Planning a Garden in the Lawn

Posted on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 · Leave a Comment 

A 10 by 12 ft garden in August

This is a good time to make plans. If you are willing to spend just 15 minutes a day, every day, from spring to fall you can create an edible showcase for beauty: the splendid look of ripe red tomatoes, multi-colored Swiss chard, or glossy green peppers. It’s not nearly as difficult as you think. And unlike maintaining a lawn, you get to eat the results of your labor. Here’s what you need to do:

 

To grow good vegetables you need sunshine, at least 6 hours a day – and preferably more. For most people, the sunniest part of the yard is in the middle of the lawn. A well maintained vegetable garden can be as gorgeous as a flower garden. And if you like flowers, you can plant some of those in your vegetable garden, too.

 

Don’t bite off more than you can chew – or weed. A nice lawn garden can be just 10 feet across and 12 feet long. Properly maintained, it will provide you with fresh veggies much of the summer.

 

Lay out the garden with string and remove the grass

Using string and stakes define the borders of the garden and pry out the sod after cutting it into 1-foot squares with an edging tool or a spade. Use the sod to start a compost pile.

 

Start early enough in the season – say the first of May – so you can work just 15 or 20 minutes a day for a week or more to get all the grass out. That way you get in the habit of spending time in the garden, but don’t develop blisters or an aching back. Gardening should be fun, not hard work. Still, it can give you a workout without going to the gym.

 

Your lawn garden will have two raised beds separated by a walkway. Once you have removed the sod, you can just mound up the soil to form beds about 30 inches wide with a walkway up the middle and a 6-inch space between the lawn and the beds all the way around the garden. To do this, (after removing the sod) loosen the soil with a garden fork, shake out the soil and then rake the soil from the perimeter and the walkway onto the beds.

 

Then spread out 5 bags of composted cow manure on each bed (each bag is usually labeled 30 quarts), and work it into the loose soil with your garden fork or favorite hand tool.

 

Adding composted manure enriches the soil

Alternatively, you can build wood-sided beds using ordinary 6 or 8-inch wide planks. For more years of service, 2 inch thick lumber is even better. Gardener’s Supply (www.Gardeners.com) sells a variety of brackets for building raised beds, and I suppose others do, too.

 

If you build wood-sided beds you will have to buy more filler than if using mounded beds. Most garden centers sell top soil and compost by the tractor scoop, which is usually two thirds of a cubic yard of material. They’ll dump right into the back of your pickup truck, or even deliver (for a price). I recommend a mix of topsoil and compost, a 50-50 mix. 

 

A small raised bed is great for a child

If you make wood-sided beds you can place them right on the lawn without removing the sod, which saves a lot of labor. Just scalp the grass with the lawnmower and put a thick layer of newspapers over the lawn, then fill the box. Long carrots might hit the bottom the first year, but most other plants won’t be bothered.

 

What to plant? Make a list of the veggies you like best and that taste best freshly picked. If you plant tomatoes, dedicate at least 24 inches of a row to each plant. And buy those wire cages for your tomatoes, so they won’t flop over and shade out your carrots or broccoli nearby.

 

I like to plant lettuce seedlings all around the tomatoes at the beginning of the season while the tomatoes are still small. By the time the plants get big, the lettuce will have been harvested and eaten. Run your rows north-south, and plant tomatoes (or any tall plants) on the north end of the garden so they will shade other plants less. Buy some bagged organic fertilizer and stir some in at planting time.

 

Oh, and about those weeds: the easiest way to prevent a problem is to mulch. Put down 6 sheets of newspaper and cover it with straw, mulch hay or last fall’s leaves. This will keep the soil dark, turning off the switch that weed seeds have to tell them when to germinate. Mulch also holds in the moisture during dry times. But when a few weeds do turn up – and they will – be sure to pull them before they get big and make more seeds. That’s preventive maintenance.

 

Gardening is said to be a middle aged sport. After all, what parent of three toddlers has time to weed? But if you wish to reduce your food costs and feed your family well, a garden is great. And done this way, you can maintain it in 15 minutes a day. I promise. Just keep at it daily, and you’ll be surprised and delighted at how good your garden looks, and how much food you can grow – right in the middle of the lawn!

 

Henry is a UNH Master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books. Send mail to him at PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or e-mail him at henry.homeyer@comcaset.net. 

