Grow More Food

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Carleen Madigan

Art direction by Ash Austin

Book design by Stacy Wakefield Forte

Text production by Jennifer Jepson Smith

Indexed by Claire Splan

Cover and interior photography by © Hilary Dahl

Additional photography by © Andrei310/iStock.com, 197; © Nigel Cattlin/Alamy Stock Photo, 198; Courtesy of Waypoint Analytical, LLC, 71

Illustrations by © Steve Sanford, except 48 & 52 by Ilona Sherratt © Storey Publishing, LLC

Text © 2022 by Colin McCrate and Brad Halm

A previous version of this book was published under the title High-Yield Vegetable Gardening (Storey Publishing, 2015).

Ebook production by Slavica A. Walzl

Ebook version 0.0

February 1, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages or reproduce illustrations in a review with appropriate credits; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other—without written permission from the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

This book is dedicated to Roy Brubaker, who has inspired many people to grow good food for the world.

Contents

Introduction: Become a More Productive Vegetable Gardener

Part 1: Plan Ahead & Keep Records

Chapter 1: Evaluating Your Current Garden Setup

Chapter 2: Crop Scheduling & Record Keeping

Chapter 3: Garden Mapping & Crop Rotation

Part 2: Build Healthy Soil

Chapter 4: Prepping Soil for Production

Chapter 5: Building & Maintainung Soil Quality

Chapter 6: Suppressing the Competition

Part 3: Get to Know Your Plants

Chapter 7: Selecting Seeds

Chapter 8: Transplanting & Direct Seeding in the Garden

Chapter 9: Fertilizing, Prunning & Hand Pollinating to Boost Production

Chapter 10: Managing Pests & Diseases

Part 4: Create Efficient Systems

Chapter 11: Setting Up a Home Nursery

Chapter 12: Starting Your Own Transplants

Chapter 13: Irrigating Consistently & Evenly

Part 5: Extend & Expand the Harvest

Chapter 14: Extending the Growing Season

Chapter 15: Timely Harvesting & Successful Storage

Appendix: Garden Planning Worksheets & Charts

Resources

Metric Conversion Charts

Index

Garden Successfully with More Books from Storey

Share Your Experience!

Introduction Become a More Productive Vegetable Gardener

This book is for people who are intent on getting as much food as possible from their gardens, whatever the size of their plot. Our knowledge is drawn from a background in small- and large-acreage farming, as well as in backyard gardening. After years working on a variety of diversified vegetable farms, we launched a home gardening business. Since 2007, we've been running this business, called Seattle Urban Farm Company, which helps homeowners, restaurants, and communities grow their own food. We've taken the systems and practices used by professional growers and adapted them for use at the scale of a home garden.

There are many reasons why a home gardener might want to implement the strategies described in this book. It may be that you simply want to be more efficient with your time and resources. Or feed your household from the garden year-round. Perhaps you'd like to set up a miniature farm stand by the mailbox for supplemental income, sell a few vegetables at your local farmers' market, coordinate a community garden, or prepare for the zombie apocalypse.

No matter what your goals are, the strategies and techniques described in this book will help you approach your garden like a small-scale farm, dramatically increasing its productivity. Focusing on production means that your plot will need more careful planning, record keeping, and management than a typical backyard vegetable garden.

How to Grow More Food in the Space You Have

The first step toward a highly productive garden is simply understanding what makes a garden successful. To get the most out of your garden, it's important to:

Grow for a purpose. Take the time to consider the goals of your project. Grow for the tastes you prefer and yields you can use. Make sure to have a use in mind for each crop before it goes in the ground.

Select the best site and use it efficiently. Think ahead and place annual and perennial crops in appropriate locations. For most crops and climates, more sun is better. Lay out your garden to maximize productive space and find creative solutions for spaces outside of the main vegetable garden. Keeping a productive garden space requires using nongarden spaces in support roles.

Plan well and keep good records. Spend time before each season to make a thorough plan of the garden. Update the plan throughout the season as you make necessary changes. Maintain an accurate record of garden tasks and what happens in the garden, and use this information to inform future plans.

Maintain fertile soil. Successful growers say, "Care for the soil, not the crops." Ongoing and meticulous care of the soil is essential. Soil amendment should happen several times every year.

