Crisis Gardening: How to prepare your garden beds for planting

This is the last post in my series on crisis gardening.

So far we covered planning how much to grow, choosing the most suitable location for the crisis garden, and designing a crisis garden layout. Now today we’ll talk about garden bed preparations.

In this guide, I’ll outline my method for preparing garden beds for planting. This is a method I specifically use for rebuilding or sustaining the soil fertility in pre-existing garden beds. The initial garden preparation might differ slightly in that you’ll need to remove the existing vegetation, most likely grass or a lawn, to start a garden bed.

To grow vegetables in your crisis garden and ensure continuous and reliable yields you’ll have to make sure that your soil, in addition to the good structure, has the nutrients the veggies need for their growth. The vegetables are very demanding and perform poorly if the soil fertility is lacking. Also, as they grow, they will deplete nutrients more than most other plants found in nature.

Therefore, managing soil fertility will always be a crucial task in prepping both new and existing garden beds. You’ll have to do this through adding appropriate amendments, organic fertilizers, and compost.

With soil amendments and organic fertilizers, you’ll be able to address certain soil deficiencies and provide plants with readily available micro- and macronutrients. And by adding organic matter you can provide both fuel and a habitat for all soil organisms, and build soil structure as a result.

Okay, so here are the precise steps on how to prepare garden beds for planting.

STEP 1. Remove the existing vegetation

If you are starting from scratch you can do this by removing the sod by hand, sheet mulching, or good old tilling the ground with a shovel or a machine.

I prefer the no-till methods but even if you decide to till the ground, you’ll only have to do it this once to break the ground so to speak, while later on you can do the no-till as you’ll just keep adding compost on top.

In case you already have crops going in your bed, you start by pulling out and clearing all the previous crops. Pull them from the base of the plant and shake off the soil so that you’re not moving soil around. It’s best to keep as much soil intact as you can.

STEP 2. Aerate the soil

Regardless of how you decide to start in step 1, the next step is always to let some air into the soil. For this you can use a broadfork or digging fork to loosen the subsoil on your beds.

So take your broadfork/digging fork and apply pressure with one foot to press the tines into the soil, then pull back on the handles to lift and loosen the lower soil slightly. Raise the tines out of the soil, move 6 in (15 cm) further back, and repeat the sequence until you make a full pass down the bed.

STEP 3. Add appropriate soil amendments/organic fertilizers

Now add soil amendments/fertilizer onto the bed’s surface. Which ones you’ll use depends on the nature of the deficiencies of your soil.

Here are some soil amendments/organic fertilizers you can use:

Bonemeal or Phosphate Rock — Slow-release sources of phosphorus, useful for fruiting veggies like tomatoes.
Alfalfa Meal — A quick-acting source of nitrogen and some potassium. Also it’s very high in trace minerals.
Kelp — Supplies a range of trace nutrients, as well as a dose of plant hormones.
Blood meal — A good source of nitrogen.
Wood Ash — High in potassium and has an alkaline effect on the soil. Lasts 6 months.
Aged Manure — Nutrients are rapidly available to plants; the amount of nutrients will vary widely, depending on the type of animal, the bedding material used for the animal, and how long the manure has been aged.

When in doubt use poultry manure as this will supply the necessary nitrogen for the early stages of the plant growth when they need it the most for fast development. Later on, the compost will take over the job of releasing the rest of the required nutrients for optimum growth.

STEP 4. Mix the amendments/organic fertilizers into the soil

Use simple hand tools to mix the amendments/organic fertilizers into the soil. Here you should work only the top 2 in (5 cm) of the soil. This way you do not disturb the soil structure, and you avoid disturbing dormant weeds and bringing them to the surface to germinate.

Take a rake or a digging fork and mix in your amendments/organic fertilizers into the top of the soil. Pay attention to spreading the amendments/organic fertilizers evenly.

STEP 5. Apply compost

Finally, spread a layer of well-finished compost on the soil. Use a roughly 5-gal bucket (20 l) for every 10 ft (3 m) of 30-inch-wide (0.7 m) bed. For raised beds that would be approximately a bit less than two 5-gal buckets (40 l).

Rake the bed smooth, mix in shallowly, level up as necessary.

Now your beds are ready to plant!

All right, so that was my method of preparing beds for planting – it’s easy and effective and it works. I do this when I’m prepping new beds for planting for the first time, and every time for putting existing beds back to production after a harvest.

For existing raised beds, it takes me some 15 minutes to do the prep and have the bed replenished and ready to be back in production.

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Talk soon,

-William

Crisis garden layout: the three-step permaculture design method

by papprentice Leave a Comment

Once you’ve picked the best spot for your crisis garden, it’s time to start working out the specifics of how it’s going to look.

You should already have an idea of what you’ll grow and in what amounts, so now let’s see how to lay out the available space.

Properly laying out the crisis garden ensures that it’s accessible and manageable and that your vegetables receive adequate amounts of essential inputs such as sun, water, and nutrients from the soil.

Even if you’ve chosen a location that ticks many of the boxes outlined in the last step, the inappropriate type of beds, wrong bed orientation, and poor design of space could render many of these advantages worthless.

