The City Homesteader

And then came news reports of fresh produce tainted with toxic pesticides and potentially lethal bacteria. News about climate change prompted many to begin calculating their carbon footprint and "food miles," the long distances their meals traveled before reaching their plate and the resulting environmental impact. More and more people began to recognize that they had lost touch with where their food came from and that it had become nothing more than fuel for their busy lives, that they were out of sync with the seasons and nature.

Now, the generation raised on food from a bag or box is rediscovering the simple pleasure of producing some of their own food and sharing it with others. Not just people with acres to farm and experience raising crops, but anyone with the desire and nothing more than a small backyard, balcony, or sunny windowsill to grow a few food plants.

You can be a part of this revolution of new food producers. Wherever you live, no matter how much room you have for a garden—or even if you have none at all—you can reap the soul-satisfying rewards of picking the freshest, safest, most healthful food possible. You can grow and eat homegrown food just about all year long. In this chapter I'll take you through the basics of raising your own food, and I'll share strategies, techniques, and tricks for getting the most food from whatever space you have to work with.

Before you decide on where to plant your garden, take the time to observe it at different times of day and, if at all possible, over several months. The most productive gardens get eight or more hours of direct sunlight during the height of summer—this is what master gardeners and plant tags mean when they refer to "full sun." If the spot you choose gets less than eight hours of sunlight ("partial sun" or "partial shade"), your choices of what to grow will be a little more limited, but you can still grow a lot of your own food. Plots that get fewer than four hours of direct sun each day, known as "full shade", are not well-suited to growing food.

In full sun you can grow all of the most popular garden crops, including tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, peas and beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, corn, and raspberries.

In partial shade you won't get a robust harvest of "fruiting crops," like those I listed for full sun, but you can still grow a lot of leafy vegetables, such as lettuce and spinach, as well as root crops like carrots and beets and herbs such as basil and rosemary.

Full shade—beneath a tree or in the shadow of a tall building—means you'll need to implement Plan B: container gardening.

The other critical factor in choosing where to site your garden plot is drainage, or how much water the soil holds. You want to avoid spots where water stays in puddles for more than a few hours after a heavy rainstorm, because most plants drown (yes, drown for lack of air) in standing water. But you also don't want it to drain away too quickly—before plants' roots can absorb it—which is often the case where the soil is predominantly sandy. To assess the drainage where you want to plant your garden, try this easy test:

You can improve the drainage of your soil if it is slow, but where water stays in puddles for days after a rainstorm, you will be continually combating its natural tendencies. For that reason, low-lying areas and other spots where rainwater collects are not suitable for gardens. The ideal spot for your garden is at the top of a slope (so water naturally drains away) that's facing south or west (the directions that get the most sun in summer).

No matter how much space you have, I strongly suggest you start with a small garden the first season. A single bed or two about four feet wide and eight to ten feet long is big enough to produce a steady supply of different vegetables and herbs from spring to fall. Many new gardeners are very ambitious in spring, plant a big garden, and then become frustrated or disappointed when they can't keep up with it as summer arrives. So I say, start modestly and add more in future seasons once you have a clearer idea of the garden's demands and your capacity to care for it.

Spring starts out cool, so you want to start your season with crops that thrive in lower temperatures, including lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens, peas, carrots, radishes, beets, and if you have room, broccoli and cabbage. Plant them as early as possible—these all tolerate (and many benefit from) a little frost.

The average last frost date for your area is a valuable bit of information. You may find it online or you can ask your county extension office (every county has one, usually associated with your state's land-grant university). After the last frost date, you want to harvest the last of the coolweather crops, take out the plants, and replace them with tomatoes, peppers (hot and sweet), green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and basil, all of which grow best in warm weather.

When the warm season winds down and the first frost of fall nears (you want to know the average first frost date, too), pull out those heat-lovers and plant new rounds of lettuce, spinach, kale, and other cold-weather crops. Again, many of them, such as carrots, benefit from a touch of frost. In fact, while carrots are not the most efficient use of your space in spring, they are a very valuable choice in the fall because you can store them in the ground (right where they are growing) until you're ready to eat them—almost to the start of the following spring.

For years I struggled to grow spinach in the spring. By the time the garden's soil dried out enough for me to work in it and plant the seeds, the temperature quickly became too warm for the spinach, turning the leaves bitter, and the plants began flowering before I harvested enough for more than a salad or two. Then I learned to plant spinach in early September—four or five weeks before the average first fall frost where I live in southeastern Pennsylvania. The seeds come up quickly because the soil is still warm, and the plant thrives in the cool days and nights as summer turns to fall. I get a light harvest of fresh green leaves to eat before the first hard frost comes in mid- to late October and the plant's growth slows. When that happens, I surround the plants with a thick mulch of fall leaves (shredded by my lawn mower) and top them with a light (inch or so) cover of leaves, too. The plants remain alive through winter—even when we have a heavy snowfall—but they're dormant, so there's no new growth. As soon as daytime temperatures climb above 55 degrees F in spring, I clear the mulch off the top of the plants and over a week or two gradually pull it away from the plants. Before long, the plants are growing again and I've got bowls-full of fresh green spinach leaves to enjoy—weeks before spring-planted greens are ready. I've tried this technique with arugula, too, and it works just as well for that hardy green. Growing spinach and arugula over winter is an easy and rewarding way to extend your season.

Consider including garlic in your succession plan, too, because you plant it in your garden in fall, it grows all winter, and it's ready to be harvested the following late spring/early summer—just in time to replace it with another crop like green beans that will grow fast and be ready for harvest before the warm season is over. Garlic not only puts your garden to use when it is otherwise dormant, it produces a lot of food for you from a little space—you plant the cloves and each one yields a whole new head of garlic. A pound of cloves yields about seven to ten pounds of fresh garlic heads. Bonus: you can snip and eat a bit of the chivelike greens that grow above ground while the bulbs are forming below.

The goal of succession planting is to keep your space as productive as possible each month of the growing season. To do that, you want to minimize the amount of time each plant is in the ground until it's ready to harvest. Seeds take time to get established, grow roots, and mature enough to bear fruit or eat. So, whenever possible, transplant seedlings (or even larger plants) you grow yourself or buy at a nursery instead of starting with seeds. Also, as you choose which varieties of each crop to grow, you'll see that some mature faster than others. The fastest-maturing varieties make the best use of the time you have allotted in each season.

Tomatoes, peas, beans, cucumbers, zucchini, and other summer squash, even small cantaloupes work well in vertical gardens. When selecting varieties of these crops, read the labels carefully and look for "vining" or "pole" types rather than "bush" types.

You can buy trellises and other plant supports specially designed for each kind of plant. Many resourceful gardeners make them using salvaged materials. One of the most ingenious I've seen was a bed frame stood on end, twine woven from top to bottom and side to side, turned into a sturdy pea net. Fallen tree limbs and branches work and give your garden a natural look.

Even easier to work with and available for a low cost, bamboo poles and zip ties let you design and set up a trellis that's perfect for your garden without tools or even construction skills. Check out "Bamboo Trellis" on the next page to see how to make one for yourself.