The Easiest Vegetable Garden Ever, Part 3: Watering, Weeding, and Fertilizing

(Reposted from last year.)
(Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.)

So, you built (or bought) some great soil, and you chose what to grow and planted it. Now what? Maintenance! If you're looking for a good harvest, you have to care for your garden consistently. Plants are like us: they need water and food. Unlike us, though, they can't run away when another plant is invading their personal space and sucking up resources, so it's your job to give them some room by removing weeds.

The number one rule of tending a garden is this: The best thing you can do for your garden is to look at it every single day. You don't have to do much. You don't have to weed or water every day. You just have to come, do a few little things, and pay attention to what's going on. Are there bugs chewing on the leaves? Are there weeds choking them? Are they looking wilted (too little water or too much), or yellow (lack of nutrients)? Paying attention to these little details is key. Remember, we're going for easy here. Easy is going out for five minutes every morning, pulling a couple weeds, pinching a few bugs, and pouring a gallon of water onto the roots of the biggest plants. Difficult is putting these chores off until the weekend and trying to do everything at once. Break it down into tiny steps and you'll do better.

Tips for watering:

1. A key rule here is that less frequent, deep waterings are much better than more frequent, shallow waterings. If you water every day, it teaches the plants to rely on that moisture, so they'll grow shallow roots— and if you miss a day, the roots will be fried by the hot top layer of soil. But if you water them deeply, say twice a week, the roots will be forced down into the soil, searching for moisture in the cooler soil. This gives them a stronger root system and makes them more tolerant of drought. 

(If you're growing food in pots, you'll definitely have to water more frequently, but the basic principle is the same.)

2. Always water the roots, not the leaves. Most plants prefer to have dry leaves, because wet leaves encourage fungal diseases. Water the ground around the plant: that's where they soak up moisture, anyway.

One of my fellow WWOOFers working in the
garden near Port Townsend, Washington

3. If you're watering and water starts to puddle on top of the soil, it means you're going too fast, so take a break and let it soak in before you continue— otherwise, you'll lose a lot of water to evaporation.

4. A drip-irrigation system can be a wonderful solution to the watering problem. I haven't personally used them, but they are an amazing invention, and they use significantly less water than overhead watering. Many models are available online or at garden centers.

5. The best time to water is right after sunset— or, when the weather is very humid, early in the morning. That way, you don't lose much water to evaporation in the sun.

6. Bare soil is much more vulnerable to moisture loss, so as soon as your seedlings come up (or right away, if you bought seedlings at the nursery), cover all bare soil with mulch. Woody mulch is usually too chunky for vegetable gardens, so try straw, shredded leaves, grass clippings (as long as there are no seeds in it) or even torn-up green plants.

Tips for weeding:

Why are weeds a big deal? They take nutrients from your plants and often grow taller than what you're growing, crowding out sunlight and competing for water and fertilizer. You want to steer clear of competition in the garden because most garden plants are pretty delicate compared to weeds.

1. The best way to deal with weeds is to prevent them in the first place. Again, mulch to the rescue! The moment your seedlings are big enough to be nested in straw, shredded leaves, etc., cover all the bare earth with mulch. Nature hates bare ground, and weeds are aggressive annuals that sprout up to monopolize the unnatural vacuum of uncovered earth. Mulching will suppress them.

2. I prefer to weed a little bit at a time. If you go out every day and pull a couple weeds, you'll likely stay ahead of them: but if you wait for a long time, they get out of hand quickly. Aim to weed for just five minutes a day, and it'll be less work overall.

3. Get weeds before they go to seed. If you're trying to triage a big weeding project, look for the weeds that are about to form seedheads and pull those first: you don't want them spreading!

4. Use weeds as mulch. If the weed hasn't gone to seed and isn't a creeping vine, throw it next to your plants as mulch/slow-release fertilizer (see below).

Tasty weeds! (young dandelion greens)

5. Learn to identify edible weeds. You might be growing volunteer vegetables without even knowing it! Dandelions, violets, lambsquarters, chickweed, and purslane are all common garden weeds that are also delicious.

Tips for fertilizing:

1. The best way to keep your plants fertilized and happy is to work on building the soil. Soil needs much more than just nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous (the three nutrients in commercial blends): it needs organic material, a variety of microbial life, micronutrients, and more. To build soil, take a cue from the forest, which creates rich soil by dropping leaves every fall. Mulch with both brown and green materials to encourage earthworms. If you find dandelions growing in the garden, pick off the outer leaves and tuck them around plants: they have deep taproots that pull nutrients up from the subsoil, so their leaves are great slow-release fertilizer. 

2. Start a compost pile. Compost is great as both mulch and fertilizer.

3. For direct fertilizer to give a boost to poor soil, try liquid gold. What is it, you ask? It's pee. Sound crazy? That's only because modern humans are taught to be far removed from their bodily processes, and flush away this incredibly rich fertilizer because we think it's gross. But properly handled (gathered in small amounts and then diluted 20:1 in water and sprinkled on the soil, not the plants themselves), pee is both safe and effective, giving an incredible boost to your garden. Plus, it's free! Read more here.

4. Fertilizer bought at the store is fine, too. No one is the organic police here. If you're growing your own food, you're still coming out ahead, so do what you need to do!

That's all I can think of for now! If you have any other questions, please drop them in the comments. Happy gardening!

~~~

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!