The layout of your crisis garden, now that the location is fixed, will primarily be determined by the size and shape of the land you have available. With more land available for your garden, you’ll have greater design flexibility, with less, your design solutions will be somewhat predetermined.

In this post, I want to outline a three-step permaculture design method for creating the best layout for your crisis garden. I’ll use the examples of my suburban home, my rural farm, and my parents’ place to illustrate the design concepts I’ll explain in the coming paragraphs.

So grab some paper or use a whiteboard or your computer and let’s create the ideal layout for your crisis garden.

STEP 1. DECIDE WHAT TYPE OF GARDEN BEDS YOU’LL USE

Before you start sketching, first you’ll have to decide what type of garden beds you’ll use in your crisis garden.

Although there are many different ways to grow your vegetables, here we’ll focus on three main types of garden beds: in-ground garden beds, raised beds and hugelbeds.

You’ll have to decide which of these is most appropriate according to your climate and context. Here is some brief information about each of them:

In-ground beds

Main crop garden at Zaytuna Farm, image source: https://www.zaytunafarm.com

This is the basic annual gardening method practiced for thousands of years, suitable for both home and, if necessary, larger-scale commercial food production that can bring you a side income in these challenging times.

In-ground beds are the cheapest and the least labor-intensive way to start your crisis garden. If your soil’s texture is good enough, and you’re not drowning in excess water, this will be the easiest way to kickstart your crisis garden.

The big advantage of in-ground beds is that you can use a tractor, a walk-behind tractor, and other machinery to do much of the labor to prepare your garden for planting. This allows you to quickly scale your operation if required.

Raised beds

Raised garden beds are elevated garden beds that sit higher than the surrounding soil and are usually supported by some sort of frame or enclosure. You can build them in a variety of ways; out of wood, concrete, stone, or bricks… all kinds of different things.

They are a better option than in-ground garden beds if you have poor-quality soil because you can introduce a different soil type to your raised bed.

They offer several other important advantages over in-ground beds, such as that they warm up quicker in spring, drain better, and are easier on your back, and you can manage them more efficiently.

However, raised beds are not the simple ‘plow and play’ solution that the in-ground beds are. They can be costly to make in terms of resources and labor required to build them, and since you can’t use machines you are forced to use hand equipment and simple manual tools to manage it.

Hugelbeds

Hugelbeds are nothing more than raised garden beds filled with rotten wood. You can either dig a trench and fill it with wood or just pile the wood on the ground and cover it with soil.

The wood loads your raised garden bed with organic matter and nutrients that are slowly released over the years as they decompose, ultimately helping you to grow typical garden crops with no irrigation or fertilization. The huglebeds, as they were envisioned in their original form, are also very high, so you don’t have to bend over while managing them.

Although the benefits of hugelbeds are obvious and very much desirable, they are labor-intensive as they involve moving a lot of soil around and hauling decomposing wood from somewhere. Building hugelbeds by hand will require a great deal of time and energy, so they don’t scale easily unless you have a machine that can do the digging and moving the soil around for you.

Action item: —> Choose the appropriate type of garden bed based on your climate and context.

What I’m doing:

I’m a big fan of raised beds, and I use them in my suburban home plot and on my rural farm.

The soil at my suburban home is terrible, so I needed a way to introduce better soil and build it on top of what’s essentially a crushed rock top layer.

On the farm, bad soil is not an issue, but raised beds perform better than in-ground beds as they warm more quickly (the farm is at high altitude), they are easier to maintain, and they keep the ground level weeds away.

We use in-ground beds on my parents’ place as the growing area is bigger, and they till the soil with a walk-behind tractor to get the garden ready every year for planting.

STEP 2. CHOOSE THE ORIENTATION OF YOUR GARDEN BEDS

Image source: Elliot Coleman – The new organic grower

Once you know what type of beds you’ll be using, let’s now determine the best way to orient them.

Several factors will influence how you should orient your garden beds, and it all depends on your local context. The three main aspects to consider are solar access, rainfall, and slope. Here are some useful pointers to help you decide:

If you live in an area that has dry periods and you need to catch and soak the water, then follow the contours with your beds.
If the slope is steep and you want to avoid erosion, try keep the beds relatively perpendicular to the slope, or follow the contours.
If you have a choice, orient the beds sideways to the sun (N-S). This is ideal as then every row receives the same sunlight exposure during the day.
If maximizing sun is not your priority and you have too much heat, then orient your beds E-W so that you can create shade with taller crops on the side facing the sun.

Action item: —> Choose the appropriate orientation of your garden beds

What I’m doing:

Limitations of available space more or less predetermine the orientation of my raised garden beds at my suburban home, so I wasn’t consciously orienting them.

On the farm, the beds are more or less oriented N-S, which is the ideal.

My parents’ field block is on a gentle slope with an east aspect that receives plenty of sun throughout the day. The general orientation of the beds will be N-S, while only rows of potatoes to the right of the beds will be planted parallel to the slope so they more effectively drain excess water.

STEP 3. DESIGNING THE LAYOUT OF YOUR GARDEN BEDS

Now we can start designing and deciding how to best use the available space.

No matter what the size and shape of the growing area will be, you should first somehow subdivide it into workable sections; a series of several smaller-sized plots (field blocks) that are ideally of equal size, shape, and length.

