You’ve planned, you’ve purchased, you’ve planted. And now your contained vegetable garden is well on its way to saving you money and keeping your family eating healthy. But your work isn’t over. While you’ve successfully given birth to your food garden, you still need to nurture and raise it. Many first-time gardeners fail at this stage because they underestimate how important it is to continually tend to a garden throughout its entire growing season.
Under the right care, your first food garden can produce more green for your table, as well as for your wallet!
Squash should be cut off the vine with sharp pruners or shears when they reach full size and color.
Continual harvesting and care (with the help of an extended warm fall in Chicagoland) kept this container-grown cherry tomato plant producing well into October!
Photo Credit: Jenny Hooks
Keeping your food garden thriving isn’t difficult – it just requires a few routine steps. Lesson 4 in the 4 Step Food Garden shows you how to care for your contained herbs and veggies long after planting…and that first harvest.
Step 1: Water well and water often.
Hand watering a vegetable garden, whether large or small, is more important than you may think. Watering is how you encourage your plants to root deeply into the box, where there’s a wealth of nutrients available. One of the greatest causes of food garden failure is inadequate watering that only wets the top 1-2 inches of soil, leaving the rest of it dry underneath. On the other hand, overwatering can damage plants as well. (Don’t forget to consider rainfall.) The trick to getting it right is to test the soil with your finger before automatically watering so that you know how moist or dry the soil really is. Watering without checking first could cause an already overly wet soil mass to go from bad to worse. When you do water, make sure it’s deeply. Stop when you see a little water draining out of the bottom of your planter. If you planted your garden in a self-watering container, continually keep the reservoir filled (and check it frequently, especially on those hot summer days). The water will wick up from the bottom of the soil and work its way up to the plants’ roots, where it’s needed.
Step 2: Observe every day.
Great and successful gardeners share one single trait – they spend a lot of time with their plants. This keeps them familiar with how their garden should look when it’s happy, and it helps them instantly recognize possible signs of trouble. They’re also able to spot that first unwanted pest insect, which can be easily picked off or washed away before more appear and attack. It’s a very simple concept, but an important one: Get to know your plants. Take a moment to stop by once a day and visit – whether it’s over your morning cup of coffee or while enjoying an evening glass of wine. This isn’t just good therapy, it’s a reminder to observe your plants every day, so you can quickly recognize if something starts to go amiss. (Remember, you’re just observing. Fussing over your plants too much can actually “kill them with kindness.”)
Step 3: Be a prompt picker.
When a plant flowers, fruits and then goes to seed, it signals the end of its life span. But if a plant isn’t allowed to form seed – because you harvest its fruit early and often – it can be fooled into growing, flowering and yielding more produce for a far longer period. This is why allowing a zucchini to reach mammoth proportions can spell the demise of a plant, because it put all its energy into ripening those seeds rather than forming new flower buds (new flower buds = more zucchini). So if you love those tender young squash served in gourmet restaurants, feel free to pick yours at that size, knowing it’s actually going to increase your yields and extend the harvesting season!
Step 4: Mulch if it’s really hot and dry.
Mulch is just organic matter spread on top of the soil to act as an insulating blanket. It prevents the sun from baking the surface of the soil so plant roots stay cooler, as well as prevents surface moisture evaporation and helps suppresses weeds. Many home gardeners only think of using mulch for inground planting beds, but if your region gets excessively hot and dry (particularly out west), it’s a great material to use in your container garden, too. You can use any kind of bagged compost or leaf mold. Just keep the mulch away from plant stems, leaving about 1 inch of clearance all the way around. If you choose to add mulch to your containers over the summer, apply just a thin layer (about 2 inches deep at best). Excessive mulching (over 2.5-3 inches deep) can rob the soil of nitrogen as it breaks down. (Nitrogen is an important element for plants.)
With good watering practices, daily observation and regular harvesting, your 4 Step Food Garden will continue to bring you a bounty of amazing homegrown goodness throughout the growing season. Best of all, it will keep your family eating healthy while saving a fortune at the grocery store – and all because you learned to grow!
