Unless you plan to grow some lamb’s lettuce, the gardening season is finally over (too soon, though). However, I’ve got some tips for you that are just the right thing if you

a) are feeling too active on a Saturday afternoon and want to get your hands dirty and

b) want to do something good for your vegetable garden so the next season will be even better than this.

When you’ve grown a lot of vegetables during the summer, your garden will be quite low on important nutrients. The essence of the following How-To is to provide enough nutrients from compost to your soil and to make sure that it mixes perfectly with your existing soil.

So lets get started!

Step 1: Break up the ground!

Use a spade to  break up the firm soil. Do not chop up the large  earth sods (they’ll be useful in the process). So, simply turn them around and (if possible) let columns open.

It’s no problem if individual weeds remain in the soil.

Step 2: Time to empty your compost!

Open your compost bin and sieve it’s ingredients using a coarse grid. It may seem like a lot of unnecessary work, but this process will result in extremely rich and fertile soil (compost) – you’ll reap the results of your efforts during next year’s harvest!

The remains of your sieving efforts (single branches etc.) should be put back into the compost and covered with a bit of soil to encourage the compostation (otherwise, it will simply dry out).

This grid (on the photo) is simply perfect for sieving the compost ingredients.

This is what the sieved compost looks like (the small hill on the right side):

Step 3: Cover the sods with compost soil!

You should now disperse the soil over the original soil you’ve broken up in step one. If you don’t have compost, you can use bought soil as well. Ask for organic compost in your local garden center or in tree nurserys etc.

During winter, snow and rain will flush the nutrients from the fresh compost soil into the coarse clumps in your vegetable bed.

This picture shows one of my vegetable beds covered with compost soil (on the right side) and unprepared (on the left). The only thing that remains to be done is to rake the soil in spring – you’ll have perfect, soft earth.

Hey guys, I’m Felix, the new co-author of best-gardening-tips.com. I really appreciate it that I can collaborate with Marc on this website, as he has some great ideas about the way best-gardening-tips should develop and puts enormous effort into it. I hope you will enjoy the articles I will write. If any of you has suggestions about what kind of article would be helpful, just write a comment and I’ll see if I can help you. Today I’m going to write about beans, a really basic but rewarding vegetable for your garden!

Beans are just a great vegetable you can grow easily in your own garden. I like growing beans especially for the difference they make to your garden when they’re growing vertically on poles, and of course they’re also versatile in the kitchen: You can use them pre-boiled and cold in salads, fried in vegetable pans or cooked with risotto, just to mention a few methods.

There is, of course, a great variety of beans. The most important difference is whether they’re growing in bushes and need no extra frame or pole varieties, which need a wooden pole, a rope or a neighboring plant for support. Another main difference is between snap beans (where the whole pod can be consumed while the “true” bean is not yet wholly developed and shell beans, where only the beans are consumed. I would recommend you to sow 2-3 different types when you’re planting beans for the first time (provided you have enough space), so you can choose what best suits your taste for the next year.

Preferable conditions for beans

Sun and watering: Beans should have full sun and warmth; they need a lot of water (though not constant wetness!). Don’t plant them in the shadow of trees. Pay attention to the fact that pole beans will take sunshine away from smaller surrounding plants. If you live in a colder climate, you may prefer fava beans, which thrive well in cool weather.
Try not to plant beans too early in the year – beans don’t take that long, so it will be sufficient if you plant them later (the second half of may or one week after the last frost in your area is good).

Soil: Regular acidic soil of between 6 and 6,5 pH is perfect for beans. I recommend adding mulch on top of the soil to retain moisture, hindering weed growth and keeping soil temperatures on an appropriate level (high heat can cause problems with beans).

Soil nutrition: Beans should be planted in a fertile soil rich in the macro-nutrients. Before planting, prepare the soil by digging it over and adding organic fertilizer (such as manure or compost). Pole beans grow quite high and go on producing fruits for some
time, so it’s a good idea to add compost from your compost pile from time to time.

Sowing

While you can of course plant the beans inside and later transplant them into your garden, I don’t think that’s necessary – beans grow fast enough. Plant them in the upper layers of the soil (about one inch deep) with sufficient distance to one another (about 6 to ten inches). If you plant rows, calculate enough distance so you can still move between the
rows.
It’s useful to plant more beans than you will grow in the end and then to remove the smaller, less robust ones (however, don’t sow too many – beans have a germination rate of about 70%).