For example, blocks of 100 x 200 feet (30 x 60 meters) or 50 x 100 feet (15 x 30 meters) or smaller all depending on the size of your growing area. All the while leaving enough space, some 5 – 10 feet (1.5 – 3 meters), on either end to allow for access.

Standardizing the block size in this way helps with access, calculating input and production information, general organization, and, most importantly, management.

Through using this method, it’s easy to keep an eye on everything, and you can group together vegetables belonging to either the same botanical family or that have similar fertilization requirements.

Action item: —> Subdivide your growing area into several smaller-sized field blocks of the same size, shape and length.

What I’m doing:

Since around my suburban home, I’m limited by space, I haven’t been able to subdivide the growing area in the described way precisely, but I’ve done this based on the different microclimates/crop categories. I have three distinctive areas: one where I group my staple crops such as potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbages. One for year-round greens, these are mostly grown in and around the mini-greenhouse and a supplemental crop area that only has enough sunlight during the spring/summer.

On my parents’ field block, we’ll mostly be growing staple crops, so we divided this category into field blocks of potatoes, squashes, tomatoes, carrots, onions, and beetroots, with the remainder being a supplemental group of crops. There is some room – approximately 0.5 m (1.5 feet) on our ends – for access.

Okay, so with that, here are the dimension specifications for each individual garden bed type:

In-ground garden beds

Image source: JM Fourtier – The market gardener

Width

The standard width for in-ground beds is 30 inches (75 centimeters).

This is narrow enough to step over (from path to path), to straddle if you need to work above it, and to reach across when planting or harvesting. Moreover, it’s a standard width that most of today’s market gardening tools are made for.

If you plan on only using hand tools and a walk-behind tractor, a 30-inch (75-centimeter) bed system is recommended. But, of course, you can make them wider as long as you can cultivate them easily.

For a larger-scale commercial production with tractor-based tillage, planting, cultivating, and harvesting equipment, your beds would need to be 60 inches (150 centimeters) wide.

Length

You can adapt the length of your in-ground garden beds to your particular production scale. It can be as long as the size of the whole field block or less; for example, 100 feet (30 meters) long as the size of the whole block, or 30 feet (10 meters), or any other length.

The thing to keep in mind is that all beds should be of a uniform length as this also renders all other equipment (tarps, irrigation pipes, row covers, etc.) uniform.

Spacing

The pathways should be wide enough to allow the passage of a wheelbarrow or to work in a crouching position without damaging the adjacent bed. This can be a strip of 18 inches (45 centimeters) minimum, or wider if necessary.

Raised garden beds

Width

The best width for a raised bed is 3 – 4 feet (90 – 120 centimeters), dependent on your reach; 4 feet (120 centimeters) being the standard width. Your aim is to make the middle of the bed reachable from both sides without stepping on the soil.

Beds against a wall or fence should be about 2 – 3 feet (60 – 90 centimeters) wide, as you’ll only have access from one side. I make them 3 feet (90 cm) as I want to maximize the growing surface area, which requires more bending but also more veggies.

As with the in-ground beds, standardizing the width of the beds will allow you to customize row covers and cloches so that they can be moved from bed to bed as needed.

Length

The length of raised beds is a matter of personal preference. But since you can’t step over the raised bed, consider how far you are willing to walk to get around to the other side. Eight feet (2.4 meters) is the standard length, with 10 feet (3 meters) usually being the maximum length.

Spacing

Leave enough space between the beds to walk, mow, or push a wheelbarrow through them.

Around 30 centimeters (1 foot) is the minimum width for walking and 45 centimeters (18 inches) is the minimum width for wheelbarrows, and 50 centimeters (20 inches) or more for mowing and easier access.

Hugelbeds

Hügelkultur beds vary in width and size. However, in general, the bigger the better, because more material means they will grow more plants and last longer. The recommended width is 4 – 5 feet wide (1.2 – 1.5 meters)

• Length

You can construct hugelbeds that are shorter (1.2 meters or 4 foot), longer (2.4 meters or 8 foot), or even continuous!

• Spacing

As with raised beds, leave enough space for: walking – min. 45 centimeters (18 inches), wheelbarrows – min. 50 centimeters (20 inches), mowing – min. 50 centimeters (20 inches) or more.

Action item: —> Design the appropriate width, length and spacing of your crisis garden beds

What I’m doing:

All of my raised beds (except the mini-greenhouse ones) are standard size; 4 x 8 feet (1.2 m x 2.4 meters), with 20 inches (0.5 meters) of space between them for mowing, walking, and access for wheelbarrows. I just find it extremely useful to have everything this size so I can always use the same calculations per bed for all aspects of growing and just multiply by the number of beds to scale the calculations accurately.

On my parents’ field block, we use 100 centimeters (3 feet) width for the beds of everything except tomatoes, squashes, and potatoes. The beds are relatively short – some 240 cm (7 feet) – and the spacing between them is just a narrow strip you can walk on as there is no need to get anything wild between the beds. We can efficiently work the beds by straddling over them.

Conclusion

All right, so with that, you should have the layout of your crisis garden penciled in.

