1 2 Table of contents Part 1: Before you Start Part 2: Plan Your Garden Choose Your Plants Part 3: Getting Dirty! All About Soil Part 4: Planting and Growing Part 5: Pests and Fungus Part 6: Plants In Depth .............................................. Page 3 ......................................... Page 6 ................................................ Page 10 ................................. Page 14 ........................................... Page 22 ........................................... Page 27 3 Want to start a garden? I hope this zine can help! Growing your own food can be hard work, but it can also be extremely rewarding. Getting your hands dirty, and eating food you’ve grown yourself is a wonderful experience I hope people can have. This zine is a compilation of all my gardening knowledge I’ve gained through trial and error over the last four years. I still don’t know everything, but I hope the information I have can help! Good luck! PArT 1- BeFore You STArT lets do some planning! What Zone are you in? Cities are divided into sections based on the average temperature and seasonal temperatures. These sections are called Hardiness Zones. These zones are numbered from 1 to 11 (very cold to very warm). Toronto, for example is zone 5, and Miami is zone 10. These numbers can help you find what plants to grow, when to plant them, and when frosts are usually over. This info can even help determine what pests are common in your area. Find out your hardiness zone: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ There are Three Basic Garden Setups: 1. Container Gardening. This is the quickest way to start a garden, no soil amendments or yard prep necessary. All you need is potting soil and pots (with drainage holes at the bottom). Pots can be basically anything you can punch/drill holes into the bottom of and get wet! An old tea tin, tupperware, yoghurt tub, buckets, etc! Containers can be picked up and moved wherever there is sun, and be moved indoors if it starts to get cold outside. 4 2. Planting in the ground This method requires preparing the ground outside and planting straight into that soil. For this, some sort of yard space or garden plot is required. The preparation for planting is to dig up and pull out the grass, weeds, and roots out of the soil, loosening it if the dirt is very compact, and to add and mix in compost/topsoil (not needed if you have loamy soil, see p. 10). I recommend using mulch (chipped up wood or other ground cover) on top of the soil after planting. This keeps the soil cool and wet longer during the hot summer months. 3. Raised Beds Raised beds are large containers for soil with no attached bottoms. They are large wooden/ plastic/ metal containers built to sit on top of the ground, and filled with soil. These are great if you don’t want to dig up your yard, or if you have poor soil (not very good for planting in, like sand). It’s easy to make your own if you have access to wood and a drill, and can be customized to the exact size and shape you’d like in your garden! They can be very thin and tall, or very wide and only a few inches tall. When you find the right spot, I recommend putting cardboard or a weed barrier down on the grass it will cover to prevent weeds from getting in, and fill ‘er up with soil! Tools for the garden: Gardening has its own tools of the trade. There are only a few things you really do need, the rest can be improvised from stuff found around the house! The basics: Shovels (pointed or edging, I find pointed one better for all-around use), a hand trowel (small garden hand shovel), gardening gloves, and a hose setup near your plants or a watering can. One thing I really recommend getting 5 are gardening gloves that are water-proof. I use my bare hands in the dirt, but until you know your soil and what bugs/weeds you have out there, it’s best to start out safely with gloves. If you don’t use gloves, make sure to wash your hands very well! There are lots of tiny nasty things that live in soil. Plants: what do they need? All plants need 3 things to live: water, nutrients from the soil, and light. All plants need a different balance of the three. Some need a lot of light and less water (like cactus), while some need much less light and more water (pansies), and some need lot of nutrients and light but barely any water. Most veggies need a lot of water, nutrients, and sunlight. Make sure to plan where to put your garden with that in mind, and follow the handy directions on the seed packs/ seedling info cards! With that in mind, let’s get started! 