Once you’ve got a few plants in your garden, it doesn’t take much to keep them alive and help them thrive. There is so little to do that you might find yourself adding more plants just to keep busy.

June Garden Planting

If you planned your garden in March, prepared the ground in April, and planted hearty plants in May, there might not be much to do in June. If you want to take the easy route (and who doesn’t), garden centers have an abundance of plants this time of year ready to be planted directly in the ground. Even if you did none of the other steps this year, it’s easy to buy a couple of tomato plants and create a garden within an hour on a Saturday morning. You’re better off preparing the soil, which doesn’t take long, but in a wild garden you can probably get away with just digging a hole and dropping a plant in it.

Find the gaps. My main focus in this series has been my husbands hops. Two of the three are over a foot tall now. For those, we added a climbing string that reaches to the roof of the house. One of the hops failed to thrive and finally shrivelled. We don’t want to dig it up, since it might do better next year, and we can’t replace it this late in the season. So, we decided to plant around it. After weeding other areas of my garden, I had a few other gaps as well.
Goal: use well the space you have

Buy plants. As of last weekend, we have passed our last likely frost, so it’s time to go garden wild. That seems to have been everyone’s idea, because the garden store was very busy when I visited last weekend. You could have planted seeds indoors to wait out the frost, but the easiest way to plant a garden is to buy a plant and put it in the ground. I did both. I went to the store for tomatoes, but I bought a couple of tomatoes, a last-minute chili pepper, some lettuce, some kale, a calla lily, basil, a few seeds, and a couple of bags of manure. If you are likely to get excited by all of the possibilities and buy more plants than planned, and if you really don’t want to expand your garden that much right now, send someone else to the store.
Goal: buy a plant for the easiest garden

Plant and water. If you’ve prepared the soil, you probably won’t have to do more than dig a plant pot-sized hole. If you didn’t prepare the soil, dig it up, turn it over, add compost or manure if you have it, and then dig a pot-sized hole. Gently tip the plant out of the pot or tear the bottom and edges off a biodegradable pot, and place it in your hole. Put the rest of the dirt back, press it down a bit, water well, and you have a garden.
Goal: Plant your insta-garden

Note on the red caps. Do you see the two red spots in the garden? Those are bottle caps, beneath which are plastic bottles with holes. When I unscrew the caps, I can add water, which waters the roots of my new tomatoes. The cleverness of Pinterest showed me underground watering with plastic bottles. In the desert, it can get very hot in the summer, and soil dries out quickly. My raised bed is partially shaded by my house, but it still gets enough sun to suffer the heat. I haven’t tried this method of watering before, but I thought I would see if it keeps the tomatoes from drooping. It’s an experiment.

Raised bed is saving my plants. Snails. I have a lot of snails. Usually, I ignore them or admire them up close, since they don’t eat my flowers, but this week they have been munching on my new vegetable plants. So, out comes the eggshell moat around plants outside the raised bed, and up comes the chili pepper into the raised bed. I hadn’t planned to put as many plants around the foot of the hops as I ended up planting, but I found that the snails can’t get over the lip of the raised bed, so I’ve created a snail-free zone. Now, I want to put all of my leafy vegetables up high. As it all grows, we may end up with hops, tomatoes, chili peppers, kale, and a lot of lettuce in the same bed.

Total Cost So Far

• 2 more bags of manure compost – $3.00
• 2 tomato plants – $5.50
• 1 chili pepper plant – $2.50
• 4 lettuce plants – $2.00
• 4 kale plants – $2.00
• 1 package lettuce seeds – $1.50
• Total for June – $16.50 (plants)
• Total for May – $34.00 (manure, top soil, peat moss)
• Total for April – $18.00 (hops)
• Total for the year – $68.50

Total Time So Far

This month, except for shopping, it really did take less than 30 minutes to make changes to the raised bed. Planting is quick. Add the time I now spend every day gazing at the splendor of my tiny garden, and I definitely take more than 30 minutes a month, but I’m not counting gazing time here.

• Shopping – 1 hour
• Digging & planting – 30 minutes
• Previous time spent (research, prep, building raised bed, digging) – 9 hours
• Total so far = 10.5 hours

Almost half of that time was spent building a raised bed.

