Vegetarians feel a special relationship with plants. Peter Singer noted this when he wrote in Animal Liberation, "Without meat to deaden the palate we experience an extra delight in fresh vegetables taken straight from the ground." So this distinguished philosopher followed the example of many vegetarian friends and took up vegetable gardening.
You may be hearing the call back to Eden yourself. Life in the '90s, though, means that your back 40 is probably a forty-foot yard and that you will have to squeeze your agricultural chores into an already overbooked lifestyle. The solution to this dilemma? A well-planned, well-tended small garden patch that fits the space and time you have. Your mini-garden won't make you food self-sufficient, but it will put plenty of fresh vegetables on your table for much of the year.
If you want the nutritional and flavor advantages that just-picked food can provide, first select a sunny, well-drained, and fertile site for your garden. You can improve drainage and fertility, but only Nature can supply the abundant sunshine vegetables must have to thrive. You may be able to let the sunshine in by trimming shrubs or tree branches, but if something immovable (like a building) is casting shade, look for another garden spot. (By the way, dare to break the rules, if you must. Plants, like people, sometimes flourish despite adversity.)
Try to avoid putting a garden where puddles linger for hours after a rain. Plants don't like wet feet! The simplest way to improve drainage is to build raised beds for your plants, which is easier than it sounds. You can find directions in a good gardening book.
Your soil will become more fertile as you work in compost, other organic matter, and rock powders like lime and rock phosphate. Mulches from your lawn clippings or shredded leaves cost nothing and do wonders. Feed your soil and it will feed you, the old-timers say. They're right!
If you are turning a patch of lawn into a vegetable garden, be prepared for some hard work the first year. You need to break up the sod and try to remove roots of obnoxious perennial weeds. You may have trouble with destructive insects, like wireworms and white grubs, that live in grassy soil. Just remember that the first year is the worst, and your garden will get less weedy every year thereafter.
For sod-busting, rent or borrow a powerful rear-tine rototiller. You can also dig up the garden site with a spade or spading fork — a back-breaking job, but great exercise for the physically fit. Again, check your gardening book for directions.
You should have an inexpensive, but essential, soil test done by your county Extension Service (probably in the phone book under United States Government - Agriculture Department), or you can buy your own kit. The test will tell you how acid or alkaline your soil is and what to do about it, as well as levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK in gardening jargon). Plants resist pests and disease better when they are grown in well-balanced soil.
How big should you make your garden? Smaller than you think it should be, if you are a new gardener. Nothing turns new gardeners into ex-gardeners faster than watching the patch you planted in April turn into an impenetrable jungle of weeds and bugs in July. First see whether you can find time for and enjoy the work load of a tiny garden. If so, you can always make it bigger next year.
Besides, that little garden is going to yield more vegetables than you expect, if you plan it right and tend it faithfully. The trick to producing a lot in a small space is to use every inch of soil for growing vegetables, not for walkways or unneeded between-row space. You can comfortably reach across two feet for tending and harvesting. So, if you are running your vegetable garden along a fence, make it two feet deep. If your plot sits surrounded by lawn, make it four feet deep and work it from both sides.
Even a larger garden, say ten by ten feet or ten by twenty feet, can utilize this layout method. Put a two-foot-wide path down the middle, leaving four-foot-deep planting sections on each side. This wide dividing row will allow you to sit or kneel comfortably as you tend or pick the four-foot sections.
Don't waste space by planting everything in single rows one to two feet apart within the sections. Instead, think of the space a mature plant takes. That is what you need between plants. Space between rows should equal the top growth of the plant. For example, a leaf lettuce plant needs about eight inches between rows. As the lettuce plants grow, thin them out in the rows (eat the thinnings) until the plants are six inches apart. Beets need about three inches between plants in rows, and rows eight inches apart (to give room to the edible leafy top growth). Give broccoli plants about 18 inches and staked tomatoes 30 inches. Your goal is to space the rows so the top growth of the plants will touch and form a canopy. This will shade the soil around the plants and discourage weed growth. If you are using close spacing, remember to maintain soil fertility by adding plenty of organic matter.
As for what to plant, choose vegetables that 1) you like; 2) produce abundantly in a small space; and 3) taste much better when absolutely fresh. When every inch counts, those high-yielding turnip greens nobody will eat are just wasting valuable space.
Plants that produce the most in the least space include leafy greens (like lettuce, swiss chard, and kale), root vegetables (carrots, beets, and rutabagas), zucchini, staked tomatoes, broccoli, and green beans. Put up a 36-inch-high trellis and you can raise quantities of crisp oriental snow peas. Cucumbers can also grow on a trellis. Each broccoli plant yields a large head and numerous side shoots after you cut the head. Just-picked green peas (that need shelling) and sweet corn taste scrumptious fresh, but yield poorly in relation to the room they require.
You can save space in your vegetable garden by growing bell peppers and eggplants as ornamentals among your flowers. Some tomato varieties, like Pixie, Presto, and Patio, can thrive in containers on (you guessed it) your patio.
To keep your garden productive all season, plant small amounts at regular intervals. A garden diagram and planting schedule will help you use your space well. As soon as the ground thaws and dries out enough to work, you can put in all the spinach you want for a spring crop. Other hardy vegetables for early planting include leaf lettuce (two to four row feet are enough), broccoli transplants (three plants will give you flowerets until winter), cabbage. radishes, tiny onion bulbs called sets (for green onions), snow peas, chard, and root crops. In two months, the spinach, radishes, and green onions will be gone. Replant their space with another crop. You should put in another two feet of lettuce every four weeks for a continuous supply (lettuce bolts to seed, but not so rapidly as spinach). You can replant onion sets continuously. One small planting of Swiss chard and kale will last until very cold weather. As you harvest leaves, the plants produce more.
Crops like green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and transplants of peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes should go in after danger of frost. Two six-foot rows of beans planted three weeks apart will keep you in beans all season. If you pick all the beans off, the plants will reflower and bear another crop. One zucchini plant will supply all the zucchini you may care to eat.
Most hardy crops do well when planted again for a fall harvest. Determine your planting date by finding out the average date of your area's first frost and counting back however many days are required for maturity. For example, beets take sixty days. If your first frost usually comes around October 7th, plant your fall beets no later than August 7th. They will continue to grow until the weather becomes consistently cold. Kale, broccoli, and the cabbage family taste best after a few good frosts.
At the end of the gardening season, put your garden to bed by tilling or digging in all non-diseased plant residues, or add them to your compost pile. Cover the soil with shredded leaves or dry glass clippings. Take stock of your results. What did well? What didn't? (Often how plants do depends more on weather, rainfall, and pest outbreaks than on the quality of your care.) Did you have too much of something and too little of something else? Did you like the taste and size of a variety enough to plant it again, or should you try a different one next year?
Then, take a breather until the seed catalogs come in January. If you are like most gardeners, you will spend the winter impatiently anticipating another gardening season of good food, good exercise, and good, dirty fun.
Among the many excellent seed companies, you may want to check out two:
1. Johnny's Selected Seeds, Foss Hill Road, Albion, ME 04910, uses organic methods for some seed production. Their catalog offers comprehensive information on planting and plant care.
2. Park Seed Co., Cokesbury Road, Greenwood, SC 29647, carries some varieties specially bred to save space.
Judy Miner has grown vegetables organically in Vermont for over twenty years.