6 PArT 2- PICk Your PlAnTS! Plants: Annual vs Perennial What are Annuals? They are plants that grow for one growing season or year, which die off when it gets too cold (in continuously hot climates, some of these plants can live for years with the right temperatures!). They have to be replanted every growing season, as when they die, their roots do not create a new plant. Most vegetable plants are annuals, like eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, squash, corn, etc. What are Perennials? Perennials are plants that are planted once and come back to life every spring. They die back out in the winter, but their roots, bulbs, or stalks are still alive and create a whole new (usually bigger than before) plant every spring. Examples are dandelions, raspberry bushes (almost all berry bushes/trees), rhubarb, and some herbs like oregano and mint. If you’re planning on living where you are for a few years, it really pays off to plant some perennials. The plants will come back with no work, and be bigger next year! Pretty darn great! Heirloom vs hybrid varieties Another characteristic of any garden plant is whether they’re a hybrid or heirloom plant. What are heirlooms? Heirlooms are very old varieties of plants that used to be grown in a certain area of the world, but fell out of favour with recent commercial farming. Farmed crops need to make uniform fruits and disease resistant plants that can be grown on a large-scale. Heirloom plants don’t usually produce a consistent, uniform size or color fruit, or fruit 7 that can be stored long term, or transported without bruising. But the TASTE! Heirloom varieties will usually be the best-tasting varieties of fruit/veggies you’ve ever had, and it’s very exciting to show your friends and family the purple, black and white tomatoes you’ve grown! There are some very interesting looking/tasting heirloom varieties of most plants. Heirloom gardening provides more choice in what variety of produce you’d like to grow, and how you want your food to taste. Growing them also keeps old varieties of plants with a huge genetic diversity alive. What are hybrids? Hybrids (not to be confused with GMOs) are plants that were selectively bred by humans from these old heirloom varieties. These are types of plants bred with a different variety of the same plant to get a certain trait. This is mostly done with plants used for commercial food crops. For example, a hybrid tomato that produces a hard, red fruit exists because people bred a heirloom with others that produced a fully red fruit (that might be soft) with another variety that makes hard green fruit of uniform size and shape. They cross these plants through pollination to make a baby of these two varieties into a new variety: one with fully red, hard fruit that can be shipped. This is how most of our current crops came about, through this kind of breeding. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but what has happened is breeding for large, uniform fruit (able to be picked under-ripe to withstand the rigors of shipping) came at the cost of taste. The taste has been bred out of most hybrid tomatoes for a uniform size, a hard exterior, and to ripen red (the first tomatoes were actually orange or yellow!). Hybrids can be great, since they usually have disease and drought resistance. This comes in handy if you live in a climate where it is hard to grow food at all. But in the case of the tomato, I find hybrids don’t have the same gorgeous flavours as heirlooms. 8 Plants to Start your garden! Lets decide what to grow! This can be hard since there are so many plants to choose from, but lets look at some basic plant groups: A. Herbs: Usually grown for their aromatic leaves (sometimes seeds as well) used to season other foods. Annuals: Basil (sweet, Thai, opal etc), rosemary, thyme, parsley, dill, and coriander. Perennials: (will die out and grow back every season, never need to be replanted) oregano, sage, french sorrel, chives, and mint. B. Greens: Leafy greens like kale, spinach, watercress, arugula, lettuces, cabbage, collard greens, bok choy, and brussels sprouts. Kale does well in heat and cold, and will live through a few frosts, while growing tons of yummy leaves. They can get huge! Lettuces do best in lower heat, if it gets too hot they will wilt and eventually bolt too soon (start to grow flowers instead of leaves, which get very bitter). Beware: slugs love lettuce. 