In summary, there are three main steps to creating a layout for your crisis garden:

STEP 1. DECIDE WHAT TYPE OF GARDEN BEDS YOU’LL USE —> where you choose the appropriate type of garden beds based on your climate and context.

STEP 2. CHOOSE THE ORIENTATION OF YOUR GARDEN BEDS —> where you choose the appropriate orientation of your garden beds.

STEP 3. DESIGNING THE LAYOUT OF YOUR GARDEN BEDS —> where you first (a) subdivide your growing area into several smaller-sized field blocks of the same size, shape, and length, and then (b) design the appropriate width, length, and spacing of your crisis garden beds.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how to prep your garden beds for planting. I’ll show you a method I use when I’m prepping new beds for planting for the first time, and every time for putting existing beds back to production after a harvest.

See you there!

-William

How to choose the best location for your crisis garden (site assessment guide)

by papprentice Leave a Comment

Picking the right spot for your crisis garden is crucial to successful crop production.

If you plan on growing enough food to feed your family, you want to ensure that there’s no room for a mistake that can put your harvest in jeopardy.

Garden locations that can’t provide a supply of essential inputs, that are overly exposed to elements, and that are not accessible could lead to a total loss of certain crops.

In times of crisis, when your and your family’s health might depend on the very crops you’ll be able to produce, underperforming and getting insufficient harvest is not an option.

That’s why if you’re starting a crisis garden from scratch, you’ll need to take a good look around your property to find the best location for it.

To thrive, your garden plants will need sun, water, and good soil, but there are other factors you’ll need to consider to make your crisis garden fully productive and ultimately ensure that you obtain a yield.

In this post, I’ll outline eight of these factors, and I’ll give quick assessment instructions that you can do right away. These are:

Proximity to the house
Gentle slope
Open to the sun
Proper airflow
Access to water supply
Ease of accessibility
Good soil
Safe from external threats

You’ll need to consider all of these and identify a spot that has the most going for it, as this will dramatically increase your odds of growing a successful crisis garden.

In an ideal world, you would find a spot that ticks all of the boxes, but, like anything in life, you’ll have to make compromises, so don’t fret if you can’t satisfy all the outlined conditions, getting close to the ideal is what counts. There’ll always be trade-offs, just be mindful of how to compensate for any of the weaknesses.

In case you already have a spot for your crisis garden, then use this list to rethink how you use the space and how your garden is laid out.

Let’s now look at each of these factors in more detail.

>>>Featured resource – Crisis Garden Site Assessment Protocol:
What is the right location for your crisis garden? Use this short and practical site assessment guide to find out. It will help you get a quick overview of your land, avoid major placement mistakes, and choose the optimal spot. You can download it here.

1. Proximity to the house

Zone 1 gardens, just outside David Holmgren’s house. Image source Melliodora ebook.

The first factor to consider is how close the site is to your house. Whether you’re on a 1/4 or 10-acre block, your crisis garden should be as close to your house as possible.

Gardens that feed the household belong to permaculture zones 1 and 2, as you’ll be making a lot of trips to your garden and spending a great deal of time with your plants. Plus, all of the required garden infrastructure and tools will be nearby in your house, toolshed, workshops, sheds… i.e. easily accessible, saving you even more time and effort.

Zone 1 is the immediate surroundings of the house and is the natural extension of the kitchen. Since gardening and cooking go hand in hand, you’ll want the fresh, nutritious greens that you eat daily to be just outside your kitchen or back door so that you can quickly pop out and harvest what you need.

The staple part of your garden could be further away from the house in your zone 2, as you’ll need more space to grow these crops, and you won’t be harvesting your potatoes or squashes daily. However, you’ll want to keep this part of the garden close as well, not somewhere way out there. The closer it is, the easier it will be to manage, maintain, and keep an eye on it.

Action item: Survey the area around the house for possible locations for your gardens.

—> Start at your front-/backdoor, the immediate area is the best location for your nutritious green crops.

–> Expand the search to the broader area around your house for your staple crops that need extra space and less frequent visits.

Site assessment tip: The garden location should be just a short stroll away. You want to avoid locations where you’ll have to walk more than 5 minutes to get to your garden.

2. Gentle slope

Staple crop garden on a gentle slope at Zaytuna Farm, image source: https://www.zaytunafarm.com

Contrary to what you might have heard, the ideal spot for a garden is not on flat land, but instead on a gentle slope.

A slope has many good things going for it (pay attention as I’ll mention its benefits throughout this post, not just here). Primarily it helps with proper soil and air drainage, as both water and cold air, under the influence of gravity, flow down the hill.

With weather extremes becoming the norm, massive downpours and excessive rainfall are happening more often. Sudden changes from hot to cold with damaging frosts are also more frequent, so you need to be prepared to deal with these extremes, which can be quite devastating for your crops.

Locating your crisis garden on a gentle slope helps you hedge against these events.

Due to the incline in the terrain, the excess water from massive downpours is channeled away from your growing area. This helps with proper drainage and prevents soil from getting waterlogged; plants can’t grow in waterlogged soil.

Of course, you can always grow your crops in raised beds to avoid this issue, but proper garden drainage is still important.

A slope also helps you avoid damaging frost. Since cold air is heavier than hot air, it “flows” downslope and collects at the bottom of a slope, hill, or valley, so by having your garden on a gentle slope, you are better protected from frosts. Plus, you can have a longer frost-free growing season, which is especially important if you’re planning a year-round garden.

