The Thrive For Good Growing Food Course
Start Here
Welcome!
Please watch the video to get started.
I’ve put the whole course on this page.
You can scroll down to go through the lessons in order, or you can jump around as you see fit.
I created the course for Thrive For Good, a nonprofit organization.
Thrive provides training, tools and seeds to help underserved communities establish productive food gardens that combat malnutrition and generate income.
They’re such an effective charity that they have a long list of people asking for their support, so they need funding to continue their work.
I’ve been donating since 2013, and I hope you’ll join me by donating below. Thank you!
INTRODUCTION
Why and Where and How
Why grow your own food?
My goal in the garden is not only to grow food, but to grow food that is substantially more nutritious than any food I can buy.
Even if you’re lucky enough to shop at a local, organic farmer’s market, most farmers can’t put the effort into growing food that’s as nutritious as what you can grow yourself.
Depending on which nutrient we’re measuring, food grown today is 20-80% lower in nutrition than it was in the 1940s, and with some knowledge and practice, you can get these nutrients back into your food.
Many human health problems are the result of nutritional deficiencies, and nutrient-dense food is medicine. It’s a great thing to have your own medicine outside your kitchen door.
Where to put the garden?
The best place for a food garden is in full sun, in good soil, near a source of irrigation water, and close to the kitchen so you can pick a few things to stir into breakfast or dinner.
Of course, you may not have full sun, good soil, and a hose all close to the kitchen, so there’s often a compromise to be made, but as you walk around your yard, those are some things to consider.
And yes, there are caveats.
If you live in a particularly hot climate, your plants may actually appreciate a little afternoon shade.
If you live in a cold climate, you may choose a gentle, south-facing slope where the snow is always the first to melt in the spring, knowing the soil may not be as good there, but with work, you can improve it.
How big should the garden be?
A single bed with a width of 4-5 feet is about right because it makes efficient use of space while still allowing you to reach into the middle of the bed without trampling your plants, but depending on the size of your yard, you may choose to deviate from that.
Bed length is entirely flexible.
If you build multiple beds next to each other, you only need 1-foot-wide paths between them for walking, although if you plant right to the edge of the bed, the foliage of many plants will spill out to the paths, so your 1-foot path may gradually disappear. If you need to fit a wheelbarrow, 3-foot paths may be needed.
As for overall square footage, I recommend starting small. A big garden can easily get away from you, overrun with weeds or too many plants needing your attention at once.
You might start with one bed in the first year and double the square footage each year until you get to what works for you.
You can grow most of your food with a few thousand square feet of densely-planted beds, but even with a couple of hundred square feet, you can grow a nice amount of medicinal food.
Today, I’ll be building two 4’ x 7’ beds because that’s what fits into my space.
Some people say the ideal orientation of a garden is to have the long side running north to south, because the plants will all receive more equal light. However, I’ve oriented my beds in various directions, and it has always worked out fine.
What To Do, When To Do It
Broadly speaking, I think about my garden in 3 stages:
- Preparing the bed.
- Planting.
- Maintenance.
Preparing the bed
Preparing a new bed can occur at any time of year when the ground is workable.
It especially seems to happen in spring, a couple of weeks before the average last frost date, because that’s when we tend to think about getting the garden ready.
That said, you may build a bed in the summer to prepare for a fall garden or in the fall so it’s ready for peas the following spring (peas prefer to be planted as early as possible, as soon as the soil can be worked).
Later, I’ll be sharing a few ways to prepare your bed.
Planting
Planting can occur throughout most of the growing season, but there are a few key moments.
Many people start seeds indoors in late winter, 4-8 weeks before the last frost, to have the plants ready to plant out when warm weather arrives. That means seeds are often ordered in mid-winter.
For some people, indoor seed starting may continue throughout the spring and summer, allowing them to always have something ready to plant in the garden as other crops are harvested.
Then there is sowing seeds directly into the garden, which typically occurs over a 1-2 month period during spring but may continue throughout the summer with certain seeds.
Maintenance
The main tasks here are fertilizing, watering, pest management, harvesting, and seed saving.
Most of these issues can occur throughout the growing season.
Some fertilizing is done only once or twice a year, while other applications are made monthly or even weekly. Watering is done at least once a week and sometimes daily.
Pest management is an ongoing process of observation, prevention, and occasional intervention.
Harvesting typically begins in spring and may continue into winter. Most seed saving happens in the summer and fall.
But it all starts back with the soil, so that’s where we’ll start, too…
SOIL
Getting Ready
Lawn
If there’s an existing lawn, there are a few ways to deal with it.
With the method of soil preparation I’ll be using, called double digging, I remove the grass first.
First, it’s best to mow it fairly short. Then, here are some common ways to get rid of a lawn:
- Spade. It’s hard work, scraping off the top inch or so of soil and grass, and it doesn’t even get rid of all the roots, but it’s low-tech, so it’s often what I do.
- Sod cutter. Similar to the above, but the machine, which you can rent from an equipment rental place, does most of the work for you.
- Rototiller. You need a heavy-duty tiller to break up a lawn, and even then, it usually takes a few passes. After that, you can rake off some of the grass, and some of it will remain in the soil.
- Solarizing. This only works during hotter times of year. Cut the grass short and place a sheet of clear plastic, 1-4 millimetres thick. Cover the perimeter with something to keep the heat and moisture in. Wait 1-2 months.
- Smothering. Place overlapping layers of newspaper, cardboard, landscaping fabric, or black plastic to block out the sun entirely. Weigh them down so they don’t blow away. This may take 2-3 months, but it kills most of the grass.
If you remove the grass, it would ideally be put into a compost pile so that you can eventually return the topsoil and organic matter to the soil.
Weeds
If you have weeds growing, you may want to address them first.
If there aren’t many weeds, you can prepare the bed using any of the methods I’ll share, and they’ll be incorporated into the soil.
But if there are a lot of weeds, I remove them with a hoe, and then I either leave them on the soil surface as mulch when I’m done digging, or I move them to a compost pile. Most weeds are good for the soil, so it’s okay to leave them even if some of them end up taking root again.
Or if they’re particularly troublesome weeds like English ivy, kudzu, or bindweed, I remove as much of them as I can, root and all, with the help of a garden fork.
Soil Testing
Soil testing is beyond the scope of these lessons, but I do want to mention it because if your goal is to grow your own nutrient-dense food, soil testing will eventually become part of the puzzle.