9 C. Veggies: the good stuff! Includes eggplants (slow growing plant, 2-4 fruits per plant per season), tomatoes (like lots of sun and acidic soil), peppers (they like lots of heat), zucchini and other squash (you’ll get about 8-10 fruits off of each plant!), cucumbers (a vining plant that climbs), beans, (one of the easiest plants to grow! They grow very fast and you’ll get a lot of beans), cowpeas (related to peas, look like beans, and are great for super hot climates and sandy soil), peas (beautiful flowers, don’t do well in direct sun). D. Root Veggies: The large root of a plant that is eaten, but the leaves can be edible too! Beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, onions, garlic, and potatoes (do not eat potato greens, they are toxic). All root veggies need very rich, loose soil. If the soil is too compact, the root won’t be able to get big, and will stay small and hard like a normal root. Make sure to give them enough space in between; if the plants sense too many other roots nearby, they will stay small. Daikon radish has been the easiest root veggie for me to grow with no bug issues, and they get HUGE! E. Fruits: Raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, black currant, cherries, grapes, mulberries, strawberries. These are all perennials, and raspberries and strawberries have been the easiest to find and grow for me! If you’re container planting or renting, I’d advise strawberries, as you don’t have to wait for the bush/tree to mature! 10 PArT 3- GeTTInG DIrTY! AkA All ABouT Your SoIl I f you live in a developed or suburban area, you most likely have no proper topsoil left in your yard. Every time an area is developed, the topsoil is dug up and moved to make way for building! Clay-like or sandy soil is what is left and is very com mon because of that. This means adding some good topsoil is ideal before planting. THree TYPeS oF SoIl All soils are a mixture of these four things: SILT, SAND, LOAM, and CLAY. Some soils have much more sand, much more silt, or much more clay than others. More loamy soil is the ideal, since it is the rich, black, organic part of soil that plants love. Clay-like soil is much more common, and isn’t too bad either since it is still usually has some nutrients. Clay is not ideal to grow root veggies in, since it is way too compact for them to get big enough. You can always add soil amendments to change your soil, to become more loamy! Soil Amendments These are soil-like additions you can add to your soil to make it richer in nutrients and have a better makeup for your plants. They are made up of compost, peat moss, manure, rich topsoil, diatomaceous earth, and other organic matter, like bone meal. Adding them before you plant will start your plants out right, giving them the proper nutrients to avoid problems later on when plants mature. Healthy, well fed plants are much less susceptible to disease, and they grow better and bigger, too. 11 pH and acidity in your soil pH is a scientific number scale that measures acidity/alkalinity from 1-14. The lower the number on the scale, the higher the acidity (1 = high acidity, 7 = neutral, 14= high alkalinity). Soil naturally has varying degrees of acidity. Some soil can be very acidic and that can harm plants. Some plants love slightly higher acidity (or lower pH), and others love slightly lower acidity (higher pH), but usually within the range of pH 5.8 to 6.5. If you plant in the ground and your plants keep withering or not producing fruit, too high/low acidity in the soil might be the problem. You can test the acidity in your soil by getting a cheap soil-test kit for a few dollars from any big box store or garden center. Dissolve your soil in water and add the different pills form the test into the water. The pills tint the water a certain colour, which indicates certain acidity, whether too high or too low. A naturally occurring high acidity area to avoid planting is where pine trees drop their needles. The needles are super acidic and usually kill anything trying to grow there, which is why there isn’t usually any plants under pine trees. Now that you’ve prepared your soil in the containers & area you’d like, lets choose wether you’s like to garden organically or not: What is organic gardening? Organic gardening is basically gardening without synthetic chemicals. This means not using any synthetic chemical fertilizers or insecticides/fungicides. Instead of using synthesized nitrogen fertilizers (non-organic fertilizer uses nitrogen made from petroleum and other synthesized chemicals), an organic garden is fertilized with natural sources of nitrogen (the most important fertilizer), like kelp, fish emulsion (fish poop), organic bone meal (ground up bones of livestock), and organic compost. Only organic pesticides are used, like neem oil, garlic spray, or ladybugs. 