Gardening with Kids: Get ready for spring

The calendar has turned to March, which means one thing here in the North: Time to start planning the garden. For those of you in warmer climates (probably everyone), the time to plant is much closer. Here we tend to hold off until Mother’s Day to plant seeds, and wait until late May for transplants like tomatoes or other warm-climate veggies. That (usually) ensures that the frost danger has passed and there won’t be anything to worry about until September.

I have been gardening in my backyard since 2011, and have tried a number of different methods. Backyard gardening is a great way to supplement you pantry, explore new vegetables, and teach your kids where food comes from. I want to chronicle my garden adventure this year for a number of reasons. But the main one is that this will be the first year I will try to include my boys in the process. Since they’ll only be 2 at the beginning, I don’t expect a lot. They do have a memory though, so my hope is that they’ll be interested in the changes over the summer. I already know they like to “help” by watering, so I’ll work with that. And they did like eating tomatoes off the vine last summer.

Since this will be a series, I’ll start where I’m at now, which hopefully won’t be too late for everyone else. But because timing for a garden is entirely dependent on your local climate, I will keep things relative to last frost dates. If you live in a place where frost is less of a danger than the peak of summer heat, you might find this less useful. I have no experience with gardening in places like Texas, Florida, or other similar locations, though the resources I use often have sections for warm-climate gardening.

Today we’ll focus on getting ready. Since it’s still two months away from last frost (or more… *sigh*), this is the right time to make sure existing or new garden beds are planned and prepped.

Where does your garden grow?

I may do a more comprehensive follow-up on selecting a site, but here’s a brief summary: 8+ hours of direct sunlight for most of the growing season (between first and last frost).

There are few veggies that will produce anything edible with less sunlight than that. Exceptions are during the first couple weeks for seeds, as well as during the end of the season when you’re just waiting for the remaining fruits to ripen. But otherwise, if they don’t get at least 8 hours a day, you’ll have a poor harvest.

Our backyard is to the west, and there are some trees along the property line between our house and our neighbors. So while the garden has a pretty clear view of the south and southeast skies, the morning and evening sun are blocked. On the plus side, during the peak of summer, the sun is high enough that it actually sneaks through at sunrise for an hour or so, and clears the house pretty quickly. Just keep things like this in mind when selecting a site, or evaluating sites you already have. While all vegetable plants want maximum sun, I’ve found that tomatoes and peppers do especially poor when they are shaded out even a small amount.

The dirt on soil

Even if you have a spot that gets every drop of sunlight during the day, that only carries the veggies so far. If the dirt you plant in is lacking, your bounty will be small. In the United States, a number of state universities offer soil testing for a small fee. Just fire up a search engine and type in ‘<your state> extension soil testing’. This will pull up your local University Extension, which is a useful program for many things, not just gardening. If you happen to live in a state that doesn’t have a university that offers such a program, you may have to rely on a commercial product or company to help out. You might want to speak with local gardeners to see who they recommend.

For our garden, we assumed our native soil was going to be near barren. And even if it wasn’t, we had other reasons to suspect the health of the dirt.

We knew from research that our property was previously commercial rather than residential. Before it was redeveloped, the last owner used the land to store vehicles and items. When the city bought the land and razed the old structures, they noted that there were visible oil, gas, and other leaks around the property. The expense of replacing this soil was too high for us to consider.

We also observed the existing lawn. The lawn that was added when the house was finished showed all the signs of being starved in many places. When we’ve dug for other projects, the soil was compacted and full of rocks and construction debris. Since that would kill a tiller, or someone standing too close, the choice was clear: We needed to create our garden soil.

If you have no idea of the history of your backyard, notice that the lawn, trees, or other plants don’t do well, or just want to make sure you start off on the right foot, get your soil tested. If you’re curious what testing looks like, here’s a link to my local university: http://soiltest.cfans.umn.edu/. Such testing can also check for heavy metals like lead.

Put it all together

For those who don’t have a garden already, or a garden that’s been lackluster, you first need to pick the location. South-facing is the best, as the sun travels from east-to-west in the southern half of the sky. (If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, just replace north with south.) If that’s not an option, you’ll need to watch the sun a bit, or more importantly, where your yard is sunny the most. You might end up with a garden that gets the majority of its sun in the morning and afternoon, or the other way around. Remember that 8 hours is a minimum. Also keep in mind that the sun will continue to get higher in the sky until the Summer Solstice, so what you see before the Spring Equinox isn’t a perfect representation.

Another option is skipping the garden bed altogether and do container gardening.

This is a great option for yards that lack a large spot for a bed or have a lot of non-dirt space. You might have to guess the first year; rather than picking one permanent spot, you spread them through a few candidates. Just be aware that the soil mix you need for containers is different from a raised box or bed. Your watering requirements will be different as well, since a smaller amount of soil means the plant can’t send a tap root deep into the earth. On the plus side, containers can be moved around, so if you notice in June that some plants aren’t getting the sun they need, you can move the to a different spot in the yard. Container gardening is a perfectly viable way to grow herbs, vegetables, and other plants. It’s also good if you have a small space.

If you know where the best sun is, get the soil tested to see if it’s deficient in anything. Once those results come back, you can figure out how to amend the soil. If like us you assume the soil is poor all around or just don’t have the time, you can try to build your own soil. We started with a few cubic yards of pre-made dirt from a local provider that pulverizes peat moss, black dirt, and compost into a single mix. Once we filled our boxes, we added about 2″ of commercial compost from a garden center, mixed between cow, mushroom, chicken, and other sources. Since an aggressive mulberry tree shaded out most of one box and part of a second last year, we’ll try that again, but after we hack away at the offending tree.

Time spent now is time saved later

Hauling dirt, bags of compost, trips to the garden center, etc. all take time. And that means you might have to scale back your plans. We have 96 sq feet of garden boxes, plus more space for containers.

We also have a berry patch.

However, it took us 7 years to get there. It took a lot of manual labor, as well as money. I can’t imagine getting all that done with kids now, so if you have kids or lack other resources, stay modest.

But it does mean that each summer and fall, we have a lot of veggies to store away for the winter, assuming we find time to preserve it all.

If we’re being honest, most of it gets frozen. Or we give a lot away. They do make nice gifts, and you feel less guilty about tossing things back into the compost heap for next year.