Action item: Survey the slope of the prospective garden site.

—> Check the angle of the slope. Use the smartphone inclinometer app (e.g. Theodolite) for taking measurements on the site or Google Earth elevation profile function for online assessment.

Site assessment tip: The ideal slope is one that has less than 5% incline. However, you can easily cultivate anything up to 12%. More than that could lead to significant erosion and runoff problems unless you use terraces.

—> Look out for potential frost pockets.

Site assessment tip: You want to avoid locating your garden at the bottom of a slope. Instead, the ideal is on the upper half of a slope.

3. Open to the sun

Most vegetables need about 8 hours of sun per day to produce a good crop.

Fruiting vegetables, like most summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchinis, squashes…) need lots of light, while root vegetables (carrots, beets, onions, potatoes) can grow with 5-6 hours of sunlight. Leafy greens (lettuce, chard, arugula, spinach) can grow with only 3-5 hours of sunlight.

So some crops will be more demanding than others, but as an overarching rule, the more sun you can get, the more productive your crisis garden will be. You should aim at a full day of sun throughout the growing season. That is to say, unless you are in a really hot climate, then strategic shade is your friend.

The ideal spot for a crisis garden from a solar access perspective is an open site clear of any shadows from trees, structures or buildings, on a south-facing slope (here’s the slope again). You want to take full advantage of sunlight, so you don’t want anything blocking it, and you want to maximize what you get.

The south-facing slope helps you get the most from solar exposure. It receives the highest amount of sun compared to the east-, west-, or north-facing slopes. Also, because the sun’s rays hit the soil surface more directly, the entire garden area warms up quicker. This is especially important in spring as you can get a harvestable crop earlier.

Action item: Survey the solar access of the prospective garden site

–> Check the slope aspect, use a compass app on your smartphone to make measurements of the slope aspect. Face in the direction the slope faces and read the bearing on the compass.

Site assessment tip: South-facing slopes (Northern Hemisphere) work the best, SE or SW are good as well, E (morning sun) is better than the W (afternoon sun), and the north slope is the worst from a solar access perspective.

—> Use the Sun Surveyor or Sun Seeker apps to look at the sun’s path across the prospective garden area. Look for any potential obstructions that might reduce the amount of sun the location receives. In particular, pay attention to fall, spring, and summer solstices.

Site assessment tip: If the location receives full sun for 6-10 hours a day, it gets a pass. Note that in hot climates, some summer shade is desirable.

4. Proper airflow

Plants in your crisis garden need to breathe fresh air.

Stagnant air encourages fungal diseases brought by mold and mildew, creates a favorable environment for some insect pests, and holds air pollutants around plants. All of this can severely limit the productivity of your garden.

Thus a good airflow through your garden is essential if you want to prevent disease and encourage the healthy and robust growth of your plants.

Locating your garden on a slope (here’s the slope again) helps with this as the slope creates natural ventilation that stirs up any stagnant air. But slope or no slope, you’ll want to make sure that the gentle breeze can provide you with good air circulation.

A relatively open position where the garden can feel the wind is desirable in this sense, as you don’t want dense vegetation or other obstacles to make it hard for air to circulate.

On the other hand, although exposure to the gentle breeze is good, a constant strong wind will wreak havoc on your crisis garden. A strong wind will damage your plants, cool the whole growing area, and make it difficult to keep your light garden infrastructure in place.

The ideal is to find a balance, protecting your garden from damaging winds while giving it plenty of air for breathing. Windbreaks in the form of trees, hedges, low stone walls, or buildings can offer the necessary shelter.

Action item: Survey the airflow of the prospective garden site

—> Find the general information about the wind speed and direction distribution throughout the year. Use this website to generate a wind rose chart for your area.

Based on the wind rose chart check:

Are there are any natural windbreaks in the direction of prevailing strong damaging winds?
Is the site open and clear of dense vegetation in the direction of light wind breezes?

Site assessment tip: Wind speed is reduced the most near the windbreak. At distances of 25 to 30 times the windbreak height, wind speed is reduced by less than 10 percent.

If there is no natural wind protection, you can plant a hedge, build open or woven fences, and other semi-permeable alternatives. As a quick fix, you can set up temporary screens.

>>>Featured resource – Crisis Garden Site Assessment Protocol:
I’ve created a short and practical site assessment guide that you can use right away to get a quick overview of your land. It helps you shortcut the process and avoid major placement mistakes. You can download it here.

5. Access to water supply

The productive crisis garden is highly dependent on a consistent and sufficient supply of water.

This is especially true when you start sowing seeds and transplanting your seedlings as the soil should be consistently moist. But once the plants begin to grow, the water demand is also high; on average, your plants will need a steady supply of one inch (25 mm) of water per week during the growing season to be as healthy and productive as possible.

If that can’t be supplied by natural rainfall – and it probably won’t as the rainfall is becoming unpredictable and erratic – you’ll need an irrigation system which will ensure that water is available when you need it. So the potential site must have a water source that meets the needs and size of your crisis garden.

