The Easiest Vegetable Garden Ever, Part One: Dirt

Finished compost for top-dressing the bed in our front yard

(Reposted from 2019)

Did you know that autumn in the Midwest is the perfect time to start a vegetable garden? If you've ever wanted to try growing your own tomatoes, turnips, or taco toppings, now is the best time to start!

But before you go running out to buy seeds, here this caveat: the first step in growing a garden isn't planting seeds. This is the number one reason people's gardens (including mine this summer!) fail: focusing on the seeds rather than the soil. If you want to grow vegetables, the first thing you have to do is cultivate some rich, black, beautiful soil— which will hold water and nutrients, as well as becoming home to literally billions of microorganisms that work in harmony with your plants. 

Wood chips are also good, but leaves will break down more quickly

In the Midwest, the best time to soil-build is autumn. Two words: fallen leaves. They are everywhere. People pay to have them taken off their property. If you're planning to put them on the curb, take them back! Your future garden will thank you. (I didn't realize how much I took fallen leaves for granted until we tried to garden in a mostly coniferous environment this summer.)

So without further ado, here are five steps you can take today to start a garden that will grow delicious produce next year. And best of all, all the materials are free!

1. Figure out where you want the garden to go. Most vegetables are annuals, which are plants that have adapted to growing in sunny locations, so you need as much sun as you possibly can. Unfortunately, if you haven't been paying attention to the patterns of sunlight and shade in your yard over the year, the angle of the sun won't give you a very accurate reading right now (not to mention any deciduous trees won't be casting shade at the moment). However, make your best guess. If you're wrong and it gets more shade than you think, it'll be a learning experience. Most vegetables are happiest with six or more hours of sun. (Hint: Oftentimes the area with the most sun is the front yard! Challenge the status quo and plant some veggies!) Mark out where you want the garden to go and clear any obstacles. If the grass is tall, cut it first and leave the clippings.

2. Gather some cardboard. Scrounge up enough cardboard to cover the garden site (most grocery stores are fine with you taking their boxes) and lay it down, overlapping the edges. This will provide a weed barrier, which is essential especially if you are trying to garden over grass. 

I mean, you don't have to get quite this carried away, but you could.

3. Dump a pile of leaves on the garden site. Make as thick a layer as possible— a foot-thick layer would not be too much. If you want to get fancy, string some wire or put some boards or cinderblocks along the sides to contain the pile, but you can also just let it spill out into the grass a bit. Water the leaves thoroughly to help them stay put when autumn winds blow. 

4. Start saving your kitchen scraps for the garden. Keep a bucket with a lid in your kitchen, and throw in veggie bits, coffee grounds, fruit peels, and eggshells (but no meat, dairy, or oil). When the bucket is full, take it out to the garden, pull back a layer of the leaves, and stash the slimy greens underneath them. Move systematically through the garden over the next couple months, putting the scraps in a different place each time. The leaves should prevent the scraps from smelling; if not, just add more leaves. A couple months before you are planning to plant (in St. Louis, probably January or February), stop adding scraps to the garden, so that everything has time to break down before you put seeds or seedlings in it.

5. Wait. That's all you have to do for now! The leaves and veggie scraps will invite all sorts of critters and microbes to migrate to your garden site, and they'll do the hard work of soil-building. The winter rain and snow will help break down the leaves, too. Now curl up with your hot cocoa and dream of spring!

Want to read ahead?
Part Two: What to Grow

Part Three: Watering, Weeding, and Fertilizing

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P.S. If you want an awesome beginner's book that covers the basics in more depth, see if your library has The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food: Step-by-Step Vegetable Gardening for Everyone by Joseph Tychonievich and Liz Anna Kozik. You won't be disappointed!