Support for pole beans: With pole beans, pay attention to use poles that are long enough (about 7 feet), as beans can get quite large, and sufficiently stable. Instead of wood or iron poles, you can also stretch wires over one row of beans and connect them vertically with simple ropes.

Harvest

Depending on the type, beans take about two beans to three and a half to grow edible fruits. Pay attention to harvesting snap beans early enough, when they’re still young and tender. Pole beans provide beans in an ongoing process, so harvest whenever the pods are in the right condition. Typical green snap beans are harvested while the beans are about to bulge while shell beans such as kidneys are harvested when the seeds are wholly developed and dry.
One common rule is that “the more you pick, the more they produce”, so don’t be shy about picking the pods.

Pests

I’ve found that slugs are a big problem. One solution (besides pesticide) is to plant alliums such as garlic or shallot, which repel slugs, next to your bean row. If fungal diseases like leaf spot come about, try to keep the plants less moist. Beans need a lot of water, but excess moisture can lead to fungal disease. You can circumvent this by watering during daytime instead of in the evening so the soil dries more quickly (this is also advantageous if you have problems with slugs!).

Rotation and combination advice

Altering the location from bean plantings from year to year to avoid diseases. There are also some nice combinations of beans with other vegetable plants that are helpful for nutrient use and mutual support:

Beans, corn and squash: This combination is called “The native American three sisters”. You can find a good article on reneesgarden.com. The beans use corn plants as a growing support, so you don’t have to use poles.
http://www.reneesgarden.com/articles/3sisters.html

Beans and spinach: Beans can provide the necessary shade for spinach (especially for a spinach harvest in late summer).

Beans and cabbage (in succeeding years): Cabbage need a lot of nitrogen, which is provided by the beans.

You should rather not grow beans on the same patch as peas, leek or onions, as these plants have similar needs in nutrients as beans.

Hopefully, these tips were helpful for you. Go forward, it’s not yet to late to plant some beans in your own garden!

As I told you before, I’m a fan of organic gardening. Not only is fertilizer from organic sources a good additive to your soil than enhances its structure (especially for sandy soil!) but it’s also economically more viable than chemical fertilizer. Inorganic fertilizers only feed your plants and are often washed away, therefore wasting the environment.

Disadvantages of organic fertilizers are that they contain much less nutrients per weight unit (which makes them more expensive when it comes to transportation) and that they release their nutrients much slower than inorganic fertilizers.

From a chemical point of view, “organic” would be the counterpart to inorganic, which could for example be limestone. However, when I say “organic” I refer to substances not attained from chemical processing. I want to list the most important and handy forms of organic fertilizers in the following article.

Organic fertilizers

Manure: Besides being an umbrella term that also encompasses compost and so called “green manure”, manure means animal feces (from pig, cattle etc.) that may come in liquid or dried form. Manure generally improves soil structure. Its fertilizing value depends on the respective animals, f.e.:

• chicken litter is high in nitrogen and protein
• sheep manure is high in nitrogen and potash

You should, of course, consider the odor of manure from animal waste. One other important factor is its source – it may be contamined with antibiotics if the respective animals have been treated with antibiotics.

Seaweed: Seaweed supplies all three macro-nutrients (n-p-k) and amino acids; you can use seaweed as mulch or as a component of your compost heap. One potential problem is that it contains quite a lot of salt and may be harmful for worms in your compost heap. You should try (especially if you live near the coast) and observe the effects carefully. Seaweed may also be bought in processed form (dry and liquid).

Vermicompost: Vermicompost is a special form of compost that has gained popularity in recent years – it’s ordinary compost that has been thoroughly broken down by earthworms. It contains high amounts of nitrogen (which is a real bottleneck nutrient) than normal compost. You can process vermicompost in your own compost pile. See http://www.redwormcomposting.com/ for more info!

Guano: Due to its high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, guano is a well liked organic fertilizer (plus it doesn’t smell as bad as other animal manure!). Pay attention to the fact that seabird guano is higher in nutrients than bat guano! Guano may also be applied to leaves as a fungicide.