Using a clean shovel, take at least a few samples of soil from around your garden, mix them together in a clean container, and send 1-2 cups to a soil lab. I prefer to use an organically minded lab, which typically means mailing the sample outside of your area.
The lab will identify the excesses and deficiencies of the main elements in your soil, along with fertilizer recommendations to help bring things towards balance. The cost of the labs I use is approximately $25 for a basic test, $25 for more comprehensive testing, and an additional $25 for their recommendations.
On top of that, you can get into biological testing to look at the balance of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms in your soil, which is also important for soil health. That’s another $25 to $50.
Some people are reluctant to spend this money up front, and that’s okay – it’s never too late to test.
Organic Matter
“Soil organic matter” is plants, animals, and microorganisms, some of them living, but most at various stages of decomposition.
Organic matter constitutes a small portion of the soil, yet it plays many important roles.
Compost
Compost is made of organic materials that have been broken down for weeks, months, or years until they resemble something akin to dark soil.
Those organic materials may have included grass clippings, leaves, food scraps, manure, straw, wood chips, and pretty much anything that was once a plant or animal.
Good compost is rich in nutrients and contains beneficial microorganisms. It looks good and smells good.
Bad compost may contain garbage and harmful microorganisms. Sometimes, it looks and smells bad, but sometimes it resembles the good stuff. That’s why you may want to eventually make your own so you can control the ingredients and the process.
In the meantime, the best way I know to find good compost is to ask around. You may find it at a garden center, a dedicated composting center, a mulch/soil supplier, or even a local farmer.
You can also buy compost in a bag, which is easier than buying in bulk, albeit much more expensive. You can even buy it online, although I’ve found it to be much lower in price at a garden center.
A common suggestion is to spread a 1/2-inch thick layer of compost, but even 1/16 of an inch is very helpful if the compost is good.
A cubic yard of compost typically costs $30-$60 (although it can be obtained for as little as free and as much as $100). When spread at 1/2 inch thick, it will cover about 650 square feet. When spread at 1/16 inch, it will cover about 5000 square feet. It goes a long way.
If you buy it in bags and spread it at 1/2 inch thick, that’s about 1 litre (1.5 pounds) per square foot. When spread at 1/16 inch thick, that’s 1 litre per 8 square feet.
Mulch
Regardless of how you prepare the soil, mulching is almost always worthwhile.
A good mulch feeds the soil, protects the soil from rain/wind/sun, and blocks weeds.
My favourite mulch that does all of the above is leaves. In the fall, you can collect them from your property and put them on your beds.
I often pile them 6 inches high. They partially break down over the winter. In the spring, they need to be raked aside in places where you sow seeds, and then you can gradually bring them back underneath the seedlings, although with some crops, I end up planting so densely that there’s not much room for mulch.
If you don’t have leaves, straw is a reasonable substitute. I’ve often found bales of straw in online classifieds from local farmers, as well as at hardware stores and garden centers.
Wood chips can be an okay mulch, too, especially under trees and shrubs. In a vegetable garden, I find leaves and straw easier to manage.
Soil Prep Options
Before we can plant, we usually need to work on the soil.
It’s conceivable that your soil has such great natural fertility that little needs to be done. However, to dramatically improve your chances of success, I’ll show you how to prepare a garden bed in a way that has been proven to produce big yields in a small space.
I’ll also mention some other options you could use instead.
We prepare the soil to make it easier for seeds to germinate and grow, and for planted plants to become established and start forming roots.
We also want that soil to have a good balance of water, air, nutrients, and beneficial biology.
Today, I’m using an established method called deep soil penetration, also known as double digging, because, with just a shovel and a garden fork, I can prepare the soil for planting and promote unencumbered root growth right away.
A double-dug soil will capture, retain, and drain water well.
It will have sufficient air space to support roots and beneficial soil organisms. Soils lacking sufficient air tend to promote the growth of organisms that are harmful to plants.
Some other options:
The first is tilling with a gas-powered machine. Most home tillers go 3-6” deep, although some can get 8” down. This is similar to digging by hand, but you can’t go nearly as deep with a tiller, and proponents of double digging say it’s less hard on soil structure and biology. That said, it is a fast and easy way to prepare a large area of soil for planting, so I understand why some people prefer it. Back when I was installing gardens for clients, I used a tiller because time was of the essence.
The second method is sheet mulching, which is where you lay down a thick layer of organic materials, 12-24 inches thick, often starting with a layer of cardboard or newspaper to block the grass/weeds and then piling on some combination of materials like manure, straw, leaves, and grass clippings. That can be an excellent option if you have 6-24 months to wait for it to become usable. And there are even a couple of things you can grow there in the meantime, the common one being potatoes.
The third method is to buy some topsoil, 2-way mix, or 3-way mix and put it right on top of your soil, making a raised bed perhaps 6-12” high. I don’t love 3-way mix because it usually contains peat, a non-renewable resource that isn’t particularly useful in the soil. My preference would be a 2-way mix of topsoil and compost, whether you buy it already mixed or make it yourself with a 75% topsoil and 25% compost ratio. You can use boards, rocks, or any other materials to keep the soil within a defined area. Alternatively, if the soil is moist and not too high, it may retain its shape without support.
Double Digging A Bed
Here’s what you’ll need…
Tools:
- A shovel for digging.
- A pickaxe for especially hard soils.
- A garden fork for deeper soil penetration.
- A hard rake (aka bow rake) to level out the bed.
Optional preliminary steps:
- Water. We want the soil to be moist but not too wet. If it’s dry, water it the day before or in the morning. If it’s saturated with water, wait until it’s not, because working wet soil can cause problems.
- Remove weeds. You don’t necessarily have to remove weeds, but if there are some you want to get rid of, now’s the time.
- Spread compost. 1/2 inch thick is plenty. That’s about 1 litre (1.5 pounds) per square foot. You can use up to 1 inch, but even 1/16 inch (1 litre per 8 square feet) is incredibly helpful.
- Spread fertilizers. If you conduct a soil test, you can apply fertilizers based on the results of that test. If you didn’t do a soil test, you could apply a broad-spectrum fertilizer. Or you can wait until later to fertilize. I’ll discuss fertilizers more in the maintenance section.