Your June List: Plants

If your plants from May are thriving, just water, weed, and gaze. If you are filling in spaces like I was, buy a plant to fill in.

Our goal is to spend no more than 30 minutes a month. It probably won’t take you even that long, unless you include shopping time. Here is one possible way to spend your 30 minutes this month.

• Shop (20 minutes)
• Dig a hole (2 minutes)
• Plant (5 minutes)
• Water (1 minute)
• Gaze at your creation (2 minutes)

The Rest of the Garden

Did you notice the plants behind our raised bed? A decade ago, my mother planted bulbs that would give her flowers throughout the season. You can see them green in April, tulips and daffodils in May, and now irises in June. The leafy greens you see on the far right are raspberries that we planted 2 years ago, blackberries planted 3 years ago, and grapes planted 4 years ago. They climb up a metal trellis then across a wire along the edge of the roof of our house. The hops will probably grow up to the wire as well. Every thing that you see growing green around the raised bed is generally neglected but thrives anyway. That’s our wild garden.

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You want to garden but you don’t have time. Don’t sweat it. Focus just enough to cultivate one small patch, and you might be surprised how committed you become to helping your garden thrive.

May Garden Preparations

If you already followed March planning steps and April preparation of the ground, you can probably get your gardening done before breakfast on a Saturday.

• Gather materials
• Mix soil
• Plant
• Water

Gather materials. Our gathering began as we investigated mystery bags in our garage and found potting soil, we turned over the year’s compost, and we talked to neighbors to borrow a very tiny amount of paint for the trim on our raised bed planter. We didn’t end up having enough compost, dirt, and other material, so gathering involved going to the gardening store. Sad though it seems to buy dirt, we didn’t have other sources nearby. Our county sells top soil, but they didn’t have any available when we went to buy it. If you are fortunate enough to live near a farm, you might find all of the manure you need for free. We had neither easily available, and our goal is not to fret about the garden this year. So, the store.
Goal: use what you have on hand or can borrow then buy as a last resort

Mix soil. The soil mix you need depends on what you are going to grow. We added a lot of manure, peat moss, compost, and top soil.
Goal: give your garden the best possible start

Plant. If you started seeds last month, it might be time to plant out. We had snow just last week, and we may have snow again until the end of May, so we only plant hardy plants outdoors in early May. Whether you plant out or keep your seedlings in the house or garage a bit longer depends on your zone and your plants. If you look closely at our main photo or skip to the close up below, you will see our hops. They were in pots that we moved indoors during the coldest nights over the past month. Since the planter is sheltered, we think they won’t get more snow. So, we planted them today.
Goal: plant out when the zone and plant align

Water. If you plant out, press down the nice, loamy soil, and water.
Goal: wet well the first day then ignore for a couple of days—if you can

Top Soil Mix

Our chosen spot has grown nothing but the same overgrown bush for 20+ years. The dirt is not impressively rich. Building our raised bed up 16″ over an area 3′ x 6′ meant that we would need a total of 24 cubic feet of soil, so we knew we would need to add to our few inches of dry dirt.

There was so much space to fill in my new raised bed that I decided to try lasagna gardening, with alternating layers of material. After digging out my dry, sad dirt and many, many rocks, then setting aside the dirt in buckets, I put down a layer of pizza boxes for my first lasagna layer. I followed this with dry grass and other dry pieces that I hadn’t cleared out from the garden last fall. Dry was followed by green grass clippings, then dried leaves, and peat moss. This brought us up to only 6″ deep, leaving me with another 16 cubic feet to go.

We didn’t have any more dirt or compost left, so we headed to the store to buy bags of top soil, peat moss, and manure. The manure should be about 40% of the total volume, according to our helpful in-store expert. By the time I added bags of stray potting soil I found in my garage, I think we had about 30% manure. Total cost for all of the bags for 16 cubic feet was $34.