Bloodmeal/bonemeal: Bloodmeal is high in nitrogen, bonemeal contains phosphorous in large amounts. This said, I personally don’t like to apply these both as I try to circumvent animal mass production. Ok, blood&bone-meal are only by-products, but they still add to the profits of animal farms.. You can, however, mix blood meal with water and use it as a liquid fertilizer for your plants. Bone meal is a real slow-release fertilizer that should best be mixed with the soil.

Peat: Peat (or turf) are partially decayed plants that have been trapped in moors; it may be used as fuel or by us gardeners. Peat increases soil acidity and improves its structure by storing nutrients (it does itself not contain important nutrients).

Cover crops: Cover crops are plants that are grown for some time and then mixed into the soil for structure and nutrients. Leguminous crops like peas or alfalfa are used most often, as they take nitrogen from the atmosphere and fix it into the soil, therefore guaranteeing a sustainable ecosystem. They’re also commonly used in conventional agriculture – but they’re not so convenient to use in your ordinary garden, as you would need to forgo planting of food crops for a certain time period. See my article on bio-intensive gardening for a method to circumvent this!

In my last article on organic vegetable gardening, I gave you some basic tips with regard to vegetable gardening. I want to continue this series by talking about strategies you can use to improve your vegetable garden (and of course raise your yields).

There are several methods that claim to be the “most effective way” to grow a lot of crops with minimal land use (and being sustainable at the same time). Among the most popular are the [amazon_link id="B000Q320L8" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]“biodynamic gardening method”[/amazon_link]  based on a system by Rudolf Steiner, the [amazon_link id="160774189X" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]“biointensive gardening method” [/amazon_link]by John Jeavons, and the [amazon_link id="1591862027" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]“square foot gardening method” [/amazon_link]by Mel Bartholomew. I found the second (Jeavons) quite interesting – there are even current attempts to popularize it in African developing countries where good soil is scare and people need to use a sustainable method of horticulture; and its techniques are practical and easy to grasp.

Key elements in vegetable gardening:

1. Carbon farming: 60% of your vegetable gardening patch should be made up by compost crops that are composted and thus used to provide fertilizer for the the whole cultivated land.For example, alfalfala or rye contain both high amounts of nitrogen and carbon and are thus ideal for compostation.You can also plant these crops during late autumn, when you will not grow any more legumes; their deep roots may be tilled into the soil.According to the biointensive method, human manure should – if possible – also be added to the compost.
2. Intensive planting: Take a small patch of land (so you can still work on it), but grow as many plants as possible – this is easiest when you don’t plant them in rows, but in hexagons!The high density of plants also works to form a living mulch over the soil, which ensures sufficient moisture levels. If you start seedlings in seperate parts of the garden or in small growing boxes, you can use the remaining space for earlier plants.
3. Double digging: At the beginning of each planting season, the soil is dug quite deeply to ensure sufficient drainage and aeration (promoting root growth) for the crops.
   This method is called double digging because it’s easier to first remove a trench of earth 12 inches deep and than to only loosen the following 12 inches with a fork. You should also mix your compost into the soil in this process. Of course, this technique limits you to the growths of annuals.
4. Companion farming: You should mix the plants grown of your patch a.) in space (meaning to have different crops next to each other for the best use of the vertical space (including roots)) and b.) in time, as known from traditional crop rotation – see my tips on crop rotation in the earlier post. This will maximise the plants you can grow on one patch of land and the different plant types will ensure the sustainibility of the soil.

What I find especially interesting about this method is that it tries to combine two seemingly contradictory elements:

1. High yields
2. and sustainibility.

It emphasizes that all four elements should be present unless you want to deplete your soil from its nutrients. Actually, the system is quite suiting to a gardener like me who only wants to dedicate a limited space of his garden to horticulture – the compost of the rest of my garden would allow enough compost to supplement the compost of the cultivated area. To get deeper into the subject of intensive organic gardening, I will have a look at [amazon_link id="0880103825" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Rudolf Steiners “biodynamic method” [/amazon_link]the next time I write on this blog.

What are your experiences on organic vegetable gardening?

Feel free to leave me some comments if you’ve tried it as well!