Now, here’s how to prepare your bed:
- Starting at one end, with a shovel or garden fork, dig a trench about 12 inches wide and 12 inches deep, going across the width of your bed and put that soil into a wheelbarrow or otherwise out of the way. We’ll save it for later. If you can’t dig 12 inches, do what you can. Even 6 inches is worthwhile.
- With a garden fork, loosen the soil in the bottom of that trench. Ideally, we do this a further 12 inches deep, although some soils are so compacted, it can be tough to get that deep. Again, 6 inches would still be worthwhile.
Now, continue digging trenches down the bed, but this time, you can simply move the soil from each trench into the previous trench.
From here, we keep going. We loosen the soil in our new trench and then start again with a new trench beside it.
And so on, until we have a trench at the end of the bed. Some of the soil we saved from the first trench could go into the last trench, although you may find the bed is now so elevated due to the digging that you don’t need any of it, i.e., there’s often enough soil to fill the last trench just by raking the entire bed with a hard rake. In that case, you can instead keep some of it for other projects or to incorporate into a compost pile.
Some people do this every few years or even more often. I just do it once.
PLANNING
Choosing What To Grow
Several factors should be considered when deciding what to grow. Here are some:
- What do you eat the most?
- What is most expensive for you to buy at the grocery store?
- What grows best in your soil and climate?
- Do you have health issues for which there are foods that are known to help?
- Do you want to focus more on calories to feed your family (e.g. potatoes) or medicinal plants to keep you well (e.g. many herbs), or gifts for your neighbours (e.g. tomatoes and basil)?
- Occasionally, you may satisfy all of the above, but not always, and that’s entirely fine – you get to choose based on what’s important to you.
As for how many different crops to grow, that’s something you will figure out over time.
For many reasons, it is beneficial for the garden to have a diverse range of plants growing, and it is also beneficial for your health to eat a diverse range of plants.
But it’s more challenging to grow a diverse variety of plants because you have to learn the intricacies of each of them.
Regardless of the square footage, I’d rather grow 5 types of plants exceptionally well than 50 types poorly.
My suggestion is to start with 5-10 varieties of plants.
Companion Planting and Polycultures
Companion planting is when you position certain plants in close proximity to each other in the garden because one of them benefits the other, or they benefit each other.
The benefits could include reducing disease/insect pests/weeds, improving soil health, attracting beneficials such as pollinators and pest predators, providing physical support, providing shade, or simply making more efficient use of space.
Or sometimes we avoid certain combinations because a plant can have a negative impact on another.
I won’t get into too many specifics here because there are infinite possibilities, but here are a few combos that have been scientifically tested:
- Peas and lettuce are cool-season crops, often some of the first things sown in the garden. When planted together, the peas (which require some form of vertical support) provide shade and a small amount of nitrogen to the lettuce.
- Corn makes a good trellis for pole beans. You just need to sow the corn seed a few weeks ahead and let it get 4-6 inches tall before sowing the bean seeds underneath. The beans may provide a little nitrogen to the corn. You can also sow a few vining squash along with the beans to provide a ground cover. This Indigenous American combination is often referred to as the “Three Sisters.”
- If you have squash bugs and/or squash vine borers on your squash family plants, then next year, plant some Blue Hubbard squash, which will lure the pests away from the other squash because Blue Hubbard is their favourite. Plant the Hubbards a few weeks before the other squash.
- If you have Colorado potato beetles on your potatoes, plant tansy and catmint among them.
A challenge with companion planting is that, although you’ll come across no shortage of recommendations, when you look for research, it often doesn’t exist, or if you find some, it’s often not so clear whether a certain combination is actually all that good.
Having read through many studies over the years, I don’t get too picky about choosing specific combinations, but I do plant many types of plants in close proximity with the expectation that the overall result will be better.
This is called a polyculture (as opposed to a monoculture). Although it could be as simple as mixing everything together all throughout the bed, there’s usually a little more order than that.
The way I tend to do it is I have a few plants that are my main crops, for example, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, beans, and broccoli. I may plan the garden around them and then, among each of them, plant several smaller crops.
Polycultures can suppress weeds by having plants with varying heights and leaf types that more thoroughly shade the soil, as well as by releasing different chemicals into the soil that prevent some weeds from germinating.
A polyculture can confuse pests while also providing habitat for their predators.
It can also utilize soil nutrients, water, and temperature fluctuations more effectively. In some years, some crops do better than others, so if you have each area of the garden planted with multiple crops, you’ll be more likely to have something do well.
Yields from each crop are usually lower, but overall yields from a given area are higher.
This can be as informal as mixing many plants together in a bed, or, if you want to keep things cleaner, you can do one row of X and then one row of Y, and so on.
The most important thing to remember is that many herbs are useful companions, so I encourage you to plant them liberally among your vegetables.
Crop Rotation
Just like animals, plants are categorized into families.
The most common plant families in a vegetable garden are:
- Allium. E.g. Garlic, leek, onion, scallion, shallot.
- Amaranth. E.g. Beet, spinach, Swiss chard.
- Brassica. E.g. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, radish.
- Cucurbit. E.g. Cucumber, pumpkin, squash, zucchini.
- Legume. E.g. Bean, pea, peanut.
- Solanum. E.g. Eggplant, pepper, potato, tomato.
- Examples from other families. Carrot, corn, lettuce.
It’s worthwhile to know which family each plant belongs to because, ideally, we “rotate” (i.e. move) families to a new spot in the garden every year.
An example: if I grow broccoli in one spot this spring, I will do my best to find a new spot to plant broccoli and all other members of the Brassica family in the fall, and again next year, and perhaps for a few years.
Plants from the same family are often eaten by the same insects and diseases, and in some cases, moving them to a different spot from year to year (sometimes even from season to season) can reduce that pest pressure.
Crop rotation has other benefits, similar to companion planting – it can decrease weed growth, improve soil quality, and increase yields.
I’ve seen 7-year rotations where members of the same family are planted in an area only once every 7 years.
Grouping your families together can help simplify this rotation process, for example, growing broccoli, cabbage and kale in the same area and moving them together year to year. The downside of that, though, is if you get an insect that eats all of them, you’re just making it easier for the pest.
That’s why crop rotation can get quite tricky in a diverse vegetable garden with dozens of plants. Rotation certainly makes sense in a monoculture, where, instead of growing corn every year, a farmer may do beans one year, then corn the next year, and any number of plants in subsequent years.