My Lasagna Layers:

Top Soil Mix
Peat Moss
Leaves
Green Grass
Dry Grass and garden litter
Cardboard

Total Cost So Far

• Wood for raised bed – recovered from siding
• Paint to match our house – borrowed from neighbor (since we all use the same paint)
• Compost – homemade
• Soil – $34 for manure, top soil, peat moss

Add this to previous $18 for 3 hops plants for a total of $52 so far.

Total Time So Far

We have not been spending just 30 minutes a month. I think we would have been a lot closer if we had chosen a smaller spot and not built a planter. The planter took most of a Saturday afternoon. My husband and son did a beautiful job building and painting our raised bed to blend in with our house and small yard. Apart from the building, we are spending about 30 minutes every two weeks.

Research and planning – 15 minutes
Ripping out old bushes – 15 minutes
Mapping out the area – 15 minutes
Sorting out materials – 30 minutes
Planting hops in pots – 20 minutes
Building raised bed – 5 hours
Painting raised bed – 30 minutes
Digging bed – 15 minutes
Lasagna layers – 10 minutes
Shopping – 1 hour
Mixing top soil – 15 minutes
Planting – 10 minutes

Total so far = 9 hours

Bonus, several of our neighbors have come by to see our raised bed. The siding matches our houses, and they asked how to make a planter like this for themselves. Maybe they were being polite, but we had nice conversations about our gardens, our dogs sniffed one another, and we had an all-around good time.

Your May List: Planting

How much time you spend this month depends on how well you prepared the ground last month. If you already dug in compost to create soil that is ready for the plants you started last month, you will have plenty of time to gaze at your garden in your allotted 30 minutes. Here is one possible way to spend 30 minutes on your garden in May.

• Gather materials (10 minutes)
• Mix soil (10 minutes)
• Add plant (5 minutes)
• Water (5 minutes)

If you didn’t plan or prepare yet, you still have time. Set aside a Saturday, and you’ll be ready to cultivate your tiny patch through the season. Easy.

The Hops

In the time total, I didn’t count all of the time my husband spent fussing over his hops in their pots over the past month—poking the soil, watering, taking the plants in the house or garage at night, and so on. He has been babying his plants, and they are now 1-3″.

He bought Centennial (pictured), Cascade, and Nugget. The Nugget is the most bitter, so he carefully placed it in the center of the less bitter two in hopes that he will be able to tell them apart when it comes time to pick the hops and brew the beer.

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This is the year we are letting go of our ambitions for a perfect garden and creating a garden that fits into our busy schedule. We are planting wild gardens for busy parents.

April Preparations

If you follow last month’s easy steps, you already started small, shared your plan, and set your goal. This month, we prepare the ground and the seed or plant. If you are just starting now, it’s easy to catch up.

• Prepare the ground
• Prepare the seed or plant

Prepare the ground. Dig the dirt in the area where you are going to plant. How deep you dig depends on the plants. About 6″ average will be fine for most plants. For carrots or potatoes, dig at least 12″. For my volunteer pumpkins, I don’t dig at all. They just grow in the hard dirt next to my sidewalk where my kids carve pumpkins each year. How you prepare the ground depends on what you want the dirt to do.
Goal: dig a little

Add organic matter to the dirt. If you made compost over the past year, its time has come. Dig in about 50/50 dirt and organic matter. If you don’t have enough compost, you can add shredded leaves. If you still don’t have enough, go to a garden store, tell them the condition of your soil, and buy a bag of whatever they recommend. If you have clay, you might need sand (though be careful adding sand). If you have sand, you might need peat moss or topsoil. You’ll pay, sure, but it’s a trade off between money and the time it takes to make enough compost.
Goal: add organic matter

Prepare the seed or plant. When you plant outside depends on your weather and your plant. Look at your projected last frost date. You will probably not plant until after that date, but you can make exceptions if you are willing to put in a little more time to do research. Add the frost date to your plan, if you’ve been taking notes. (Gardeners take notes. If you are more wild than that, fine.) That is your target planting date. If you have to order a plant, place your order now. If you need to grow seedlings, check the seeds to see how quickly they grow. Plan your seed start date so you have a seedling ready on your plant date. It could be time to start the seeds now.
Goal: have the seed or plant ready on the planting date

To check your projected last frost date, you can look at these frost charts for Canada, which give you only one date as a broad estimate, or enter your zip code for this very cool frost chart that gives you the chance of frost by date and spring temperature.