Know your plants. To get the most out of your crops, you must develop an understanding of the physiology, genetics, and cultural requirements of the plants. The more you know about your crops, the easier it is to increase their yields.

Select the best crops. Choose crops and specific cultivars that will perform well in your climate. You'll want to select varieties that are vigorous, produce well, and that you like to eat.

Deal with pests, diseases, and weeds immediately. Closely and frequently monitoring the garden for problems allows you to deal with them before they get out of hand.

Observe and respond. You are the best ongoing source of information about your garden. Keeping track of which varieties perform best and what pests show up and when will enable you to customize your project to your specific conditions.

Maximize your time and energy. Develop systems and use tools that maximize efficiency by saving time and energy. Time is nearly always the most limited resource of a production gardener, so make the most of it.

Water well. Vegetable plants need consistent and adequate water. By the time you notice signs of water stress, you've already reduced your overall yield potential.

Extend and expand the seasons. Create spaces that allow you to extend planting and harvest dates earlier and later in the season. Stay organized with succession planting to grow multiple crops in each space throughout the year.

Harvest and store crops smartly. Know the appropriate time of day and stage of growth to harvest your crops. Pay attention to postharvest care for maximum quality and storage life.

Think like a Farmer

In our experience, the most successful growers have a decidedly positive way of thinking about their gardens. Although intensive food production is challenging, these growers understand that you are most successful when you find joy in the process itself. They don't allow the inevitable struggles to tarnish their experience.

There is no doubt that intensive food production is hard work and can be exhausting and frustrating. Crops will fail, seasons will be unexpectedly hot or cold, and more insects than you imagined possible will eventually cross your path. One day you may find yourself screaming obscenities and flapping your arms in the air like a deranged chicken in response to a Colorado potato beetle outbreak. However, it's essential to seek creative ways of overcoming these challenges and to find joy in the simple pleasure of doing a little better each season. A successful grower recognizes the highs and lows as part of the agreement to work with nature.

To be successful and to improve their growing systems year after year, gardeners must relish the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and from the vagaries of nature. Observation and knowledge are key in this process: Farmers understand that learning how their crops grow and how the plants respond to their care is vital to their livelihood and well-being. It is embracing this interaction and the give-and-take with nature that makes food production so captivating and rewarding.

The Art of Gardening for Production

You might say that production gardeners are a bit like artists. Their work runs like a thread through all of their activities; they may be struck by sudden inspiration at any moment; and they perform their tasks as dictated by the work, instead of trying to fit their work into a scheduled routine. The soil is your canvas, plants are your medium, and each onion, pepper, and head of lettuce is a work of art.

Like artists, many growers find that their passion increases over time. As you become intimately familiar with your crops and your soil, your techniques will become second nature and you will truly get lost in your work. The most successful growers are those who continue to find new inspiration in their crops and systems. For some, experimenting with new varieties every year helps keep them engaged and motivated. For others, achieving a continual harvest of salad greens or breeding their own variety of winter squash fuels the fire.

Anyone can become an artist in their garden. No matter the size of your plot, you'll find that as your knowledge and experience grow, so will your yields and your love of food production.

How to Use This Book

This is a guide to maximizing garden productivity at home, not a comprehensive encyclopedia of vegetable production. We include useful information for growers at every skill level and focus on techniques that will increase yields for the production-minded gardener. We show you the systems and techniques used on small vegetable production farms every day so that you'll learn to use your yard just like a miniature farm.

We focus on annual vegetables and herbs but also include information on perennials. The information is structured this way because we've found that most home gardeners are concerned primarily with their annual crops. Perennials take less care and often take up less space in the grower's mind.

Developing a system to employ all of the techniques outlined throughout the book will take time. While this book will help improve your garden productivity from day one, you should approach gardening with a long view and gradually acquire skills as they become relevant and appropriate for your garden.

It should be no surprise that professional growers take their work very seriously. They monitor every aspect of their farm: recording when crops are planted, fertilized, irrigated, weeded, thinned, pruned, and harvested. They note which varieties perform best, and they continuously make adjustments to their practices as they develop more efficient and successful ways of caring for their crops.