In a home garden, crop rotation makes the most sense when you have a few crops that are especially important to you and you rotate them, concerning yourself less with the other plants.
I encourage you to take some notes (and photos) in case you want to get into rotating your crops next year.
One point of clarification: The previous lesson was about companion planting and polycultures. It’s possible to take a polyculture to such an extreme that all plants get intermingled together across the whole garden, which makes crop rotation virtually impossible.
I’m not sure which would be better: interplanting all plants across the entire garden with no crop rotation, or full separation of plant families with careful rotation. I expect there’s a happy medium, with some companion planting and some crop rotation.
Succession Planting
Planting doesn’t have to happen all at once in the spring.
Even plants that take longer to mature, like tomatoes, can be planted in two or three sessions over the course of a month to spread out the summer harvest.
And some seeds can be sown (to “sow” a seed simply means to plant it) every couple of weeks throughout the spring and summer to get an extended harvest.
Staggered planting like this can also decrease pest problems, as the earlier plants may encounter issues that are avoided by the later plants, and vice versa.
When sowing seeds during hot months, it can be beneficial to sow them a little deeper to provide some protection from the heat. Covering the bed with shade cloth can also help keep the soil cooler.
Going back to our main plant families:
- Allium. E.g. Garlic, leek, onion, scallion, shallot. Mostly planted once/year, but scallions and shallots can be planted regularly.
- Amaranth. E.g. Beet, spinach, Swiss chard. Can be planted regularly throughout the year.
- Brassica. E.g. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, radish. Can be planted regularly, but most of them don’t like to mature in the summer heat, so you may take a break from planting them in late spring, but then start again in summer for a fall crop.
- Cucurbit. E.g. Cucumber, pumpkin, squash, zucchini. Mostly planted once/year, especially because most people don’t need many plants since these are so productive, but you can definitely plant them in 2-3 stages to extend the harvest and prevent some pest problems.
- Legume. E.g. Bean, pea. Can be planted regularly, but peas don’t like the heat, so take a break in late spring.
- Solanum. E.g. Eggplant, pepper, potato, tomato. Mostly planted once in spring for harvest in the summer, although if you live in a warmer climate, you can also do a planting in late summer for a winter harvest.
- From other families. Carrots can be planted regularly. Corn could be planted 2-3 times in spring. Lettuce can be planted regularly, although many lettuces don’t like summer heat.
Herbs
- Perennials are generally just planted once. E.g. Chives, Mint, Oregano, Sage, Thyme.
- Annuals could be planted regularly. E.g. Basil, Cilantro, Dill, Parsley.
There’s no special formula for this. Just choose some plants that you’d like to have more of and plan to sow them regularly, perhaps every couple of weeks.
I especially do this with different types of lettuce and other greens, but you may decide to include beets, bush beans, carrots, and others.
Planning Your Garden
Most food plants require full sun, which, in horticulture, means at least six hours of direct sunlight per day. However, for most food plants, 10 hours or more a day is preferable.
If you don’t have full sun, there are some plants that grow in part shade, even if they take longer to mature and don’t get as big. Your main options include various lettuces and greens, numerous herbs, and a wide range of root vegetables.
If you do have good sun and you’re growing tall plants like climbing tomatoes or beans, it’s best to put them on the side of the bed that allows the rest of the garden to remain in full sun, unless you’re growing some plants that like a little shade, in which case, you may use the climbing plants to provide shade for them.
The spacing between plants in the garden varies depending on the type of plant. Planting in rows is fine, although if you’re an efficiency nerd, you can get about 15% more plants if you plant in a hexagon pattern.
Either way, you don’t have to have big rows between plants. Farmers plant in rows with wide spaces between them, allowing their tractors to drive through the field during the growing season.
You can plant things closer together, which reduces soil moisture evaporation, decreases weeds, and protects the soil.
There’s no magical way to lay out a garden, and although I’ve seen charts of how many of each type of plant to grow per person, the truth is that it’s entirely up to you.
What I will give you is a general idea of some things most people don’t need many of, and other things for which you may plant dozens of plants:
- 1-4 per person. Cucumber, Eggplant, Pepper, Squash, Tomato, Zucchini, Herbs (each).
- 10-ish per person. Bean, Pea, Potato.
- Dozen(s) per person. Beet, Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrot, Corn, Garlic, Kale, Lettuce, Onion, Radish, Spinach, Swiss chard.
To summarize these planting preparation lessons, here are the main things to remember:
- Grow whatever you want to grow, whether it’s what you eat the most, what is most expensive to buy, what grows best in your soil and climate, or some other criteria.
- Feel free to intermingle your plants in polycultures, as the benefits of having them together are many.
- Take note (and photos) of where everything is planted so you can consider moving them to a different spot next year.
- Plan on having at least a couple of plant types that you continue to plant successively throughout the season.
PLANTING
Seeds and Seedlings
A seedling is a small plant that was started from a seed several weeks earlier.
If you plan to grow just a few plants, you may decide to buy seedlings from a garden center or farmer’s market, so you don’t have to go through the process of starting your own from seed.
But the more plants you’re intending to grow, the more likely you’ll want to start them from seed yourself, partially to save money but also for the other benefits that come from using your own seed that you saved from last year.
You can buy seed from a local garden center, but the more you get into this, the more likely you’ll want to go right to the source – the seed companies growing the seed.
Most of them are now online, so you can order from their websites, and some of them will still mail you a physical catalogue if you prefer ordering the old-fashioned way.
Regardless, I still encourage you to buy local, which doesn’t necessarily mean your direct community, as there may not be any seed growers there, but it does mean seeds grown in a similar climate to yours. That could be your state/province, or your USDA plant hardiness zone, etc.
If you store your seeds at a cool temperature, in a dry location, and away from light, they can remain viable for 2-5 years or more, depending on the seed.
You may see some seeds that are labelled “open-pollinated” and others that are “hybrids.”
Hybrids are created by humans through the cross-pollination of two different species of plants from the same genus (e.g., two types of tomatoes) to combine the strengths of each.
(Hybridization is very different from genetic modification, which is a whole other level of intervention that is not allowed in organic farming and gardening.)
The main time you may decide to use a hybrid in a home garden is when you have a lot of trouble with a certain disease on a certain plant, and you find a hybrid that has been bred to be resistant to that disease.