If you have chosen your one tiny patch to nurture for this year, preparing the ground should not take you more than 30 minutes.

What I did.

We prepared the ground the difficult way. Preparing the ground is not such an easy task with my ground.

Shallow. My soil is generally shallow, since my house is built on what used to be a stone quarry. I remember one year when my mother planted carrots that all came out bent at 90 degree angles. (I live in the house I grew up in.) After about 8″, we just have rocks.

Dry. I live in a desert. The soil dries out very quickly and easily, so I don’t want to make it even easier for water to drain.

Depleted. For at least the past 20 years, the spot I chose has had the same old bushes, with no improvements at all in the soil. You can see the stumps that we finally pulled out in last month’s post.

Visible. Because my space is along the sidewalk leading to my front door, I also want it to look nice.

Because of all of this and the fact that my husband is very attached to the success of his hops, I planned a raised bed. A raised bed gives us a lot more flexibility in soil quality and depth.

Ground conclusion: preparing the ground did not take 30 minutes.

I presented my husband with the idea of a raised bed. I showed him instructions and pointed out the pile of painted wood in our backyard, left over from replacing the cedar siding on our house. In my mind, I can see how I would do it in 30 minutes, but his fussery has resulted in approximately 1 hour of planning, 2 hours of him deciding where to put the bed (in a space that is only 2-4″ larger than the bed on each side), and I assume another 2-12 hours of him putting the pieces together and filling them with dirt. As you can see from the photo, he isn’t done. I hear the hammering as I write, so I am confident you will see the result next month.

The expected result is a 6′ x 3′ x 1.5′ cedar-sided raised bed that matches the color of our house, with hops that shade the wall of our kitchen, making that room ever so slightly cooler in the hottest part of summer.

Because the hops we are planting are my husband’s babies, intended to be used for home brewing, he is fussing over them and their bed. That’s fine, of course, as long as he has the time to fuss. In last month’s post I suggested that one of the essentials of your wild garden is to share the gardening or the planning. I shared the idea, and my husband took over. I love this. I just need to give him gentle nudges every once in a while, like researching raised beds and pointing to already painted wood in the yard.

You could also have your children do supervised planting, though that probably takes longer than just doing it yourself. It depends whether your goal is the process or the product.

We prepared for the plant. Three hops rhizomes arrived this week. We need to plant them as quickly as possible, but we also need to avoid frost. We had 8″ of snow last week before the two 80 degree days showed up and melted it away, so it’s warm but we aren’t past the threat of frost quite yet. According to the zip code frost chart above, we still have a 90% chance of more frost. So, part of our gardening this week involves planning to protect the plants on cold nights.

Hops can sometimes grow 12″ a day, though 24″ a week is more usual. We have a space 8-9′ then we will train them to grow out. To give them support as they grow, we are running a wire up from the bed to the wire where our grapes and blackberries grow along the edge of our roof.

If your plant will need support, plan for that as you prepare the space.

Your April List: Prepare the Ground

You can do it! Spend 30 minutes on your garden in April.

• Dig the ground (10 minutes)
• Add organic matter (10 minutes)
• Start the plants (10 minutes)

If you have less than ideal soil to start, you might want to spend extra time preparing the ground, though you don’t have to go so far as to build a raised bed like I did. This is definitely the month to spend a little extra time if you want your garden to perform well.

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It’s time to think about seeds and seedlings. Too busy to think about a garden plan? When you feel guilty that you don’t plant your dream garden or a fully sustainable one-acre farm year after year, scale down your plan. I declare this the year of wild gardens for busy parents.

Every year Naturemom and I get ambitious about planting gardens, hers in south central Ontario and mine in the U.S. mountain west. Every year we plant something, but no year—not one year since we starting writing about it—have we met our ambitious goals. When we talked about what kind of garden posts you might want to read this year, we decided that you might be like we are: too busy to keep up with your big plans.

