Tips and Techniques
Edible gardens are a world unto themselves in the landscape. There are many strategies unique to vegetable gardens that extend growing times, keep the garden healthy, and maximize crop yields. Here's a cheat sheet of common edible garden lingo and strategies.
Succession garden
Think of a succession garden as a master plan for the garden from season to season. For instance, in June, you can plan to clear some spring vegetables and plant summer crops. Or you can sow and transplant alongside waning spring vegetables with a view to next season's produce.
Succession planting
The primary purpose of succession planting is to provide continuous crop output within the season by sowing seed of a given crop at 1 to 2 week intervals. For instance, you can stagger corn production by making a subsequent planting when the first is 1 to 2 inches tall. Beans, turnips, seasonal lettuce, and beets are well-suited to this practice.
Companion planting
Companion plants like aromatic herbs or flowers are purported to repel pests in the vegetable garden. Although there is a lack of science behind companion planting, growing a wide variety of pollinator-friendly herbs alongside edible crops does help attract beneficial insects and natural enemies.
Intercropping
This involves planting early maturing crops between rows of late maturing crops to increase production in a small area. For example, beans, radishes, green onions, or seasonal leaf lettuce may be planted between rows of tomatoes, peppers or corn. The quicker-maturing plants will be harvested before the others become large.
Crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of changing the location of edible crops from year to year. Rotating crops in the garden enhances soil fertility and lowers risk of pests and diseases. Backyard gardeners with limited space should at least avoid planting exactly the same crop or crops from the same plant family year after year in the same part of the garden. For example, do not follow melons with cucumbers or squash, and do not plant peppers, eggplant, or potatoes where tomatoes grew the year before.
Cold frames
Like mini-greenhouses, cold frames are structures that create a stable environment for frost-tender seedlings by protecting them from big temperature swings. Keeping delicate seedlings in cold frames helps them thrive until winter temperatures stabilize. Cold frames also work to protect seedlings from pests, including birds, cutworms, earwigs, slugs, and snails. Cold frames are easy to assemble and can be made from inexpensive or recycled materials. Because they are better acclimated from the outset, plants that start life in cold frames often do not experience the transplant shock that many plants face. Among the most transplant-vulnerable seedlings are basil, beans, cabbage-family plants, lettuce and peas.
To make a standalone cold frame:
• Place an old window pane or a rigid sheet of plastic on top of a four-sided box filled with soil.
• Be sure that the box receives plenty of sunlight.
• The box can be made out of any material that holds the soil in place, including wood, straw bales, metal, cinder block, or brick.
• If you want to reuse your cold frame every winter, consider adding a hinge to one side so you can easily open and close it.
Floating row covers
Floating row cover is a white, lightweight, synthetic fabric with a gauze-like appearance. Air, sunlight, and water can penetrate the material. Vegetable gardeners drape it over and enclose individual plants or groups of plants and secure it to the ground with pins, bricks, rocks, soil, etc. The cover “floats” directly on top of the growing crop. Some gardeners install simple frames to support floating row covers, creating a dome effect. Row covers are often used in the winter to protect plants from frost, and in summer to provide some shade.
Floating row covers provide many benefits:
• Provides frost protection in early spring and late fall/early winter
• Encourages faster plant growth due to increased temperature and humidity under the cover
• Prevents insects, deer, birds, and other pests from eating your plants
• Inexpensive
• Reusable: can be re-used for two to three years
BACK TO EDIBLES
> What Edible Gardens Need
> Best Choices for Marin
> How to Prepare
> How to Plant
> Edibles in Containers
> Planting Calendar
> Grow & Care Sheets for Vegetables, Herbs & Fruits
> Tips & Techniques
> How to Maintain
> Fruit Trees
> Top 20 Edible Garden Problems
> Cover Crops & Soil Enhancements in the Off-season
> Conserving Water
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Visit our EDIBLE DEMO GARDEN at IVC Organic Farm & Garden
April 2025: The Joys of Selecting and Planting Seeds
It’s hard to find a gardener who doesn’t love checking out new seed varieties and anticipating the abundant and tasty harvest they promise. The photos and descriptions are tantalizing and the names intriguing. Who wouldn’t be curious about a pumpkin variety called ‘Abominable’, a pepper named ‘Frodo’, or a tomato tagged ‘Dancing with Smurfs’? With so many seed varieties to select from, narrowing down the choices can be challenging. In January this year, a team of EDG volunteers had a lot of fun picking out varieties for our spring and summer crops.
How Seeds are Selected
Seed selection starts with a garden plan, taking into consideration the space available for each type of crop. Once decisions are made about which crops to plant and where to plant them, choosing the right varieties becomes the focus. The Demo Garden is the perfect place to try out some of those new and different seed options while continuing to plant those varieties that have proven to be reliable. Planting more than one variety of each crop makes it possible to directly compare them in terms of growth and productivity.
Time to maturity is important in determining which summer crop varieties to plant. The soil must be consistently warm (over 55 degrees) for the time specified in the variety description to produce a crop. The climate in the Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden where the Edible Demo Garden is located provides a long enough growing time for most summer crops. However, varieties requiring more than 120 days to maturity may not achieve full production before the weather turns cool.
Seeds planted in the Edible Demo Garden must be organic certified. Organic seeds are from plants grown in compliance with federal standards which exclude the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and genetically modified technologies. Seed choices for the Demo Garden are often based on the descriptions provided by organic seed companies and it’s up to the volunteers to determine which varieties seem well suited for the garden conditions and promise the best taste.
Planting the Seeds
On February 27th, the new MMG training class got hand-on practice in seed starting. Seeds are planted in a starting soil mix in flats of cells with 2 or 3 seeds per cell. Supervised by EDG volunteers, the trainees planted 60 cells of cucumbers (‘Armenian’, ‘Crystal Apple’, ‘Jin Yang’ and ‘Early Fortune’) and 90 cells of sweet peppers (‘Pusztagold’ and ‘Bacskai Feher’), along with 30 cells of green onions and 72 cells of lettuce. The class will have the chance to take some of the cucumber and pepper starts home to plant in their own gardens where they can assess how well they grow in our different microclimates. The planted seeds are now germinating in the greenhouse.
Starting plants in the greenhouse gives them an advantage and allows better timing for optimum crop production. They are not ready for transplanting outside until they have developed at least one set of true leaves. The first set of leaves to appear are embryonic leaves called cotyledons. They look different from the plant’s typical foliage. True leaves are the more recognizable leaves that develop above the cotyledons. The time required for seedlings to be ready for transplanting varies. Beans can be ready in 3 to 4 weeks while peppers can take more than 8 weeks.
New Varieties in the Demo Garden
EDG volunteers look forward to growing the new seed varieties they have selected for the summer. The seeds have been ordered but not all have been planted. ‘Dancing with Smurfs’, an indigo-colored cherry tomato, along with ‘Altai Orange’ and ‘Woodstock’ are among the new tomato varieties. Two new melon varieties, ‘Sweet Freckles’ and ‘Farthest North Galia’ will be tried in the garden. The ‘Pusztagold’, and ‘Bacskai Feher’ peppers, now germinating in the greenhouse, are small, sweet Hungarian type peppers. Last summer’s pepper crop included an overabundance of hot peppers, so it’s sweet peppers in demand this year.
Starting with seeds is rewarding. There is the pleasure of choosing seeds from the many available varieties and the joy of nurturing them and watching them grow into tiny plants. It’s even better when the veggies and fruits turn out to be as yummy as the seed descriptions promise.
Click here for more information on planting from seeds.