Ideally, you would have access to a year-round spring or stream that you can tap into, and that’s higher than your garden so you can gravity feed the water to it. Second best is a large enough pond from which you can pump the water, while a well is a good third choice.

What you want to avoid is having to haul water from a distant place. Therefore your crisis garden should be near a water source or you have a way to deliver that water to the garden in some way that doesn’t involve you carrying it manually.

That’s why it makes sense to have your garden near your house as you’ll have a water source nearby and ready to use.

Action item: Consider the water supply options for the prospective garden site

—> Think about how you will supply the water to your potential garden site.

Are there any year-round springs or streams you can tap into?
Is there a way to bring the water from a dependable pond?
Can your well or municipality water source supply the necessary water?
Do you have a water tank storage you could use?

Site assessment tip: Even a modest garden will require thousands of liters/gallons a week. Irrigating a 1,000-square-foot (~100-square-meter) garden at the recommended rate of one inch (25 mm) per week will use 600 gallons (2730 l) each time. If your water source can’t deliver that amount of water, and you can’t count on the rainfall, you’ll be short on water.

6. Ease of accessibility

Maneuvering with a walk-behind tractor, image source:https://www.themarketgardener.com

Logistically, your crisis garden should be easily accessible, meaning easy to enter, work in, and work around. This will save you a lot of work and trouble.

You want to ensure that you can access and operate within the garden with the largest equipment and vehicle you plan on using. This might be a truck or a car, tractor or walk-behind tractor, bigger manure-spreading trailer, or a wheelbarrow. Whatever you plan on using, consider the accessibility from that perspective.

Also, you’ll need frequent deliveries to the garden area. The main inputs your garden will need every year are soil, compost, mulch, and other amendments. Ideally, you want to bring those truckloads of material or individual bags to the garden site with a vehicle, not manually by hand, as close as possible to where they are needed.

So the garden location has to have enough maneuver space to do so, it has to support the weight of the equipment, and have a clear path to deliver it. Ideally, you would find a dedicated spot for garden supplies from which you can then manually redistribute them throughout the garden.

Action item: Consider the accessibility of the prospective garden site.

—> Examine the potential garden area from an accessibility perspective.

Can you enter it, work in, and work around it with the largest vehicle/equipment you plan on using?
Where can you unload your deliveries of soil, compost, mulch, and other amendments?
Is your unloading site easily accessible, has enough space to maneuver, can support the weight of the equipment, and has a clear path to do the delivery?

Site assessment tip: Be cautious about overly steep roads leading to the site and sites that don’t have enough maneuvering space for operating your largest vehicle/equipment.

7. Good soil

Good soil is the foundation of a successful crisis garden. For the best yields, your garden needs the best soil you can give it.

The soil quality depends on its composition; the proportions of clay, sand, silt, organic matter, and the history of (ab)use; when and how the soil was treated before you came in to steward the land.

The ideal soil is deep, dark, loose, fertile and full of life (huh, I can smell it and feel it in my hands right now), what some would describe as rich and healthy loam.

Although the goal is to have the best possible soil from the get-go, in reality, we’ll have limited choices, if we even have the luxury of choice that is. Our only option could be, for example, lifeless pure clay that becomes hard as concrete in summer or sandy soil that can drink gallons of water and become dry 5 minutes later or anything in between.

The good news is that you can make any of these soils productive for growing your crops. The absolute worst and truly inhospitable soils can be dealt with by simply installing raised beds on top of it and adding your soil, and the rest by proper soil management; adding organic matter, compost, soil amendments…

However, despite the fact that you can make any soil fertile, the amount of resources (time, work, money) you’ll have to throw at it depends on the initial soil quality, so it pays to look for the best soil possible.

Action item: Survey the soil of the prospective garden site.

—> Choose a spot that is representative of the site and dig a test hole that’s 12″ x 12″ (30 x 30 cm) and 12″ (30 cm) deep.

Examine the soil and check:

1.The compaction – how hard it is to dig the soil.

Site assessment top: The more compacted the soil the harder it will be to work the soil and grow productive crops.

2. Soil texture – Use your hands to get the feel for the soil’s texture (the proportions of different-sized particles that determine the soil’s physical characteristics).

Site assessment tip: The ideal soil texture from a gardening perspective is loam. Loam has almost equal amounts of sand and silt and a little less clay. This soil texture retains water, but drains easily and provides room for air to mix into the soil.

3. Earthworm number – count earthworms in the dug-up soil.

Site assessment tip: In general, if there are more than 10 it’s good, the soil biology is very much alive and present.

8. Safe from external threats

To ensure that you have something to show for all of your hard work you’ve invested into the garden, your potential site has to be safe and protected from outside threats.

Specifically, I see these threats as human and animal forces that, directly or indirectly, can destroy a whole growing season’s work in a moment.

I suspect that, going forward, abundant gardens will become a tempting target for thievery. Of course, we all are happy to share our food with those in need, but as with other areas of our material life, there will be some people who will want to steal from our garden just because it’s a viable target.

Wild animals, on the other hand, don’t think and calculate in terms of viable targets, they just adapt to what’s palatable and tasty in the environment. Deers, raccoons, kangaroos, rabbits… You name it, it can graze off or destroy your seedlings and mature crops in a few hours when you have not been watching.