The big downside of hybrids is that when the plant goes to seed, that seed usually reverts to one of its genetic parents, which usually isn’t very appealing. That’s why, with hybrids, you can’t save the seed and expect the same benefits next year.
Open-pollinated seeds are mostly pollinated by insects, birds, or the wind. Some of them are “heirloom” seeds that have been passed down for generations, often due to their exceptional benefits, such as superior taste or disease resistance.
The main advantage of open-pollinated seeds is that they reproduce true to type, allowing you to save them every year and plant them again the following year, thereby reaping the same benefits, saving money, and, importantly, enabling the seed to gradually adapt to your soil and climate conditions over time.
Then there’s organic. Although you could buy a non-organically grown seed and grow it organically, feeling good about what you’re eating, I always prefer to support those who are doing things without synthetic chemicals. The same goes for buying plants, although finding organic ones can be more challenging.
Starting Indoors Vs Outdoors
We may start seeds indoors to give them a head start on the growing season or to provide a more protected environment for them to begin their lives, away from pests and inclement weather.
The further you get from the equator, the more likely you need to start some things inside because your growing season may not be long enough for certain plants to bear fruit if they were directly sown outside.
During the growing season, you can continue to start some plants inside to make better use of space in the garden. When your lettuce is ready to be harvested, it’s nice to have a plant ready to take its place, rather than sowing seed directly and waiting weeks or months for it to be ready for harvest.
That said, starting seeds indoors is more work than sowing them directly in the garden, so when direct sowing is possible, I generally opt for that.
I’ll give you a list below, but note that from the “Start Indoors” list, there will be plants that some people prefer to sow directly outside, especially as you get closer to the equator, and from the “Start Outdoors” list, there will be plants that some people prefer to start inside. There’s some trial and error to figure out what works best for you.
Many of the “Start Outdoors” plants have delicate roots, so they don’t love being transplanted, which is one reason they’re often directly sown outside. That said, some gardeners start some of them inside to get an earlier harvest, avoid early pest damage, or if they have short summers that don’t allow enough time for plants to reach maturity.
Start Indoors:
- Brassica. E.g. Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage. Brassicas can be a little challenging, and they seem to do better when started indoors. Additionally, they typically require growth in the spring and fall when temperatures are cooler. Starting them indoors allows them to reach harvest size before the heat of summer or before the cold of winter for a fall crop.
- Solanum. E.g. Tomato, pepper, eggplant. This family tends to take a long time to bear fruit, so it’s best to start indoors to ensure the plants produce fruit before the fall weather gets too cold.
Start Outdoors:
- Cucurbit. E.g. Cucumber, zucchini, squash, pumpkin.
- Legume. E.g. Peas and beans.
- Root crops. E.g. Beet, carrot, potato, radish, onion, garlic.
- Corn.
Indoors or Outdoors (for these, many people like to start them inside, and many people like to sow them directly outside):
- Greens. Lettuce, kale, spinach.
- Herbs. Most of these can be directly sown, but some people like to start them indoors.
Sowing And Planting Outdoors
Some seeds are planted one inch apart, while others are planted two feet apart. Seed packets usually tell you.
As for depth, most seeds are planted just under the surface of the soil, slightly deeper than they are thick. For example, a beet seed is approximately 4mm wide, so it is planted about 4-6mm deep, i.e., with 4-6mm of soil on top of it.
For seeds that are planted close together, some people like to make a shallow trench with a trowel or even their finger.
For seeds that go further apart, like 6”, you may dig individual holes, or if your soil is particularly fluffy, which is generally the case if you’ve recently double dug the bed, you’ll be able to bury the seed directly with your fingers without doing any digging.
Sometimes, I find it better to water the soil before sowing the seeds, especially for tiny seeds, which are sown so shallowly that watering after can wash them all away. That said, sometimes it’s easier working with drier soil when sowing, in which case you can water after. Watering after also can help settle the soil.
You can use the soil that’s already in the bed to cover the seed. Just make sure it’s not a big chunk of soil – we want the soil on top of the seed to be more like a powder, so it’s easy for the root to grow down and the shoot to come up.
And then there’s planting.
Whether you’ve purchased some seedlings or grown them yourself, planting in the garden is easy.
Gently remove the plant from the container without pulling on the plant itself. Sometimes, I can squeeze it out, but usually, a butter knife helps to remove it, like muffins from a muffin pan.
When you get it out, if the roots are root-bound (circling around the edges of the container due to having overgrown the container), tease them apart with your fingers or cut them with a sharp knife to help encourage them to grow out into the soil.
Then, you just dig a small hole. If you’ve already prepared your soil with compost and fertilizer, you don’t need to do anything special in the planting hole. In general, we want to amend the whole soil, not just the planting hole.
That being said, it’s okay to add a small amount of compost and/or broad-spectrum fertilizer/microbial inoculants during planting to ensure the plant has a favourable environment to start with. But don’t go overboard. I don’t want the rootball to be planted only in compost. That can cause problems.
Place the plant so that the top of the rootball is slightly deeper than the top of the soil, and use your hands to ensure the soil is firmly around the rootball.
Some people plant even deeper, so the plant’s lowest leaves are just above the soil. I do this for tomatoes, peppers, and the brassica family because it’s well established that they will develop more roots along the buried stem and be better off for doing so.
I suspect some other plants do the same, but some may be unhappy buried too deep, so with most plants, I only go slightly lower than soil level (side note: most trees and shrubs don’t want to be planted deeply, and indeed, in some cases, like clay soil that gets a lot of rain, we may plant them a little higher than the surrounding grade).
Unless the soil is already too wet for some reason, it’s usually good to water gently when you’re done planting to help settle the soil around the rootball.
Starting Seeds Indoors – What You Need
Containers
There are many types and sizes of containers. As long as they have drainage, they can all work.
I mostly use small, plastic pots that are 2.5-3” wide and tall. I start a couple of hundred plants this way each year. It’s possible to use smaller containers that are more like 1-2” wide and tall. This makes more efficient use of space, with the compromise being a smaller root system. You could also use bigger containers, but that can be overkill. I find 2.5-3” to be about right for growing a seed for 4-8 weeks before planting it out.
I put these into a 10” x 20” tray to catch any water that drains out of the containers when I water them. Depending on the exact dimensions of the containers I’m using, I can usually get 20-30 containers into a tray.
