- Growing an Organic Garden for Busy Families
Experience shows that gardeners generally make more or less mistakes at the beginning of their work. Certainly, perfection is an elusive goal as perspectives evolve with time. Nonetheless, we can strive to learn from our past mistakes and anticipate future challenges to minimize new ones. This necessitates effective planning to avoid repeating known errors and pave the way for smoother endeavours. Planning provides a vision for the eventual layout of the garden, even if the implementation takes several years. Dealing with uncertainties, especially regarding pathways in a landscaped garden, is common. New gardeners may initially struggle to determine the ideal locations for paths, leading to spontaneous formations that may later prove unsuitable. Likewise, decisions on tree and bush placement, water pipes, wells, compost piles, and other installations can be challenging at first. Often, they might not even realize the necessity of certain features until later stages of development.
Typically, these essential elements in the garden are introduced gradually, and it becomes evident that their interconnections may not be advantageous. Subsequent reorganization ensues, leading to inconvenience and losses. Hindsight reveals that thoughtful pre-planning could have averted such issues. Nonetheless, it's essential to strike a balance and avoid excessive complexity during the planning phase. Opting to arrange vegetable beds in a south-north direction ensures maximum sunlight exposure for the crops. This arrangement also prevents taller vegetables, like tomatoes and peas, from casting shadows on each other, optimizing their growth potential.
Tips
To sustain a single person's vegetable needs throughout the year, approximately 130 square meters of land would be necessary. However, after excluding peas, beans, cabbage, and potatoes, this area can be reduced to 45 square meters, providing sufficient produce for winter consumption. Anyone can easily calculate the required area based on the data in Table 1. Furthermore, it's important to consider the placement of the water tank for irrigating our garden. Position the water tank or water tap within the vegetable section where the crops are cultivated, and it's advisable to plan accessibility for easy use with gardening equipment.
Table 1.
Distribution of vegetable area
The name of the vegetable | One person needs a year (kg) | Yield kg per square meter | Approximate area m2 for harvesting |
Potatoes: a) yearly b)late | 40 120 | 2,5 2,0 | 16 60 |
Cabbage: a) yearly b)late | 7,0 23,0 | 2,5 2,5 | 3 9 |
Carrots | 15,0 | 2,7 | 6 |
cucumbers | 14,0 | 2,3 | 6 |
tomatoes | 8,0 | 3,0 | 3 |
kale | 8,0 | 2,5 | 3 |
beets | 6,0 | 2,8 | 2 |
onions | 5,0 | 1,8 | 3 |
Fertilising and caring for crops grown in small gardens
Small gardens often host a diverse range of crops. To maximize the yield of leafy vegetables, it's unwise to cultivate the same crop consistently in the same area. To counter this, small-scale gardeners should implement a recognized practice of crop rotation. This method excludes certain perennial vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus, along with marigolds. When organizing plant placements, it's important to recognize that vegetables vary not only in taste but also in their nutritional requirements and other factors. Certain plants in the first group exhibit high nutrient absorption, while those in the second group are more conservative, and some in the third group respond positively to increased nutrient levels. For instance, legumes utilize nodules to efficiently capture nitrogen from the atmosphere.
The initial category encompasses lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and pumpkins. The second group encompasses all rhizomes and bulbs. Meanwhile, the third group comprises legumes, peas, and beans. With these criteria in mind, it's recommended to divide the entire small garden space into roughly four sections. Among these, one section should receive organic fertilizers during autumn and mineral fertilizers either in autumn or spring. This designated area is suitable for planting the first group of plants. In the second segment, exclusively mineral fertilizers are applied, primarily during the spring season, and it's also where vegetables from the second group are cultivated. In the third segment, a modest amount of spring-applied mineral fertilizers is recommended. As for these particular vegetables, the application of nitrogen is usually unnecessary. The fourth segment of the field is allocated for perennial vegetables.
In the following year, the first group of plants is situated in the section of the field previously occupied by legumes. Here, after the harvest interval, organic fertilizers are applied during the autumn. In the colder sections of the garden pertaining to the second group, the areas where the first group's crops were grown in the preceding year are assigned. However, in the portion of the field where the second group was cultivated in the initial year, plants of the third group were not present.
In the third year, plants from group 1 are situated in locations where the third group's plants received sunlight during the second year, accompanied by proper fertilization. Vegetables from the second group are planted in the garden sections where the first group's plants were present in the prior year. Meanwhile, the plants from the third group are positioned where the second group's plants were situated in the previous year.