Another potential outside threat that’s concerning is pollution coming from neighboring conventional farming sites and heavily traveled roads.

Toxic chemical residues traveling by surface and underground water runoff and by air as herbicide and pesticide drift can be catastrophic for your organic produce and for the health of your family.

Action item: Survey the site from a security perspective

—> Check if the prospective garden site is near any frequently used paths or roads that would put it on the thieves’ radar.

—> Are there any visible animal paths highlighting that the area is visited by animals regularly?

Site assessment tip: Although there are many temporary measures you can employ to deter the two- or four-legged marauders, ideally, your prospective site should be somehow out of sight for them yet easy for you to observe. That’s why placing the crisis garden close to the house makes so much sense. Alternatively, a good fence or a dense hedge will help you with this issue in any location.

—> Are there any conventional farming plots and heavily traveled roads bordering the prospective site?

Site assessment tip: Either avoid sites that are close to these pollution sources or plan to plant an evergreen hedge on the border as a buffer to block out the bulk of the pollution before it reaches your garden.

Conclusion

In summary, what I’ve listed here are factors that you’ll have to consider when deciding on the best location for your crisis garden, namely:

Proximity to the house
Gentle slope
Open to the sun
Proper airflow
Access to water supply
Ease of accessibility
Good soil
Safe from external threats

To ensure that you grow a successful crisis garden, try to find the spot that has the most going for it.

The ideal spot is a sunny, south-facing, gentle slope with deep, rich, loamy soil that’s close to the house so that you have a water supply nearby, you can keep an eye on it, you have a warm microclimate and protection from the wind, and where it’s easily accessible.

In reality, as with everything in life, in most cases, you’ll have to settle for something that’s not ideal and doesn’t tick all of the boxes, so prepare to make compromises. Just make sure that you think about how to mitigate any potential weaknesses or threats.

All right, so now you should have a pretty good idea about where to place your crisis garden on your land.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how to determine the ideal layout of your crisis garden. This will ensure that your garden is accessible and manageable and that your vegetables receive adequate amounts of essential inputs such as sun, water, and nutrients from the soil.

I’ll see you there!

-William

Crisis Gardening: Growing enough food to feed your family

by papprentice Leave a Comment

With the current pandemic, the damage to food production and supply chains has already been set in stone. It’s just a matter of time before the full effects of these unfortunate events trickle down to cause a shortage of food in your local area.

As a crisis gardener, you want to hedge against this by growing as many of your vegetables as possible. Ideally, you would be able to produce everything you consume within a whole year, but getting close to that ideal as much as possible is good enough.

With that in mind, in setting up your crisis garden, the first step is to have, at least, some idea about what you’ll grow, and how much of it to be able to feed yourself and your family.

Once you know this, you can then more accurately plan the right amount of seeds and transplants you’ll need and the required layout of your crisis garden. Without first crunching some numbers, you will most certainly resort to ad hoc ‘planting as you go’ all over the place, and thus growing an overabundance of some crops while being short of others.

You would be surprised how little space and plants it takes to produce an overabundance of nutrient crops such as fresh greens. The image below is a photo of my silverbeet bed in my mini-greenhouse, the bed is some 60 cm x 120 cm ( 2 ft x 4 ft).

Currently, it feeds three families; my own, my parents, and my cousin’s. So some 9-12 plants in this small raised bed are enough to supply us + others with fresh silverbeet throughout the growing season. We would need another bed like this to get us through the winter months as there is no regrowth, but the point is we don’t need to grow much silverbeet to fulfill our needs.

It’s good to know this when you’re setting up your garden and thinking about how many seeds/plants/transplants you’ll need and how much space you’ll need to dedicate to each crop. Getting this right saves you money on seeds, time, and labor on growing, and you get to use your gardening space more effectively.

So let me outline the steps to take if you want to plan your crisis garden the right way from the outset.

I’ll describe each step in detail and, where applicable, link to various web resources to help you with your planning.

>>> Plug-and-Play Planning Resource: I’ve also created a supplementary spreadsheet to help you shortcut this planning process. In there you’ll find I’ve done almost all the work for you. You can download it here.

STEP 1: Create three distinctive groups of crops

Start with the big picture and create three distinctive categories of crops so that you can classify your veggies according to their role.

These three big categories are:

Staple crops
Nutrient crops
Supplemental crops

Staple crops are the ones from which you’ll derive most of your calories. These are reliable, easy to grow (low labor), and storable crops such as potatoes, squash, beans, cabbages, onions, etc. You’ll grow these in high volumes, and they’ll take a disproportionate amount of your garden space.

If push comes to shove you could survive solely on these crops; they are calorie-dense and provide you with the raw energy you need. However, although you’ll be able to survive, you won’t be able to thrive as you also need nutrients to be healthy.

Nutrient crops will fill that gap; these are greens such as kale, chard, spinach, arugula, etc. You’ll be mostly harvesting these fresh, growing them year-round, and sometimes freeze-storing the surplus. For your own needs, you won’t have to produce a high volume of these, nor will they take up much space, but they are nonetheless an essential part of your crisis garden.

