Garden FAQ

Six inches works for shallow-rooted crops like lettuce and radishes. Twelve inches is the sweet spot for most vegetables. Eighteen or more for carrots, parsnips, and tomatoes. My 4x8 beds are 12 inches deep and they've handled everything from Black Krim tomatoes to Scarlet Nantes carrots.

Need? No. Want? Absolutely, after 2022. That summer I lost a whole bed of lettuce to the drought because I kept forgetting to water in the heat. A $50 DripWorks kit with a timer solved it. Drip keeps foliage dry (less disease), uses 30% less water than a hose, and lets you leave town for a weekend without panicking.

Direct-sow anything that germinates fast and hates being transplanted: carrots, radishes, beans, peas, beets, turnips, parsnips, dill, cilantro. Start transplants for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. Rule of thumb: if the crop needs 75+ days to harvest and your zone has short summers, start 6-8 weeks before last frost under a grow light.

Cut, don't pull. Use scissors or a thin blade and snip the weaker seedlings at soil level. Pulling disturbs the roots of the seedling you're keeping. Do it when seedlings have their first set of true leaves (the second set, after the cotyledons). Eat the thinnings, baby greens are delicious.

Succession planting means sowing a new round of a fast-maturing crop every 2-3 weeks so you get a continuous harvest. Lettuce, radishes, bush beans, arugula, cilantro, baby spinach. I put a reminder in my calendar every other Friday through the season. Stops in late summer when daylight starts dropping.

Seedlings you started indoors need to get used to sun and wind before they go in the ground. Set them outside in a shaded spot for an hour the first day, two the second, gradually increasing to 6-8 hours over 7-10 days. Move to partial sun in the second half of the process. Skip this and you'll watch healthy seedlings bleach white and die from sunburn in one afternoon. Ask me how I know.

Yes. Both crops rely almost entirely on bee pollination for fruit set. If you have a honeybee or native-bee problem in your area, either plant flowers nearby (borage, zinnia, alyssum, sunflowers) to attract pollinators or hand-pollinate with a small paintbrush each morning. First-year beds with no nearby flowers see the worst pollination.

Raised beds win on soil volume and root depth. Containers win if you rent, have no yard, or want to grow tomatoes on a balcony. A 5-gallon grow bag holds one determinate tomato or one pepper. A 10-gallon handles an indeterminate. Use an organic potting mix (Pro-Mix HP, Foxfarm Ocean Forest, or Coast of Maine Bar Harbor Blend). Containers dry out fast in summer; drip irrigation is almost mandatory.

Mel's Mix is one-third compost, one-third peat moss or coco coir, one-third coarse vermiculite. It's expensive the first year (maybe $200 to fill a 4x8x12 bed) but lasts decades, because you only top-dress with compost after. Alternatives exist. Fox Farm Happy Frog potting soil, Coast of Maine raised bed soil, or DIY blends of topsoil and compost all work. The three-part mix just balances water retention, drainage, and nutrient load unusually well.

Yes, with cold frames or row covers (Agribon AG-30 is what I use). Kale, spinach, arugula, mache, and claytonia all produce through light frost. Under a row cover they handle hard frost. In Zone 6a I harvest fresh salad greens through Christmas most years. Eliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook is the reference.

For heirlooms, yes, save and replant. Brandywine tomato, Dragon's Tongue bean, Glass Gem corn, these all grow true from saved seed. For F1 hybrids (anything labeled "hybrid" or "F1"), no, the next generation reverts and does weird things. Save seeds by letting one healthy plant go to fully ripe flower/fruit, collect, dry, label, store in a mason jar in the fridge.

Heirlooms are open-pollinated varieties that breed true from seed, usually older than 50 years. Better flavor, better saved-seed viability, often lower disease resistance. Hybrids are crosses bred for specific traits (yield, shelf life, disease resistance). Better production, worse flavor in my experience, and the seeds don't breed true. I grow mostly heirlooms; my Black Krim tomatoes out-produce any hybrid I've tried.

Cover crops are plants you grow specifically to improve the soil. Winter rye, crimson clover, buckwheat, hairy vetch. They fix nitrogen, break up compacted soil, and add organic matter when you till them in. For raised beds, crimson clover in fall is the easiest option. Cut it down two weeks before you want to plant in spring; let the residue decompose.

Two inches of straw, shredded leaves, or wood chips around established plants. Keeps soil moisture in, weed seeds out, and soil temperature steady. Don't mulch right up to plant stems (invites rot). Don't use hay (full of weed seeds) or cedar chips in a vegetable bed (can inhibit germination). Oak leaves from your own yard, shredded with the mower, are free and perfect.

Floating row cover early in the season keeps cabbage moths, squash vine borers, and flea beetles off. Hand-pick tomato hornworms and squash bugs in the morning (they're slow before the sun warms them). Neem oil or BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) for a targeted intervention; both are organic-approved. Marigolds and nasturtiums nearby as trap crops. Healthy soil grows healthy plants that mostly outcompete pests on their own.