Edible Landscape Design Essentials – Editor’s Note: We are excited to have Hilary Dahl, co-owner of Seattle Urban Farm Co., and creator and Host of the Encyclopedia Botanica Podcast, as a guest blogger. In this post, you give great tips for planning and preparing your edible garden. Whether you’re new to edible gardening or a seasoned pro, you’ll find great tips to make this year your best vegetable harvest ever!
Author’s Note: To keep things simple, this blog focuses on annual vegetables. Annual crops are those that are replanted every year, including many things that people think of as vegetable crops (ie, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Lettuce, Carrots, Beans). This is compared to perennials, which live year after year (ie, Apple Trees, Berry Trees, Berries). I think it’s helpful to divide them into those categories because annual plants have specific needs.
Edible Landscape Design Essentials
Almost all annual vegetable crops need at least 6 hours of sunlight during the growing season to grow. And in our region, more sunlight is always better, so if plants can get 10 or 12 hours of sunlight in the summer, that’s even better.
Permaculture Principles For Your Edible Landscape — Daily Harvest Designs
Consider seasonal sunlight. Because of Seattle’s high latitude, the sun is often lower in the sky in the winter months than in the summer. This means that areas that don’t get much sun in the winter may get a lot of sun in the summer. On the other hand, deciduous trees can throw people off when choosing a site in winter. It may seem like the site will get full sun, but when the tree fills up in the spring, the site may be completely shaded.
It is also important to remember that the sunniest area is not the southern part of your yard. For example, my garden is actually on the north side of my property because it has full south and west exposure.
There’s a great phone app called Sun Seeker that can show the sun’s path, hourly intervals, winter and summer modes, rise and set times, and more from anywhere on your site.
Your garden may thrive if you see it every day. If possible, I strongly recommend to gardeners to spend 15-20 minutes in the garden a few times a week, rather than a few hours every few weeks. This allows you to catch pest and disease problems before they get out of hand and make sure you can tend to any other problems as soon as they occur. Having a garden that is easy to get to will help make regular garden visits possible.
Less Noise, More Green: Edible Landscape Project
Once you have found the right place, create a dedicated space, set aside your annual vegetable garden. This will allow you to maintain the soil in a way that is beneficial to annual plants and can be harmful to many perennial plants. Think about the size of garden that is best for you: how much time do you want to spend in your garden each week? Generally, a 100-400 square foot garden can be managed in 1-2 hours per week IF you are free. watering…
Think about where all your water sources are on your site and how you will get water from them to your garden. It is possible to water the garden by hand, but it takes a lot of time. In order to have a truly successful garden, it will need to get plenty of water.
Keep in mind that we do experience drought here in the Seattle area during the summer (sometimes going 90+ days without rain), so you may want to consider installing a drip irrigation system that is connected to an automatic timer to keep you from going. You don’t have to spend all the time you have in your garden just watering every day. Automatic drip systems on a timer are an easy way to manage watering in annual beds. This can be connected directly to the hose bib on the side of our house, and watering can be done from there.
When creating a garden it is important to remember that the health of your plants depends on the health of your soil. With proper care (aka, next steps), your garden soil and plant health should improve over time.
The Mediterranean Garden Is The Sun Soaked Style You Can Mimic In Any Yard
Test your soil before you garden if you think there may be lead in the soil. It’s not very common, but we do get contaminated soil from time to time. King County offers free soil testing. If you are not in King County, we recommend the UMass Amherst soil test.
The pH of your soil affects the availability of nutrients to your plants. This means that even if you add compost and fertilize your garden soil with everything you can think of if the pH is off, the plants will not be able to absorb and use these nutrients.
You have three basic options for testing your soil pH. You can use a pH test kit at home or you can send a soil sample to a lab. Both of these are great solutions, but I think for the average home grower a home inspection is sufficient.
For almost all annual vegetable crops a pH between 6.2 and 6.9 is optimal. If your pH is above 6.9, it is considered too alkaline and may benefit from a soil acidifier such as elemental sulfur. If your pH is below 6.2, it is considered acidic and will require the addition of Calcitic lime or Dolomitic lime to make your soil basic. In general, PNW soils are more likely to be overly acidic than overly basic.
An Edible Garden With A Twist
There is never a bad time to add lime to your soil. Ideally, you would add it in the fall so it has time to prepare your soil, but if you have acidic soil, add it now and it will start to interact with the soil over the next few months so by spring it will have started to plant. adjust your pH.
The benefit of Dolomitic Lime is that it provides magnesium and calcium to your soil, both important plant nutrients. However, if you use Dolomitic lime, you will need to be careful because excessive application or frequent use can throw off the calcium-magnesium balance, which can lead to all kinds of plant health problems. If you haven’t done a soil test specifically to determine your current nutrient levels, it’s safer to add Calcitic Lime.
Organic matter is the backbone of a healthy garden soil. Broken down organic matter gives your soil a loose, loose texture that plants love, helps the soil absorb water and hold it so plants can soak it up, and provides essential nutrients that plants need to grow.
Adding 2-3 inches of compost once a year is sufficient if added in the fall. If you add compost in the spring, you’ll also want to top compost your beds in the fall to protect soil structure during the rainy winter months.
How To Design A Beautiful Edible Garden
Some plants prefer to be planted directly in your garden rather than started in pots and transplanted. Some of these include carrots, radishes, turnips, mixed lettuces, arugula, and beets (but these can be replanted). Some plants are difficult to grow from seed in the garden and will do better when transplanted, either using purchased starters (baby plants) or by starting your plants from seed indoors and planting them in the garden.
For many people, especially beginners, I highly recommend starting shopping. Growing your own takes special tools, dedicated space in your home and a few months of attention. Often, growing a transplant in the window without proper lighting and care will lead to leggy (because it doesn’t get enough light), unhealthy transplants that will struggle in the garden. Often the best use of time and resources is to purchase early planting each spring.
You can buy nursery stock to plant directly in the garden. Nursery gardeners should check each cell in the container to make sure none are empty, but often, several appear and the young plants can be separated and grown individually when transplanted. This is VERY important or the transplanted plants will be stressed, suffocated and weak.
Some plants – especially squash – do not like their roots disturbed. It will shock them and slow their growth, so cut all the plants except one with scissors so they don’t get crowded and can’t get into the garden.
Edible Landscaping: A Guide To Integrating Food Producing Plants Into Your Landscape Design
There are several different considerations to think about when placing your plants. I’ve dedicated an episode of my gardening podcast, Encyclopedia Botanica, to each of these in-depth planning topics, so check them out for more information. Follow the links below and you can play the episodes directly from my blog, no podcast player required.
More information on everything discussed in this blog can be found in our gardening tutorials, Food Grown in Your Backyard, and High Yield Vegetable Gardens. Both books are available at Swansons!
Be a Swansons Plant
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