12 Fertilizing: What it is and when/how to do it Fertilizing is very similar to adding soil amendments, but fertilizing is done throughout the growing season, after plants are planted and settled in the soil. Adding things like compost tea or commercial dry or liquid fertilizers to the soil every few weeks is ideal, but not 100% necessary (especially with amended soil). Once your plants start growing fruit (tomatoes start growing on the plants, zucchinis bloom, etc), your plants may start to need more minerals, and usually need to be supplemented. What is in fertilizer? N-P-K: Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) are the three main minerals most veggie plants need to grow. All fertilizers have 3 numbers on their labels, in this sequence. This means if the numbers are 18-25-16, the fertilizer is 18% nitrogen, 25% phosphorus, and 16% potassium. All plants need a different amount of each of these, but there are vegetable fertilizers sold that are formulated for most veggies. organic fertilizers: compost tea, coffee grounds, egg shells Compost tea is a small amount of compost added to water and then fermented. This is a great additional fertilizer during the growing season when plants are fruiting. Used coffee grounds on acid-loving plants is also great. When I put my used coffee grounds at the bases of my tomatoes, they always do better. Another household option is ground up egg shells. They give the plants minerals, but should be used with other fertilizers. Here are some resources on making compost tea: http://www.homecompostingmadeeasy.com/composttea.html 13 What is compost? Compost is made by the natural decomposition of organic matter over time in a special compost roller, a compost bin, or with worms (vermiculture). Basically, compost is rotted leaves/plants/fruit/grass/food that becomes a rich black mixture that appears like soil. All the minerals that the plants/fruit had inside them decompose (with the helps of bugs/worms) and are then able to be absorbed by your plants as compost. It is great for plants, because it has all the minerals and nutrients in it that they need to grow. It is a sustainable way to fertilize your garden, and make less waste by reusing your own garden clippings and food scraps. Gardening compost is usually available at most nurseries/DIY stores, but if you have the space, it’s definitely worth looking into doing yourself! 14 PArT 4- GroWInG AnD PlAnTInG! Seeds or seedlings? There are two choices to starting your garden plants: buying them as seedlings (baby plants), or by obtaining seeds. Since they each have their pros and cons, I tend to do a bit of both throughout the season. And if some of your first seeds die, seedlings are a great backup. Why I love seeds: They’re cheap, you get a bunch at a time which you can usually use over many seasons. You have a lot more control over where you get your seeds, you can find some really cool rare seeds, get some from people you know, or go to a seed library. The cons: They take more time to mature and fruit. For certain plants, they will need to be started indoors a few weeks before spring to be ready to plant outdoors once it’s warm enough. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs and some others are pretty time intensive seeds that need to start indoors if you have a shorter growing season like in most of Canada. You’ll need a sunny windowsill or a light setup for these seeds starting indoors (more on p. 16). Why I love seedlings: Seedlings are great for people with a short planting season (like in most of Canada), since they’re already a month or two old when you buy them. Once you get them, they’re ready to put into the soil, and that’s it! The cons: They tend to be more expensive (each plant is usually the same price as a pack of 50 seeds). If you’re planning on growing heirloom varieties or organically, it can be harder to find these seedlings being sold. It can be impossible to know where they’re coming from, and what chemicals they’re treated with if found at a big box store. There is also a more limited selection of plants available, unlike with seeds. 15 Seed resources You can find seeds in almost any store nowadays. I do most of my purchasing using the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (rareseeds.com) who have such a HUGE variety of organic heirloom seeds. A lot of their heirlooms are collected from around the world, so they have some seriously interesting varieties you may of never heard of or seen before. They usually throw in a free pack of seeds with every order! They also send out free gorgeous catalogues every year. A good resource for free seeds are Seed libraries. Most large cities have them, and are a great resource for getting free seeds or seed- swapping with others. Starting Seeds indoors or outdoors? Seedlings vs Direct Sow Sowing is planting seeds in soil to grow. There are two basic methods used: planting them indoors in pots until the weather warms up or planting the seeds directly outdoors in the ground or raised beds. Some plants should be planted outdoors (direct sowing), but some take much longer to mature and produce fruit, and it can be too cold outside to plant them to give enough time for fruiting. For places with shorter summers (2-3 months long), I recommend