Beginner Gardening: Starting a small vegetable garden, 2 by RickCorey_WA

RickCorey_WA wrote:
Brassicas are easy to grow in a cool season vegetable garden. Broccoli and beets are familiar Brassicas.

Leafy Asian greens like Bok Choy, Tatsoi and Komatsuna can be eaten at any stage from baby-leaf to mature plant, so the kids can nibble when they are ready, not just when the plants are ready. And if you start them from seeds, they are far from fussy, and grow very fast.

>> the right tools but not spend a fortune?

A 15'x15' square is small enough that if anyone can bring a few shovels, a steel rake, and a few hoes, you should not need to buy any tools.

How ready is the soil? If you have grass growing there now, you have some prep work to do, getting rid of the grass and lightening the soil. That can be done fast with a lot of work, or over a season or two with very little work.

Add compost to the soil! The more, the better. Till it in, the first year. After that, improving the soil depends on what you have too much of, and what you have too little of.
Some soil types benefit from adding:
- peat moss (but it breaks down in less than one year
- finely shredded softwood bark
- granular softwood bark (smaller than peas, smaller than 4 mm)
- coffee grounds

! ! ! NOT sawdust or wood chips underground, unless you bury it below the root zone. They get fungus-y and also suck up all the available nitrogen for a year or so.

It's good if you mound up the soil a little higher than the surrounding walkways. That assures that part of the root zone is well drained and well aerated. If you have the money for it, or if someone donates wood or concrete paving stones, you could make 8" walls and have proper raised beds, which encourages improved soil and well-aerated root zones.

Plan to mulch the the surface of the bed after seedlings emerge. or some people improve the soil first, then lay down mulch, and THEN clear mulch away from spots to transplant seedlings into, or clear rows to plant seeds in.

Mulching greatly reduces weeding chores and also protects the soil from drying out and baking on a sunny day. Mulch with whatever is most available or cheapest:
- pine needles
- bark chunks
- biggish wood chips
- straw or hay
- nasty plastic film (boo, but it does prevent weeds)

Remember that a sunny spot is vital. You can improve the soil, and bring water to a spot, but you can't make the sun brighter.

May I suggest that it will be a lot easier and more fun if you make several narrow beds instead of one big 15x15 square? Walking ON the soil will compact it down no matter how much you improve the soil.

A bed that is only 2-3 feet wide can be planted and weeded from either side without stepping on the fluffed-up soil or having to walk around. If young kids do much of the work, 24-30" wide is desirable.

If you make some 18" wide walkways and 2-3 foot-wide beds, you can shovel the soil from the walkways up onto the beds, making that soil deeper. If you add amendments to the soil, only add it to the beds, not the walkways.

You could break the 15 foot width into four beds of 30" each, and three walkways of 18" each.

(You might look around and see who has a wheelbarrow they would loan out for work days. Then make sure the walkway is wide enough for that wheelbarrow, especially if you use walls to make raised beds.


If the walkways would have been muddy, you can layer wood chips, bark or other mulch over the walkways. Some people use scraps of old carpeting!

If you are putting a garden into a lawn, you can just leave 18" of lawn in place and only cut up the sod where you create beds.

Seeds can be inexpensive, and those will teach the kids a lot more than buying already-started seedlings in pots.