Some people grow the plants all together directly in 10” by 20” trays and then gently tease each of them out with a popsicle stick or something similar. This is more space-efficient, so if I ever wanted to start more plants, I would consider that instead.
Soil
Using soil from the garden can work, but it has a higher failure rate because it’s often too heavy. Instead, you can buy seed-starting mix online or at a garden center or hardware store, and it works very well. I’ve used cheap ones and expensive ones, and they’ve all worked fine.
You can also make your own, although it may not be worth the time when you’re not starting many seeds. However, it can save you money when your garden grows larger, as well as giving you more control over the growing medium.
A simple recipe is 1/2 light soil or sand and ½ well-finished compost. Another common recipe is 1/3 topsoil or peat moss or coconut coir, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 sand, perlite, or vermiculite.
Seeds
As I wrote in a previous lesson, you can buy seed from a local garden center, but the more you get into this, the more likely you’ll want to go right to the source – the seed companies growing the seed.
Most of them are now online, so you can order from their websites, and some of them will still mail you a physical catalogue if you prefer ordering the old-fashioned way.
Regardless, I still encourage you to buy local, which doesn’t necessarily mean your direct community, as there may not be any seed growers there, but it does mean seeds grown in a similar climate to yours. That could be your state/province, or your USDA plant hardiness zone, etc.
Light
Unless you have a lot of direct sun coming through a window, which is rare in the winter, it’s worthwhile to have some supplementary lighting for your plants.
I use LED lights in the 5000-6500 Kelvin range. It’s quite a white light, not a yellow light, and it’s very bright. With two 4-foot LED “T5” lights, I can provide light for 2 trays. I have them on a timer for 16 hours/day.
That said, I know many people who simply place the plants in a sunny window, and although growth may not be optimal, it’s often enough to get them started.
Temperature
Room temperature works best for most vegetables that are started indoors. If your room is cold, you can buy an electrical heat mat for $15-$30, which will fit under one 10” x 20” tray.
Starting Seeds Indoors – The Process
Here’s how I start my seeds:
Seeds
Although not necessary, I usually soak my seeds overnight because it speeds up the germination process.
I also add a small amount of liquid kelp and/or sea minerals to the soak water, so the seed has access to all the elements it needs to be optimally healthy at the beginning of its life – again, an optional step, but worthwhile.
Soil
Add your growing medium to the containers and place them in a tray with no holes (to catch water).
I like to water them now, before seeding, but many people water them after seeding.
Seeding
Most seeds are planted just under the surface of the soil, slightly deeper than they are thick. Place 1-3 seeds per container, ensuring they are just deep enough to be lightly covered with soil.
Once you gain more experience, you start to have an idea of which seeds germinate very well, meaning only one is needed per container, and which ones don’t germinate as easily, in which case two to three per container will give you a better chance of having a plant in each container. When more than 1 seed germinates in a container, you cut all but 1 of them off with a pair of scissors.
Light
I placed the trays under my lights immediately. Most seeds don’t require light to germinate, but even LEDs, which don’t generate much heat, produce a slight amount that speeds up germination for most plants.
I like to keep the lights 2-4” above the tops of the plants, which means they need to be raised higher every week or two as the plants grow.
Water
I water every couple of days, once I see the soil has dried out a little.
I don’t want the soil to stay saturated all the time because that can promote disease, but I also don’t want it to dry out too much because the plants don’t have a well-developed root system yet to absorb much water.
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Hardening Off
When the plants are 4-8” tall, which often takes 4-8 weeks (although it does depend on the plant), and the temperature outside is appropriate (which varies a little for different plants), I harden the plants off.
Hardening off is the process of gradually acclimating plants to the sun and wind by taking them outside for increasing amounts of time each day.
There are many ways to do it, but a simple way to remember is to spend 1 hour outside on day 1, 2 hours on day 2, and so on.
Along with increasing time outside, there should be a little more time in the sun each day, starting with shade on the first day and gradually increasing the sun exposure.
After about a week of hardening off, plant them in the garden.
MAINTENANCE
Fertilizers and Inoculants
Most soils have at least some of each element plants need, but many soils don’t have enough of each element or the right balance of elements to grow optimally healthy plants.
You can get an idea of the fertility of your soil by sending a sample to a soil lab. Based on their analysis, you can apply the deficient elements to the garden. It is very worthwhile to do this to improve soil health as well as plant health, nutrient density, and flavour.
But even without a soil test to guide us, there are things we can apply in small amounts that don’t supply too much of any one element and so won’t cause any excesses.
Compost is a great start, and we don’t need much. 1/2” spread out over a bed before digging, or even dusted on the surface during the growing season, is usually more than enough.
You can also make your own liquid fertilizer by combining a mixture of weeds and fresh grass clippings in a container, filling it with water, covering with an air-tight lid, and leaving it for a few days or, even better, a few weeks.
I do this regularly, the only downside being that unless you get weeds from other places, you’re only bringing in the nutrients that are already abundant in your soil, not the ones you need the most.
For this reason, I use several broad-spectrum fertilizers, most of which are derived from the ocean, including seaweed fertilizer, sea mineral fertilizer, and fish fertilizer. There are similarities between them, but each brings its own benefits, so I use them all. If you live near the ocean, you can make your own. Otherwise, you can buy them.
Most gardeners focus on fertilizers (let’s call that the chemistry of the soil), but just as important is the life in your garden (the biology).
“Microbial inoculants” bring that biology, the beneficial microorganisms that are often deficient in the garden for various reasons. We need that biology to feed our plants and protect them from diseases.
The primary method for incorporating this biology is, again, a small amount of high-quality compost.
And then there are products. My favourite is called Effective Microorganisms, a liquid mixture of fermenting microbes that was formulated in Japan in the 1970s and early 1980s and is now used worldwide.
If possible, it’s a good idea to apply small amounts of broad-spectrum fertilizer and beneficial microorganisms regularly, rather than applying everything at once in the spring.
I come through at least monthly and sometimes weekly – especially useful during late spring and summer when plants are growing the most.
How To Water
Just like us, plants need water to live.
In nature, they’re watered by rain. You can approximate that in the garden with a hose, sprinkler, or even a simple watering can.
That said, some plants are more disease-prone than others, like the tomato and squash families, and they’ll be less likely to get disease if their leaves stay dry.
