and straw are sometimes sold as mulches, it’s generally best to avoid them, as they can contain seeds that will sprout into weeds.

In terms of the nutrients they provide to soil, woodier mulches tend to decompose slowly and provide few nutrients, whereas softer mulches decompose relatively quickly and provide more nutrients.

Inorganic Mulches Inorganic mulches include natural materials, such as stone, sand, and gravel, or synthetic materials, such as sheets of plastic or a woven fabric called landscape fabric. These mulches are long-lasting but won’t provide any nutrients to your soil, so they’re best used around plants that are naturally suited to your soil.

How to Lay Down Mulch If you’re laying down inorganic mulch, follow the directions on the packaging. If you’re laying down organic mulch: 1. Apply a layer of mulch 2–4" deep over planting beds of established plants, taking care to leave a radius of at least 5" around the stem of each plant. Be sure not to mulch over newly planted seeds, because that will stop them from growing.

2. Rake the mulch every few weeks to months in order to expose new mulch to the air and elements.

3. Over time, the mulch will decompose. Add more mulch when only a thin layer of mulch is left.

loppers But there are a number of overall guidelines for pruning that are universal across different types of plants.

Pruning Guidelines There are two main ways to improve a plant’s growth through pruning: • Pruning dead or dying branches: By cutting away dead or dying branches, stems, and leaves, you help the plant devote energy to the parts of it that are alive.

• Pruning dense growth: By pruning away healthy branches when a plant has dense growth, you allow the plant to put increased energy into the stalks and branches left behind, which helps the plant’s long-term growth. Pruning away dense growth also improves air circulation and access to light for the remaining branches, which also fosters growth.

When to Prune Your Garden The best time to prune a plant depends on the type of plant you’re working with. When buying a plant, be sure to ask about pruning guidelines for it.

How to Fight Garden Weeds, Pests, and Diseases Weeds, insect and animal pests, and plant diseases can do substantial harm to a garden. But there are things that you can do to protect your garden from these menaces.

How to Fight Weeds Weeds aren’t just ugly, they also harm the plants that you’re trying to grow by stealing nutrients and water from the soil.

The best way to keep weeds out of your garden is through a combination of techniques: • Mulch: A layer of mulch stops weeds from growing by acting as a barrier to light. Applying mulch to your garden can significantly reduce the amount of time you need to spend weeding.

• Pull weeds up when they’re young: If weeds do sprout in your garden, it will save you time to pull them up when they’re young. Young weeds won’t have established root systems, and it’s crucial to pull up the roots along with the rest of the weed.

• Overheat weeds: It’s possible to kill weeds by cov­ ering them with clear plastic that’s anchored at the edges. Heat will build up beneath the plastic, killing both the weeds and their seeds.

• Herbicides: Though herbicides are effective, it’s generally best to use them only as a last resort since they contain chemicals that are released into the environment. If you do use an herbicide, make sure to follow the directions carefully. You can find herbicides at garden centers and home improvement stores.

How to Fight Insects Though most insects are actually beneficial to your garden, some insects will eat the roots, stems, or leaves of your plants. You have a wide range of options for combatting harmful insects. Some of the most popular include: • Animal predators: Bats, birds, and toads all eat the insects that harm your garden. Putting up birdhouses or birdbaths or adding a backyard pond can encourage these beneficial animals to hang around your garden.

• Beneficial insects: Some garden centers, mail-order catalogs, and online retailers sell insects that prey on the harmful insects in your garden. Lady beetles, or ladybugs, eat aphids and are particularly popular.

• Copper: This metal repels snails and slugs, which tend to feed on plant leaves. To stop these animals, pick up some copper sheeting or paper with a copper backing from a garden store, and use the copper to ring your garden beds or apply it to the sides of raised beds.

• Plant stem collars: If the stems of your plants are getting eaten, protect them by covering them with “collars” made from rolled-up strips of newspapers or cardboard toilet paper rolls. The collars should extend a few inches up the stem of each plant and about an inch into the ground.

• Pesticides: If all else fails, you can turn to pesticides.

These should be a last resort, though, because they kill beneficial as well as harmful insects. If you do use pesticides, it’s best to use organic varieties such as BT. Synthetic pesticides build up through the animal food chain and can even pose health risks to humans.

There are many other weapons in your anti-insect arsenal beyond those listed above. If you think you have an insect problem in your garden, consult a gardening professional, who will probably ask you to describe either the insect or the damage being done to your garden.

How to Fight Animal Pests The best way to stop animals from eating your plants is usually to use barriers.

• Burrowing animals: To stop burrowing animals, get wire barriers and place them around individual plants, use raised garden beds with wire spanning the entire bottom of the frame.

• Above-ground animals: Fences are good at dis­ couraging deer, rabbits, and other above-ground animals. The fence should be at least 4' high, and will work best if angled outward, which makes it harder for animals to jump or climb over it.

How to Fight Plant Diseases If any of your plants have strange growths, blotches, fuzz, or blemishes on them or are mysteriously wilting, they may be suffering from disease. Most plant diseases are caused by fungi, which are treatable with various fungicides. If you think your plants might have a fungus, bring a photo or description of the symptoms to a gardening professional.

To avoid plant fungi in the first place, keep your garden tools clean and dry—fungi require moisture to thrive.