starting tomato and pepper seeds indoors while it’s still cold outside. Direct sowing seeds- which seeds? Some seeds do much better planted right in the ground (and not transplanted from indoors to outdoors). These plants are usually the ones that grow very fast, so there’s no need to start them indoors. It’s possible to start them indoors, but they can get very bad transplant shock, and tend to stop growing for a long time or even die if transplanted. It can be done, but is harder on the plant. These seeds are: cucumbers, squashes, melons, watermelons, corn, and beans. Other plants that can be direct sown, but don’t have to be are: kale or any other leafy green, peas, herbs, and sunflowers. Almost everything else can be started indoors. 16 STArTInG SeeDS InDoorS: How to start your seeds indoors in 6 steps What you will need: Seeds, potting soil, containers with holes in the bottom for drainage (or a large seeding tray), a spray bottle or other container for soft watering, clamp lights or lamps with fluorescent bulbs (or a sunny windowsill), a plastic or otherwise waterproof tray, and a timer (optional, for the lights). Step 1: setup The basic setup is having pots inside a shallow, water-resistant tray. (They should be in a warm part of the home, if possible. If they are too cold and damp, it takes much longer for the seeds to sprout and they could die off more easily or have problems with mold.) The clamp lights/fluorescent tubes/light bulb should be on top of the pots, ideally casting an even amount of light onto all of them. If you are using a windowsill, make sure it’s one where there is the most light and heat possible Here is a picture of one of my setups (it changes depending on what I have): If using an incandescent, keep in mind they give off a lot of heat. They will be good for starting seeds, but be careful not keeping them too close to the seedlings once they sprout to avoid burning them. Lights should ideally be at no less 3 inches away from your seeds, and no more than a foot and half away. Attaching the lights to a timer is an option, since seedlings shouldn’t get more than a normal day’s cycle of light, and it can easily keep it on a schedule without having to think about it. 17 Step 2: planting the seeds Each pot/section of seeding tray should be about 3/4 full of loosely packed potting soil. Each seed packet will usually include instructions on how deep to plant the seed. If not, the rule of thumb is the bigger the seed, the deeper you plant it. Basil seeds, some of the tiniest seeds, should be sprinkled on TOP of the soil. Tomato seeds, which are a bit bigger, go 1/2 cm deep, while beans/peas which are much larger seeds, can go 1-2 cm deep. Once you put 2-3 seeds in each hole, cover it with soil and push down very slightly. You have planted your first seed! Congrats! Step 3: Water, light, and wait! Now you have to give them what they need to sprout: WATER, LIGHT, and HEAT. For water, grab the spray bottle filled with water and spray the pot until the soil is soaked all the way through. For heat, cover the pot with plastic wrap and close with an elastic band around the top. This creates a mini-greenhouse inside the pot which, once it’s under the light, provides the heat it needs to pop out, and keeps the soil from drying out as quickly. Some seeding trays will now come with an attachable clear plastic lid for this exact purpose! Lastly, the seed needs a lot of light (which the plastic will also turn into the needed heat). The pots will need to now be put under your chosen light source. The longer the pot has light and heat, the faster the seed will sprout. 10-12 hours of light a day will sprout a seed pretty fast. All seeds have their own time-frame, and some might take longer than others. While waiting for the sprout to make an appearance, make sure the pot doesn’t dry out! The soil needs to be moist for the seed to sprout. Once you see a sprout in the pot, the saran wrap can be removed. You now have a seedling!! Hooray! 18 Step 4: Thinning In step 2, I mentioned putting more than one seed in the hole. This is because not all seeds you plant will sprout, only a percentage will for any given type of plant. This is called a germination ratio, a percentage of seeds that will for sure turn into plants, or germinate. This means that when the listed percentage of seeds that sprout is low, that you should plant more seeds in the container to guarantee one will sprout. This also means that some of the time, you will get a few seedlings sprouting in the same pot. This is perfect, and let them grow until they have their first true leaf. A true leaf is the first leaf grown, between the first two leaves that sprout from the seed. This leaf is usually shaped more like the mature plant’s leaves will look. Once