In a humid climate, plants may benefit from being spaced further apart to allow for more airflow among the leaves. You may also consider watering the soil instead of watering from above, whether using a watering can, drip irrigation, or a soaker hose.
Or you may water in the morning, allowing the sun’s rays to dry the leaves.
If you use a drip or soaker hose, you still want to water the entire soil area, rather than just watering around the plant. In these lessons, the whole soil area is covered by plants, but even for people who plant in rows with big spaces in between them, the roots eventually go out into those rows, too, so as long as you have sufficient irrigation water, there should be water applied there.
One benefit of planting intensely is that the plants cover the soil, decreasing evaporation. That, partnered with a mulch, will help you conserve water.
As for how much water to apply, you may come across the rule of thumb that suggests applying 1 inch of water per week. That may be a little much, but it may be okay during the heat of summer. It works out to about 60 gallons per 100 square feet.
My own rule of thumb is 1/3 inch (20 gallons per 100 square feet) per week during spring and fall and 2/3 inch (40 gallons per 100 square feet) per week during summer.
If my hose puts out 8 gallons per minute, that’s just 2.5 minutes per 100 square feet in spring and fall and 5 minutes in the summer. Again, that’s per week. But every hose is different, and once you start exploring various irrigation accessories, that changes things.
A rain gauge will help you figure out how much water you’re applying, at least for overhead watering methods like a hose, sprinkler, or watering can. Ideally, we set up at least a few gauges (or straight-sided cups) around the garden to determine how long it takes us to apply that 1/3 inch or what have you.
Ultimately, the amount to apply depends on the temperature, wind, humidity, and sun exposure.
Sandy soils don’t hold as much water, so they require more frequent watering, with less water each time, typically 2-4 times per week. Clay soils hold a lot of water, so to get the water down deep, we supply a greater amount of water each time, but then we wait longer between waterings, typically once or twice a week.
Of course, when you get a good rain, that will also decrease your watering needs. A rain gauge will tell you how much rain you got (it’s hard to guess).
With new seeds and seedlings, we need to water more frequently, sometimes every day or two, because their roots don’t reach as wide and deep as they need to tap into the soil’s reserves. But as the roots grow larger, we gradually water more deeply and less frequently to encourage the roots to extend deeper, resulting in healthier plants.
Pest Management
The most important thing to know about pest management is that unhealthy plants get eaten by insects and diseases, while healthy plants don’t.
Not only can healthy plants defend themselves against pests, but even more interesting, plant-feeding insects and diseases evolved to consume nutritionally imbalanced plants, so they don’t even eat healthy plants.
Mammals are another story – they evolved to eat healthy plants. To keep rabbits, squirrels, deer, and others out, you need to find a way to block them. That often means some type of fencing, but may also involve chemistry (like cayenne pepper) and biology (a cat or dog).
But for plant-feeding insects and diseases, the primary goal is to enhance soil and plant health, thereby minimizing any problems they may cause.
This involves a combination of the topics we’ve been discussing in these lessons, including good compost and mulching, fertilizers, microbial inoculants, and appropriate watering.
That said, building good soil can take years, so in the meantime, you will likely see some issues with some plants.
For some insects, like an occasional caterpillar that’s eating your leaves, you can just pick it off. Caterpillars eventually turn into beneficial butterflies, so you may want to just relocate them rather than killing them.
But if you have an infestation, you may decide to use a pesticide, whether homemade or purchased.
I don’t use synthetic pesticides, not only because most of them are toxic to beneficial organisms (including plants and people), but also because they tend to make the situation worse in the long run. Even organic pesticides can cause issues if overused, but most of them are more benign, so when used sparingly, they can play a role.
The most common homemade pesticides are:
- Soap and water. 1 teaspoon of natural liquid soap (not detergent) per quart of water can be useful on its own, and is often recommended as an addition to the recipes below.
- Herbal tea. Add a mixture of herbs to a bucket and cover it with warm water. Put on an air-tight lid, stir it every 48 hours, and start using it after 7 days. Mix it with an equal part of water before spraying.
- Garlic. Crush 2 cloves of garlic and marinate them in 1 tsp of mineral/vegetable oil for at least 24 hours. Strain it and add 1 teaspoon of liquid soap, then mix well in 1/4 cup of water. You can keep this in the fridge for at least 2 weeks. When it’s time to spray, dilute this again in 1 quart of water and spray it on the plants in the morning, preferably on a non-sunny day so as not to burn the leaves.
All of these can be somewhat harmful to beneficial insects and microorganisms as well, so we spray them only on plants that require it.
The most common organic pesticides to purchase are:
- Microbial (made from microorganisms). One example is Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium that makes a protein that kills some insects.
- Botanical (made from plants). My favourite is neem oil, made from the seeds of the neem tree (Azadirachta indica).
- Horticultural oil. Made from petroleum (aka mineral oil) or plants like soy and canola.
- Insecticidal soap. Similar to liquid hand soap, but making use of plant oils with longer-chain fatty acids, like olive and canola oil, which are easier on plants.
The last thing to remember is that even if you do use any of the above, be sure to apply fertilizers and inoculants regularly to improve plant health, as this is the best way to prevent and control pest problems.
Harvesting Crops
Now we get into one of the most rewarding parts of growing your own food.
In climates with cold winters, like much of the U.S. and all of Canada, most planting occurs in the spring, and most harvesting takes place in the summer and fall. In climates with mild winters, planting and harvesting can happen year-round.
In most climates, there may also be a smaller summer planting for a fall harvest, but here, I’m focusing on the main harvest.
If you buy your seeds and plants locally, the seed packets and plant labels should give you an idea of the expected harvest time for your area.
Going back to our main plant families, I’ll share the main harvest times for North America:
- Allium. Garlic, onion, scallion, shallot. Mostly harvested in the summer, but many of them are perennial, so if you leave some in the ground and mulch them over winter, you may be able to harvest some in spring and throughout the whole growing season.
- Amaranth. Beets are generally harvested in summer and fall. Spinach doesn’t like heat, so it’s often harvested in late spring, while chard can keep going throughout the summer. Amaranth is good for greens and seeds.
- Brassica. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale. Harvested in summer, but doesn’t like heat, so the hotter the summer and the milder the winter, the more that harvest moves towards spring and fall, and even winter in the hottest climates.
