Have you toyed with the idea of putting in a small garden where you could grow some fresh, tasty vegetables? The best way to get lots of vegetables from the smallest space with the least effort is by making raised beds.
Actually they will take a bit of labor to establish, but little to maintain from then on. When I say raised beds, you are probably picturing ones framed with wood, but this is optional.
Make the beds three or four feet wide by whatever length you want. Once the beds are dug, the soil is fluffed up and higher than the surrounding soil, so they are “raised.” Plant roots grow better in beds, than if you have paths between each row of crops.
Once dug, your planting beds will last for many years, if you don’t walk on them. The air that you have incorporated into your soil is one of the reasons things grow well in raised beds, so you don’t want to compact it down again.
Since you will be doing all your work from the paths, the beds must be narrow enough so that you can reach their middle easily without stepping on them. Beds along walls and fences should be only about two feet deep.
Paths will stay paths from one year to the next, too, so scrape off the upper three or four inches of good topsoil from them and add it to your beds. That will obviously make the raised beds even higher. Then heavily mulch the paths, so they don’t get muddy or weedy. Major paths, where you will need to use a wheelbarrow, should be about three feet wide, but other paths can be just a foot or two in width.
This system of permanent beds and paths makes the garden easier to work each year. As you add organic material to the beds, the soil just keeps getting better and better. After the beds are dug the first year, you can do most of your work with hand tools. You save time and resources by tilling, fertilizing, weeding and watering just the bed area, not the paths.
What to grow
Now that you have the garden layout planned, you can move on to the fun of deciding what to grow.
Grow what will do best on your site. All vegetables need at least six hours of good sun each day. A cool, filtered sun site will not produce very good tomatoes, corn, squash, beans or peppers, but it will grow fine lettuce, cabbage, broccoli or peas.
Choose your hottest, sunniest spot for tomatoes and heat-loving veggies. These locations are also perfect for early spring and winter growing.
Grow what you will eat or preserve. Growing small amounts of many different crops will provide more fresh food on your table over a longer period of time. Large quantities of a few crops will be wasted, unless you are willing to preserve or store them for later use.
Plan a succession of crops. Do small sowings of lettuce every few weeks and plant a second crop of broccoli, carrots and beets by midsummer. This provides a continuous supply of fresh veggies coming in as you need them.
To make the best use of your time and space, grow crops that are nutritious, highly productive and expensive to purchase in the store. The most productive crops in terms of yield and nutrition include all the root crops, cabbage and broccoli, peas and beans, tomatoes and greens.
Measured by monetary worth, the best things to grow are probably greens, tomatoes, peas (especially sugar and snap peas) and beans, cauliflower and broccoli, herbs and small fruit such as strawberries and raspberries.
Specialty vegetables that are hard-to-find and expensive at the market are a good choice for the garden, if you can find seed and if they will grow in our climate. Growing early and late crops is also worthwhile, since vegetables are more expensive off season.
Holly Kennell is the Snohomish County extension agent for Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Master gardeners answer questions on weekdays at WSU Cooperative Extension – Snohomish County, 600 128th St. SE, Everett, WA 98208. Call 425-338-2400.
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