Somewhere in that gap between the dream self-sufficient garden and going outside once a week for 5 minutes to stare at a patch of brown is the disappointment. Every year I plant something, but I worry and feel a little guilty that it isn’t as much as I had hoped. My garden is wild, going where it wants to go and growing what it wants to grow.

There is too much worry and guilt already, so I propose that we all revise our goals to fit our busy lifestyles. I’m closing that gap by bringing my expectations closer to my capacity.

Wild Gardens for Busy Parents

Once a month I am going to check in with you and suggest actions that will take no more than 30 minutes that will get you closer to that garden you aren’t quite ready to plant.

Here are some simple rules:

• Start small
• Share planning
• Have a goal in mind

Start small. If you have tried and not quite reached your gardening goals in the past, I want you to have a guaranteed win this year. So, start with a commitment no bigger than you can keep. I really do want to be an urban farmer, but I have to be honest about the time I’m willing and able to spend. I stare out the window at my garden a lot (since I can see it from my work space), but I don’t actually go out and get dirty very often. Trying to be realistic about how I don’t tend my garden, I think 30 minutes a month is realistic—yes, probably pathetic, but realistic.
Goal: 30 minutes a month

Share your plan. I want you to share not just in the sense of telling others about your plans but in sharing responsibility for the plans and the planning. When I plan a garden alone then just tell my husband what to do on the weekends, he isn’t quite motivated. You can see the problem: he doesn’t share my vision for a lush paradise. Make sure that you share not just the to-do list but the decisions about what you will do. Share with husband, kids, or neighbor. Just find someone who also cares about your micro garden patch and stay accountable to them.
Goal: share your garden

Have a goal in mind. Don’t go shopping for seeds or digging in the dirt until you know your intentions. My 30-minute plan doesn’t have room for a dozen types of seedlings in multiple raised beds. I figure I can plant one new plant a year and keep it alive along with previous years’ plants. Since I’m keeping my goal very small, I want a plant that is an investment.
Goal: add one new plant

This is what I did.

I’m starting small. I have one bare spot where I recently started (but didn’t quite finish) ripping out an ugly bush next to my front door. This leaves the entrance to my house less than inviting. It was easy to decide where to focus.

I shared the planning. I told my husband I was finally tired of the bare patch, and he said he might have an idea. He has been brewing his own beer, and he is interested in growing his own hops as well. His brew store sent him an offer on hops the very week I mentioned the bare ground. In busy gardener style, we stared at the bare spot together and decided hops could climb up the wire ladder we made for our grapes. We’re taking advantage of our simple infrastructure.

We have a goal in mind. We specifically did not want plants that need a lot of tending, but I suspect my husband will be a doting farmer. He wants to brew these hops, so he’s invested in helping them survive—and thrive.

Total time so far, maybe 1 minute deciding on the spot, 2 minutes talking about it, and another 2 minutes ordering the hops plants at the beer store. Five minutes. That leaves about 25 minutes to finish clearing out the bush, dig in compost, and still keep it all under 30 minutes for the month.

Total cost so far: $18 for 3 hops plants to arrive next month.

Hops join the plants I’ve managed to keep alive from previous years: grapes, blackberries, fennel, a volunteer pumpkin, and a thriving bed of mint. That’s not so bad. That sounds almost like a garden.

Your March List: Find the Spot

You can do it! Spend 30 minutes on your garden in March.

• Find your spot (2 minutes)
• Plan planting (3 minutes)
• Prepare the ground (15 minutes)
• Start the plants (order the seeds or whatever it takes to put planting in motion) (10 minutes)

If you are already doing better than I am, planting a lush, diverse garden every year, I’m truly happy for you. I hope to get there soon, but I’m not there yet. This is where I will start, and maybe hearing about your garden will inspire me to up my game to 60 minutes a month or even commit to a tomato.

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It already feels a bit nippy in the mornings, and it’s time to pay attention to the garden. Even when I don’t manage to grow much food in my garden, I still keep feeding my compost pile because I feel better knowing I’m reusing kitchen waste. I am ambitious about my garden, but I just get busy. Maybe you are the same way. Even if all you are going to do is ignore your compost all winter (my personal method), just take some time, maybe 30 minutes, to tend to your bin before you lose it under a layer of snow.