Filed under Article · Tagged with building raised beds, composted cow manure, lawn to garden

Working in the Rain

watermelon radish

After a cold snap recently we had 3 days of cold rain. By the second day, with no relief in sight, I went out to my garden and dug up the last of my root crops – carrots, watermelon radishes and purple daikon radishes. I figured that I’d better get them out of the ground while the getting was good. I came back wet and muddy, but feeling much more cheerful than before I went to the garden.

By day three, I was positively squirrely. I needed to do something outdoors. So I got dressed for an extended time in the garden: I layered on some Ibex brand wool long johns, two layers on top, and one on the bottom. Ibex makes its products from Merino wool, so they are not scratchy and seem to last forever. Then I put on rain pants and an LL Bean Gortex raincoat that keeps me dry and helps keep me warm. Rubber-palmed stretchy garden gloves protected my hands. Finally, I put on wool socks and my insulated Muck brand boots. I was ready.

I often warn gardeners not to walk on the garden soil when it is wet for fear of compacting it and ruining its structure. But I had some raised beds in the vegetable garden where I had harvested root crops – but not the late-season weeds that were there. I figured that so long as I worked carefully and never stepped off the walkways that I’d be fine.

I used a garden fork to loosen the soil near tap-rooted dandelions, then carefully tugged them out. How had so many escaped my notice? Well, I guess it was the “late-season weed blindness” that many of us suffer from. It is often spring before I notice certain weeds – because they’re blooming.

Vegetable beds ready for winter

I did know, however, that I had a fair amount of chickweed (Stellaria media) in my garden, as that weed grows whenever the ground is not frozen – including early and late in the growing year. I once interviewed author David Mas Masumoto (author of Epitaph for a Peach) who told me that chickweed is a ”good weed”. It’s good because it blooms early and beneficial insects like ladybugs depend on its nectar for food before the aphids turn up as lunch.

Chickweed is a low-growing annual that has very small pointed leaves, each only a quarter to half an inch in length. The flowers – and mine are present now – are small and white; on cold rainy days, the flowers are just like me – buttoned up tightly. With a hand lense or field scope you can see that it has fine hairs on only one side of the stem in a single band. It pulls easily, and best of all, it is edible in salads! I think it tastes like mache or miner’s lettuce – okay to mix in, but not as a prime salad ingredient.

After about 15 minutes my hands were cold, so I went in and found my Ibex glove liners, which solved the problem. Wool is warm, even if wet. And I put on another layer of socks, and that kept my feet warm, too.

I buy composted cow manure by the truckload, and still have a supply left from last spring’s delivery. So after weeding out two small beds I brought down a couple of wheelbarrows of compost, spread it on top of the beds and gently stirred it into the top few inches with a long-handled potato fork.

Late season harvest

I grow my vegetables in beds that are mounded up, or occasionally boxed in with planks. In either case, plants take out soil ingredients, and every time you pull a weed (or carrot) some soil goes with the roots, no matter how careful you are. So beds need new soil or compost added each year to keep their size.

Once the beds were all prepared for spring, I found some lawn that had been covered with late-falling leaves – oaks. Oaks are among the last to shed their leaves, and so had escaped earlier raking. I gathered them up and used them to cover the beds.

Pachysandra

During this period of cold, cloudy, dark, damp, dismal miserable weather I collected some greenery to use in vases this winter. Pachysandra is a common shade groundcover that will look good all winter in a vase of water. In fact, it will even set out roots into the water. Just keep the leaves out of the water, and change the water from time to time. It doesn’t need to be on a sunny window, and can complement any flower arrangement you buy at the store. So I picked some and brought it in.

What else did I do during the week of wet weather? I did a little pruning – nothing major, no ladders, I just tuned up a few shrubs and a small tree. I have a common ninebark, one called ‘Diablo’, which looks as neat as an unmade bed right now. But I resisted the urge to prune it as I know it blooms early in the summer, and pruning it now would remove the flower buds. Lilacs, forsythia, and rhododendrons: all these and more have their buds ready for spring. Some flowers I can sacrifice, others not.

So if you get tired of being indoors, go ahead, dress up warmly and get out there – even if it’s raining. It’s very restorative.

Henry can be reached at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or by email at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. Please include a SASE if you wish a reply to questions by regular mail.

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

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