But don't take it too seriously. Gardening is fraught with challenges. It will make you lose your mind if you don't take a step back every now and then and laugh at the whole process. Get away from your garden, play a game of Parcheesi or Ping-Pong—whatever it takes to calm down after you've lost all your tomatoes to late blight. With time, consideration, and a sense of humor, you will become a successful, highly productive gardener.

Chapter oneEvaluating Your Current Garden Setup

If you already have a garden, take the time to consider any challenges it presents. Seemingly small details can make a big difference. Maybe your beds never get enough compost, because the pathways are so narrow that a wheelbarrow won't fit between them. Maybe it's located near a giant pine tree that sends new roots into your beds every spring. Maybe it's already perfect. In any event, it's a good idea to think holistically about your space and try to identify opportunities for improvement.

what are your growing priorities?

Why are you interested in increasing the productivity of your garden? Do you want to sell tomatoes to the local corner store? Do you want the most diverse range of edible plants possible? It's important to identify your personal goals so you can lay out the garden properly and dedicate appropriate amounts of space to each crop.

For example, if you want to grow salad for dinner every night, you'll have to determine how much salad your household uses, how many nights per week you eat at home, how long it will take each planting to grow, and how many plantings you'll need to make through the year. This planning process is actually a lot easier than it sounds, and it can be fun to do, as you'll see in Chapter 2.

Write down your big-picture priorities as clearly as you can, and use them as a reference during the design process. You'll need to keep these goals in mind as your guiding light through the process, so you stay on track and actually get what you want from your project.

How Much Garden?

The chart below provides some general guidelines on the needs and potential productivity of different gardens according to size. Please keep in mind that these are rough estimates: Everyone uses a garden differently. Not everyone is growing food for the same number of people, and those people will vary in age and dietary preferences. The time needed to manage your space will also depend on how tidy and weed- free you like to keep it.

Spend some time considering the full range of time commitments you have throughout the year. This will help you home in on which garden size will work best for you. If you're just getting started with your garden, we recommend starting small. It's relatively easy to expand a garden in subsequent years, but it can be overwhelming to manage a large garden if you don't have much experience.

Create a Map of Your Property

If you're starting a garden from scratch, creating a detailed map of your yard will help you think about your space holistically and place the elements of your garden in the best location possible. If you have an existing garden, this process can help you reorganize or expand your garden and find ways to add new production spaces.

You can draw a site plan any time of year, but the off-season is a great time to get started. Knowing that you have a few months of lead time will make you less likely to rush or cut corners, as you might be prone to do when you are eager to get your plants in the ground. If you already have a garden on your property, the best time to create your map is right after the end of a growing season. Putting the pieces together is often easiest when you're cleaning up your summer crops and the past year's successes and failures are fresh in your mind.

Create a Base Map

To create your site plan, you'll need to start with a base map of the space you'll be working with. Try to make the representation of your property as accurate as possible, so that different areas are drawn in scale to each other.

In order for areas and elements to appear in scale on the map, you'll need to measure how large and how far apart they are in your yard. Also measure the edges of your property line, the dimensions of your house, the location of any other notable items (such as the driveway or walkways), existing planting beds, and the placement of water spigots. Even small details can matter. For example, a dryer vent will blast very warm, drying air outside and can coat nearby plants in a film of lint, both of which can result in stress and lower productivity.

Using online resources will make mapping your property much easier. Depending on your location and other variables, such as how much tree canopy cover is on your property, you might be able to trace an image of your lot in Google Earth and print the image, or even export it to a computer drawing program such as Canva, SketchUp, AutoCAD, or Inkscape.

You may be able to use a few other shortcuts to create your property map. For example, you may have received a map of the property when you purchased your home. If not, you may be able to request a map of your property from the city or town government. If you have an existing map, scan it into a computer or trace it onto a new sheet of paper as a starting point for your garden design. Be sure to draw in elements like utility lines, trees, ornamental landscaping, fences, patios, decks, water sources, streets, alleyways, light poles, and known time capsules.

selecting the best site

Whether you already have a garden or are planning to build a new one, we recommend assessing your site to ensure you're utilizing every advantage your yard has to offer. Poke around your site like an amateur detective. Take a holistic approach and consider if your garden is getting enough sun, if you're making use of beneficial microclimates, and if your garden is laid out in a way that's comfortable and efficient to work in.