Spread it around. If you worked your compost enough during the year that it is dark brown and earthy smelling, spread it on the garden. You will dig it in come Spring. If you do spread your compost, start a new pile.

Turn the pile. You probably add more kitchen waste (nitrogen rich green material) for a while then more sticks, leaves, and paper (carbon rich brown material) for a while. Turning the pile evens out the mix.

Give it a sniff. Does it smell earthy or is it more like ammonia? If you smell ammonia, you probably have an abundance of green, kitchen waste. You need more brown material, like dried leaves. Fortunately (or unfortunately), you probably have an abundance of leaves right now. Layer the leaves and other materials keep a good mix. You need more brown than green material, probably 2/3 brown to 1/3 green, but this really depends on the specific ingredients in your compost pile. If you add too much brown material, your compost will take longer to break down. It will still break down, just more slowly. Understanding the right balance between green and brown is one of those skills you will develop over time.

Spread it, turn it, sniff it. Done. You are ready for winter. My lazy method of composting fits even the busiest schedule.

Need more help?

If you are up for the challenge of composting all winter, check out the Compost Guy’s Winter Composting information. He’s in southern Ontario, but he gives tips for keeping your compost active further north as well.

If you need Composting Basics for the Beginner Gardener, read our earlier post.

Image © Ben Goode | Dreamstime.com.

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Sure, you are just planning your garden or maybe planting seeds now, but you can also visualize and prepare for the results of your gardening. What are you going to do when you are overwhelmed with your harvest?

Most of my recent abundance has come in the form of mint. I have chocolate mint, lemon mint, peppermint, and nice, plain mint. Every year it gets stronger and pushes out the other herbs. Every year I get more mint than the last—more mint of a kind of peppery, chocolaty, lemon flavor. We put mint in salads, in salsa, in meals, in tea. We can’t even come close to eating all of the mint. So, we preserve it. Like my mother, I reach for mint at the first suggestion of stomach upsets, so a lot of our mint becomes tea. Knowing we will use it for tea, we dry our mint. We have enough mint tea for a year or more packed into big, beautiful mason jars.

If you are fortunate, your harvest will be plentiful. Prepare now so that good food does not go to waste.

Eat it
Pick food as it ripens, and eat it as you go.

Prepare: You don’t really need to plan for eating as you go other than choosing your crops carefully. Make sure you like them. The year I planted row after row of arugula, I was very sad. I had a refrigerator full of greens that smelled like stinky feet, and I could not force myself to eat them.

Serve it
Throw a harvest party. Sure, that’s what Thanksgiving is, but most of our food ripens long before Thanksgiving. Throw a party with fresh raspberries in late June, fresh corn in July, and fresh everything in August.

Prepare: Don’t plan your family vacation during the prime two weeks for harvesting fresh food. Block out the best party times now and talk them up with friends and family. Ask now if they want to come stay for the weekend in late summer so they will definitely be available.

Give it away
Where I grew up, the harvest season joke was playing ding-dong-ditch and leaving giant zucchini on neighbors’ doorsteps. No one I knew ever managed to eat all of their zucchini as they picked it, and no one ever visited my mother in the summer without taking away a few vegetables. I think that sharing food is one of the best parts of harvest.

Prepare: Ask your friends and neighbors what they are planting. Plant something different. Anticipate the trade or giveaway. If you don’t know your neighbors, you have relationships to cultivate.

Preserve it
If you garden, chances are you will end up with more of some food than you can handle while fresh. Dry it, freeze it, pickle it, ferment it, bottle it, or turn it into jelly. The best ways to preserve food depend on what you plant and how you eat.