Then there are supplemental crops. In this group fall all other crops that you’ll grow in some capacity – either for fun, or as a taste supplement, as an experiment, or as an additional summer-/wintertime yield. This doesn’t mean that they are not nutrient- or calorie-dense, but just that they are supplemental to the other two categories. These could be eggplants, melons, peppers, corn, kohlrabi, etc.

Action Item: None. I’ve already done this step for you. In the spreadsheet, you’ll find that the first column is already split into these three categories – so you can just put a checkmark for this step and move onto Step 2.

STEP 2: Decide what you’ll grow in each of the groups

Now you should select the crops you’ll grow in each of these groups.

I’ve already alluded to what crops might fall in which category, but what they’ll actually be all depends on your particular context. Here are some useful prompts to help you with making the selection. Think about these as you brainstorm.

What are the crops that you eat — Think about your eating habits and select the crops you like to consume.
What are crops that you can’t buy — If you like to eat something, but you can’t buy it at the store or farmers market, you can always grow it yourself.
What are the crops that save you money — Think about the most expensive crops you buy and then grow them.
What crops are new and exciting — You can always try something new; you might end up putting it on your “crops I like to eat and can’t live without” list.

If you want to shortcut this crop selection process in the template spreadsheet I shared with you, there is already a list of the most common vegetables we all like to grow. They are already grouped to some extent, but you can move the rows around as you find appropriate given your personal preference and eating habits.

Action Item: Update Column C [Crop] on the spreadsheet with your preferences.

STEP 3: Calculate how much to plant (per person)

Now let’s see how much of each vegetable you’ll need to plant per person to have enough to last you for an entire year – both consumed fresh and preserved in storage.

This, of course, will depend on many factors such as your growing skills and technique, soil fertility, which vegetables you prefer, and how often you’ll be eating it.

In reality, you won’t exactly know how many vegetables to plant for your family until you’ve gone through several growing seasons. But it’s good to get a sense of what some of the averages are so you can plan more accurately.

For example, if your family likes to eat potatoes, you’ll need to grow 75 lbs (34 kg) of potatoes per adult to have enough for the entire year.

Given the planting recommendations for potatoes, this translates to a row 50 ft (15 m) in length needed to grow this amount. For a row of that length, you’ll need to plant 75 potato seeds.

This is very useful to know before planning the layout and ordering seed potatoes.

There are two ways to calculate how much to plant:

Option #1: The long way

You can find the information about the amount needed in weight and garden space for the most common vegetables here in this table from Michigan State University: https://www.canr.msu.edu/uploads/files/Table%204.pdf

Then, once you have an idea of the row length you’ll need to grow a specific vegetable, you can use this calculator from Johnny Seeds to find out how many seeds or transplants you’ll need for your crisis garden.

Option #2: The shortcut

I’ve already done all these calculations for you in the spreadsheet. So no need to use any of the calculators to crunch the numbers or search the tables. You identified what you’ll grow in Step 2, the numbers for this step are already in the spreadsheet so you can move to the final step.

So going through this step will clarify how much you’ll need to grow in weight, how much space it will take, and finally how many seeds or transplants you’ll need to source.

Action Item: None, put a checkmark for this step and move onto Step 4.

STEP 4. Source the seeds/transplants

In the final step, you’ll first need to come up with a precise quantity for how many seeds or transplants you’ll need for your crisis garden.

Think about how the numbers per person from the last step translate into the size of your family. If you have children, they probably won’t eat as many as an adult. Also, some of your family members won’t like particular vegetables, so don’t just 4x the numbers if you have a family of four.

Make a note of the quantity or weight of seeds and transplants you’ll need so that you can start searching for the suppliers with some exact figures.

For example, suppose you have a family of three adults, and you’re looking to plant potatoes. To calculate how many seed potatoes you’ll need to plant and order you would multiply Seeds/Transplants Needed (Cell F 11) x Family Members = 75 seeds x 3 people = 225 seed potatoes.

Action Item: Update Column G [Seed Order Notes (Quantity/Weight)] on the spreadsheet with your notes about the amount of seeds or transplants you’ll need for your crisis garden.

Next, find a source where you’ll buy your required seeds or transplants.

Now, I understand that at the moment it might be hard to get your hands on seeds, as people have been hoarding them big time. This hasn’t happened here where I live, but in the US, many of the seed suppliers stopped selling due to the huge backlog of orders.

Since time is precious, I don’t want you to waste it on endlessly searching the web for seed companies, so here’s my list of reputable suppliers worldwide. Some of them might be out of stock, but I think you’ll be able to find what you need.

I plan on keeping this database public, so please do add any reputable source of seeds you know of. Let’s help each other out by sharing info.

Action Item: Update Column H [Source/Supplier] on the spreadsheet with the info about where you’ll source your seeds or transplants. Additionally add any notes (cost, order date) if you’ve made the purchase.

With that, we’re done with the initial planning. If you have followed all the steps and used the spreadsheet I provided you with, you should now have a pretty good idea of what you’ll be planting, how much you’ll be planting, and where to order your seeds.

In my next post, I’ll talk about how to determine the ideal location for your crisis garden. Picking the right spot for your crisis garden is crucial to successful crop production.

In the post you’ll learn how to survey your property and where to place your garden based on the site assessment protocol I’ve developed specifically for this purpose.

See you soon!

-William