this true leaf peeks out, pick the ones that are smaller or weird looking and pull them out. Leaving the strongest, biggest, and best looking plant behind will help that one plant grow up healthy. If there are too many plants growing close together, it will stunt them all. It always feels so sad to pull these seedlings out, so if I have extra pots I’ll replant them. This process of removing extra plants is called thinning. You can now leave your sprouts to grow for a few weeks, until it’s time to take them outside. Water when necessary. You should let the soil dry out a bit between waterings, and keep up with the light. Step 5: hardening off This is the last step you and your plants have to go through before you can plant them outdoors. This can start once it’s warm enough to plant them outside. Basically, your plants are used to being indoors, where there is no wind, rain, or very hot sun. They are delicate little plants at this point. They don’t really look much like the tough thick-stemmed seedlings you get from stores, yet. This is because they need to be hardened to the outside world, especially to wind. This is a process with the plants, and can take a week or two, 19 depending on how much time you have. The process is taking the plants outside to be exposed to the sun and wind for an hour or so. This for the first few days of the process. Once they show a tiny bit of wilting or start looking pretty sad, take them back inside. This gives them a small dose of the elements without killing them. Just enough to make them stronger. Start adding time over the week or two that the plants stay out, until you think they’re strong enough to make it outside overnight. Make sure to check on your plants every so often while doing this, or they might get a little too much sun and can die. Once they are fine being outside overnight, you have successfully hardened off your plants! They are tough little plants now, and ready to be planted outdoors. Step 6: planting outdoors What you need: trowel (small garden shovel), gardening gloves, and a hose/watering can. In garden beds/ raised beds Plan out roughly where you are going to put the plants in the bed. Remember to take into account that these plants are going to grow much larger than they are now! Putting plants too close can crowd them and stop them from getting as big as possible. Make sure to have at least 6 inches of space between most vegetable plants. Your seed packs/seedling info cards should give you more specific spacing directions for each plant. Once you have a basic idea, use your trowel/ gloved hands to dig holes for your plants to be put in. Make sure they are deep and wide enough to fit the entire root ball (the soil held together by the roots of the plant). For tomatoes, always plant a bit deeper, covering the bottom of the stem almost up above the true leaves (which you pick off). Tomatoes grow roots out of their stems, and this creates a very good root system, and a sturdier plant to hold all those heavy tomatoes it will produce! 20 The easiest way to remove plants from the containers is to hold the container sideways, squeezing the bottom on opposite sides until the soil and roots loosen and are ready to come out. Gently holding the stem, they should come right out! Now you’re ready to put them in the holes. Once you place the plants in the holes, fill the holes until you have a tiny mound around the plant’s stem. Push down with your hands with slight pressure until you feel the plant is pretty solidly in the ground. Make sure to water plants thoroughly right after you plant. This makes sure the roots survive the transplant. Adding mulch on top of the soil around your plants helps their roots stay cool, and from the soil drying out too fast. I’d highly recommend it for very hot/ dry areas. In pots Keep in mind how big the plant is going to get, and the size of your pot. Tomatoes need very large pots (1-3 gallon pots), since they get very large and have large roots. Herbs and other greens can do well in smaller and shallower pots. You can plant in a smaller pot when your plant is still small, and re-pot it into a new larger pot when it gets larger. Plant the same way mentioned above (in the ground) but using potting soil. After planting, water the pot until you see water coming out the bottom. root bound Usually in large seedlings (particularly purchased ones), the roots of the plant can be bound together, making a tight ball, or keeping the shape of whatever container it was in. This is not ideal, since the roots can only grow inwards once this happens, and suffocate themselves. When you are about the plant and see this, take care to gently pull apart some of the roots, until they look loose and a bit untangled, and can now be introduced into new soil.