Prepare: Now is the time to learn to preserve food when the only other thing you have to do is watch your seedlings grow. Once you are faced with a bushel of tomatoes, it’s too late to do more than fumble around with a how-to book. If you want to eat from the bountiful harvest of your own garden year round, you need to understand how you want to use it. Do you want to freeze tomato soup that is ready to heat and eat? Do you want to make salsa with your tomatoes, onions, and peppers, ready to pour out of the jar? Do you want homemade ketchup? How about sun-dried tomatoes? Do you want to put whole tomatoes in jars so you can decide later how best to use them? Let your future use of the food determine how you preserve it. Then, start asking around. Can your mother or grandmother teach you to preserve food? Is there a class at the local college or agricultural university extension? Maybe you can even learn from a book if you give yourself enough time. Choose a method, and set out to become competent.

And, visualize your future abundance as you watch your seedlings grow.

Image © Plus69 | Dreamstime.com

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Are you ready to jump in and plant a garden in your backyard? If you have the space to move beyond an indoor garden or an outside vertical garden, a square foot garden is an ideal way for a beginning gardener to get started on the gardening adventure.

A square foot garden divides a small space into one foot squares with only one type of plant in each square. Larger plants, like tomatoes, are planted just one to a square, while smaller plants, like carrots, are planted with many (16) to a square. The method is very efficient in use of seeds, use of space, and use of water. Because it is so easy to understand and so encouraging, this method works well for gardeners who are intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea of growing their own food.

The space needed can be quite small, but the method is scalable by just repeating the 3′ x 3′ or 4′ x 4′ squares separated by spaces big enough to walk through and to stand while you tend your garden. Your squares can be dug into the ground or planted in a raised bed frame. (The official guidelines put the garden in a frame, but you can adapt the method.) The grid lines between each square foot section can be made with string or something more permanent, like strips from old blinds. You have a lot of choices within the basic guidelines for square foot gardening.

Best of all, you can start today. Draw a 3×3 grid, add dots to represent your crops (1, 4, 9, or 16, depending on plant size), then start building the frame. You can begin in any season.

Square Foot Gardening Resources

• All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholemew. This is the square foot gardening bible.
• Square Foot Gardening Foundation. This foundation, started by the Square Foot Gardening author, aims “to end world hunger by reaching out to families and teaching them how to grow healthy food for their daily meals.”
• “How to Build a Square Foot Garden,” Frugal Dad. Using the method outlined by Mel Bartholemew, this gardener added a drip irrigation system. Photos and detailed descriptions.
• My Square Foot Garden. If you are wondering how to garden for your climate, look for planting plans from many different gardeners. The plans are so simple to create and so inspiring to look at.

Image © Claus Mikosch | Dreamstime.com

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As you are planning your garden, think about not just food for humans but food for all of the creatures that you want to spend time in your garden. Even a small container garden on your porch can include a few flowering plants that will attract bees or even hummingbirds.

Focus on native plants. Local plants will be more attractive to your local bees. Look at this list of California bee-friendly plants by season for suggestions, but be sure to check with local gardeners or garden centers for the plants that will work best in your area.

Plant a variety. Gardens with a diversity of flowers are more attractive to bees. Be sure that your garden flowers throughout the season.

Think beyond flowers. The plants we think of as flowers aren’t the only plants the produce flowers. Many herbs have bee-friendly flowers. Even dandelions produce flowers that some bees like. You can let the bees have the flowers then get rid of the weeds before they go to seed.

Provide a drinking foundation. Bees are small, so you don’t need to provide more than just a jar lid of water for them. If you have a bird bath, they’ll stop by.

Go mulch-less. Mulch keeps moisture in the soil, but some bees nest in the ground. Too much mulch means no access to the soil. You don’t need to go completely mulch-less. Just keep in mind that it’s OK to let some of the soil go naked.

Or, create a bee nest. Find out about the bees in your area. Are they ground-nesting? If so, clear the ground. Are they cavity-nesting or wood-nesting? If so, add a small log or some other piece of wood with 1/4″ wide, 4″ long holes. The Xerces Society has more information on creating bee nests.

And, a bee shelter. Bees will stay in your garden if they can shelter from the weather. Shelter can be as simple as a densely planted area.

While you are creating a garden friendly for tiny creatures, consider planting for hummingbirds as well. There are only a few types of hummingbirds in Canada, but we might as well welcome them. Both bees and hummingbirds look for nectar plants, and wild plants produce more nectar than hybrids. Yet again, choosing native trees, vines, or flowers will work better than exotic species in the long run as you create a bee-friendly and hummingbird-friendly garden.