- Cucurbit. Cucumber and zucchini early to late summer, winter squash late summer to fall, pumpkin in fall.
- Legume. Beans can be harvested all summer and fall if you plant them every couple of weeks during the spring and summer, peas are harvested in spring before it gets too hot (and fall if you plant a fall crop in late summer).
- Solanum. Eggplant, pepper, potato, tomato. Harvested from summer to early fall.
As for how to harvest, most leaves and fruits can be harvested by hand, simply snapping or twisting them from the plant, but often, a knife or scissors is easier and less damaging to the plant.
Leaves taste best when they’re younger, before the plant starts to flower, whereas fruits are best when they’re allowed to ripen fully on the plant.
Roots may be pulled by hand, but a garden fork is often helpful.
There are a few plants that we can harvest all at once when they have largely died back, such as potatoes, dry beans, and winter squash, which can be stored for winter use.
But for most plants, it’s best to harvest them regularly, as soon as they’re ready, because they’re the most nutritious then and because harvesting them often causes them to produce more until the weather gets either too hot or cold for them (depending on the plant).
Many foods can be stored for many months, so you can keep eating some of your vegetables throughout the winter. But you need to create the right storage for each type of food. Some prefer it cold and moist, others warm and dry, while others want something in between. I won’t get into all of those details here, but it’s something you can learn as you go.
Saving Seeds
If you want to grow nutrient-dense food, planting your own saved seeds is part of that process because when you save seeds from the healthiest plants every year, the seeds will gradually become more adapted to your soil.
First off, you need to make sure you’re starting by buying mostly open-pollinated seeds rather than hybrids, since hybrids can’t be reliably regrown.
Next, some plants are self-pollinating, and they are much easier to save. Many of them are pollinated before the flowers even open, so they don’t cross-pollinate as readily.
But plants that are pollinated by insects or the wind are trickier because they’ll easily cross-pollinate with other plants within the same species. That means you get a hybrid, and the resulting plants, although sometimes interesting-looking, often don’t taste good. Saving seeds from plants in these families is more complicated. Seed producers must use meticulous isolation procedures, such as maintaining large distances or physical barriers, to prevent cross-pollination.
Let’s go back to our main plant families:
- Allium. Garlic, onion, scallion, shallot. Garlic doesn’t cross-pollinate. Onions, scallions, and shallots can cross-pollinate with each other.
- Amaranth. Beets and chard will cross-pollinate. Spinach is a distinct species, but it is pollinated by wind, so it often crosses with other spinach varieties.
- Brassica. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale. Will all cross-pollinate with each other.
- Cucurbit. Cucumbers will cross-pollinate with other cucumbers. Pumpkin, squash, and zucchini belong to several species, so they will cross-pollinate if they are of the same species. You need to do a little reading to figure out which ones will cross-pollinate (some pumpkins, for example, can cross with squash).
- Legume. Bean, pea. They are self-fertilizing, making them good candidates for saving.
- Solanum. Eggplants are self-fertilizing and don’t cross much, peppers hot and sweet will cross with each other, potatoes will cross with each other but we save the tubers, so it doesn’t matter, tomatoes are self-fertilizing but they may cross with insect pollination, so it’s best to plant just 1 variety if you want to save true seed (but who wants to plant only 1 tomato?).
- From other families. Corn will cross-pollinate. Lettuce is self-fertilizing and doesn’t cross-pollinate as readily.
Looking at that list, the easiest seeds to save are cucumbers, beans and peas, solanums (eggplants, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes), and lettuces.
And yet still, it’s best to plant only 1 variety of each because cross-pollination can occur, or at least keep the varieties as far apart as you can.
You can save seed from all of the other plants, but again, you need to either have big distance between them (may be possible if you live in the country very far from neighbors) or physical barriers (beyond the scope of this lesson) or accept that you may get some weird broccoli-caulfilower cross that doesn’t taste great (I would still buy some broccoli and cauliflower seeds and plant them, too).
For the seeds you’re going to save, choose the healthiest plants. That may mean plants with the most growth, tastiest fruits, and highest yields. Be sure to take seeds from at least a couple of different plants to maintain genetic diversity.
Try to leave the seeds (or the fruits that contain them) on the plant to ripen for as long as possible before disease starts to set in, even beyond when you would usually harvest them for eating.
You can dry seeds on any surface, although a seed drying rack (bought or homemade) uses fine mesh to get more airflow around the entire seed.
When your seeds are dry enough that a fingernail doesn’t leave a mark, they’re ready for storage.
Store them in a cool, dark place in a glass or plastic jar. Label them carefully, including the year they were harvested.
CONCLUSION
Preparing For Winter
It’s late autumn and the harvest is done.
It’s worthwhile to do a little work in the garden at this time of year. Sometimes, I even prepare new beds in the fall, as I now have more time, and the soil is usually not too wet.
On the other hand, if I’m going to prepare new beds in my lawn, I often wait until spring because I like having the grass there to nourish and protect the soil over winter.
For the same reason, I like to sow a cover crop in existing beds 4-8 weeks before my first autumn frost. I generally use a combination of several legumes (e.g. clover, vetch) and grasses (e.g. rye, oats). They all bring something a little different to the table, but overall, they protect and improve the soil over winter, suppress weeds, and provide homes for beneficial insects.
If the beds still have plants until frost, or if I otherwise don’t get around to sowing a cover crop, I mulch them heavily with the leaves that fall on the property, and if there aren’t enough leaves, I’ll volunteer to rake the neighbours’ leaves for them and take them off their hands. I’ll pile on 6” of leaves if I have them, but even an inch or two is better than leaving the soil exposed.
As for the remains of my vegetable plants, such as squash and tomato vines, I may move them into a compost pile, especially if I want to keep the garden looking tidy. However, often, I just let them stay right where they are. Their roots will continue to provide food and habitat for soil microbes, and when they die, they’ll simply become part of the mulch.
Then, in my climate, there are a few months of waiting until it starts all over again the next year, and I’m back to this cycle of preparing the soil, planning the garden, planting the garden, and maintaining it.
And that’s what I encourage you to do from here: make your own plan for preparing your soil, planning your garden, planting it, and maintaining it. Putting together a plan, even if it’s just 1 page, pushes you to think through a whole bunch of things, which will make the process go more smoothly when it’s time to get to work.