A Beginners’ Guide to Caring for Your Crops

For beginning gardeners, the spring rush of events to prepare even a modest garden and then get every transplant, seedling and seed settled in can be an overwhelming and exhausting experience. Take a few deep breaths; there’s a lot more to be done between now and harvest-time.

Weeding

The first green you see sprouting in your garden is likely to be weeds. If you’ve planted in rows, it will be easier to tell the good plants from the bad ones. Weed aggressively during these first few weeks. Weeds compete with your crops for food, water, space and sunlight. Don’t let them get a foothold. As the plants spread out and shade more of the ground, weeds will have a harder time taking hold.

Use a hand hoe between rows and transplants, scraping just under the soil to cut weeds off from their roots. Hand-pull weeds that are close to your plants. With root crops, keep cutting off the heads of emerging weeds with scissors to starve them without damaging the roots of your crop.

Weed regularly throughout the growing season with the goal of eliminating weeds before they have a chance to go to seed. According to Purdue University’s Consumer Horticulture Department, a single dandelion plant can produce 15,000 seeds in one year. Each seed can survive up to six years in the soil. You’ll keep a lot of potential weed problems out of your garden next year if you’re vigilant this year.

Thinning Seedlings

Most gardeners sow more seeds than are really needed. Intensive plantings mean slower growth, so you’ve got to be strong, grit your teeth and start pulling out emerging seedlings or snipping them with scissors at ground level to meet the spacing recommendations on the seed packets. Keep the

strongest-looking seedling in each area.

With some crops, like lettuce, you can do the thinning in two stages. If your lettuce needs 8 inches of space when it matures, plant the seeds 2 inches apart. When they start to crowd each other, thin them to 4 inches apart, and later to 8 inches. Add the baby leaves to your salad. You can also do this with baby radishes.

Gauging Water Needs

New seedlings and transplants need to be watered lightly every day. As their roots mature and lengthen, less frequent, deeper waterings will serve your plants best. Generally, established plants need about an inch of water per week. This isn’t set in stone, however. It depends on your climate, soil, rainfall and other factors.

Don’t wait for your plants to start drooping. By then, they’re already suffering the effects of dehydration. Chronically water-stressed plants are an open invitation to disease and insect pests.

Dig down into the soil a few inches. If the top couple of inches are dry, give the soil a deep watering. If the soil is already moist, ignore drooping plants to see if they revive when the sun goes down. Overwatering can drown the roots.

Mulching

Nothing will make weeding and watering easier than using an organic mulch on your garden beds. An organic mulch will prevent weed seeds from receiving needed sunlight, and it will keep the ground beneath it cool and moist.

Compost is popular with home gardeners because it continues to break down and enrich the soil as it decays. If you don’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides on your lawn, grass clippings make an excellent and economical organic mulch. Don Engebretson of HGTV.com advises against using straw

as an organic mulch because straw seeds will later become a weed problem.

Lay down mulch in the pathways first, taking care to keep it away from seedlings and transplants. Before laying down mulch in a garden bed, weed completely. Give it a good watering before laying down 1 or 2 inches of mulch. Keep the mulch away from seedlings and transplants until they start showing signs of vigorous growth. Then the mulch can be pushed closer. Keep mulch away from plants’ stems to prevent soil-borne diseases and microorganisms from damaging them.

Harvest Frequently

You could begin harvesting food from your garden in as little as three weeks, though most crops take longer than that. Keep a close eye on your crops in case you start getting an earlier harvest than you were expecting. Some crops, like beans and peas, will slow down production if you let even one pod go past its prime.

Coordinating your harvest with your kitchen is a learned art. You’ll learn which crops were used well, and which mostly went to waste, and plan accordingly next year. Maybe by planting more or less of something. Maybe by collecting new recipes to make greater use of your harvest. Maybe by planning on ways to extend your garden season with cold frames and growth lights.

Every new season is a fresh learning experience with gardening. As your knowledge grows and improves, so will your garden.