With the vanishing of the bees, every bee-friendly garden helps.

Image © Anthony Aneese Totah Jr | Dreamstime.com

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When you don’t have a lot of space for a garden, you can still build up rather than out. Vertical gardens and living walls can be practical and decorative.

You may have noticed that we’ve been spending a lot of time on Pinterest lately. One of my favorite boards is Edible Gardening. I find the walls of green very intriguing, so I’ve been following the pins back to their sources. I want to share the resources I’ve been finding on vertical gardening.

A Collection of Vertical Gardening Tips
This is a nice introduction, with a few informational resources. The greatest part of this post is the photo of a vegetable wall garden. Look at the wall of green with tomatoes and squash hanging off of it. That is a beautiful vegetable garden.

DIY Project Instructions
Use a pallet to create a quick garden to mount on the wall. Lots of photos.

Raised Bed Kit
This raised bed stacks vertically to give all of the plants plenty of light. This is a kit, but you might be able to use the photo to inspire your own garden.

Indoor Living Walls
These fabric planters are made from recycled plastic bottles. Be sure to look through all of their gallery of vertical garden photos.

Amazing Living Walls
The most amazing vertical gardens are whole walls of buildings, inside and out, created by botanist Patrick Blanc. His own website is difficult to navigate, but this article on his work has several awe inspiring photos.

If you wonder whether you can do it, you can! Start inside or outside; start with a pallet or a pocket; just start. With a living wall, you can create a beautiful environment for your family despise having little space for a garden.

Image © Valeria Sangiovanni | Dreamstime.com

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I know from Facebook comments on our garden planning post that there are at least a few of you who are really anxious to start gardening. I’m here to tell you that you can start right now. Plant a simple garden in your kitchen to give yourself year-round fresh ingredients for your meals.

A kitchen garden is generally the area of your outdoor garden dedicated to growing herbs and vegetables. Yes, do that, too, but I’m suggesting that you actually start gardening indoors.

You could keep this as simple as a few potted herbs on the window sill or as complicated as taking over a portion of your house with a structured area complete with grow lights. From simple to complex, here are a few ideas where you might start.

Herb Pots on the Window Sills
Scope out window sills to see how much sunny space you actually have. You will need at least five hours of sunlight a day to grow herbs well. Start with just 1-2 pots of the herbs you use or like the most. A lot of fresh food aisles in the grocery stores have herbs for sale in pots, but where is the fun in that? Buy soil-less potting mix or make your own from peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite. (Bringing in soil from outdoors could mean bring in creatures you don’t want inside.) Especially with children, growing from seed gives you more of the experience of gardening that is likely to lead you toward a bigger garden.

Fill Your Window with Green
If you want to grow more than just a pot of herbs, you could build your own hydroponic window farm with a few recycled materials and a pump. This is a great way to grow lettuce and other greens.

Make Your Garden a Feature
If you are ready to embrace your gardening, why not make it a feature in your decor. If you move your garden away from the window, you will need grow lights. You can buy shelves with lights built in or get creative with the way you arrange the plants. Put your favorite plant at about nose height in an area you walk by frequently. Imagine yourself rubbing the sage or peppermint leaves for a little aromatic boost during your day. If you have curious toddlers, put the plants high enough that you won’t find them tipped out onto the floor.

Serious Indoor Gardening
Herbs and lettuce are easy, but what about vegetables? You can grow some vegetables indoors. Tomatoes, radishes, and beans can all be grown in pots, but you can also get very serious about your indoor gardening with a deep and wide shelving system complete with lights. These look similar to cafeteria tray holders, and you could build your own system from cafeteria shelving. When you are growing indoors, it’s a challenge to give your vegetables enough room for the roots. If you buy or build shelves, an adjustable system is ideal to accommodate large and small plants.

When your kitchen begins to look like a greenhouse, it might be time to actually build a greenhouse. For now, for the anxious late-winter gardener, survey the kitchenscape to see where you can plant your little patch of green.

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