Real Scenario - A non-gardening/aspiring gardening friend just excitedly emailed me that he was able to negotiate a tiny garden 4 feet x feet raised bed as part of his apartment lease for one year. He consulted me about what to plant. Its a big city , Zone 7., full of easy bad food so I suggested the following model:
1: As the date is 12/23 () I suggested that he scavenge a window or lay down a piece of 3 mil plastic and create a mini cold frame. Lacking that I suggested used beverage bottles as mini greenhouses.
2: Space alternate holes in the garden to be used for burying coffee grounds banana peels and egg shells, a spacing of 2 per foot, using a soup can to dig the holes would result in 64 holes, 2 months of food recycling. Dont overdue it or the mice will come in force.
3: Beets, turnips for the underground, greens for the top.
4: Add a dash of worms from the petshop
5:For truly Earth-conscious effect, wash dishes w biodegradable soap in pan, empty pan into garden everyday or at least weekly (baby steps ya know).
Any other ideas or models I could pass along? I was thinking of vertical gardening but maybe thats a bit advanced better left for next year....
For good micronutrients in a food desert, parsley in a few spots to chop into soups/stews and dry for the winter to crush into things would be an excellent health builder.
Similarly, walking onion, but it might be hard to find.
I think I'd prefer to know a little more about the plot and it's environs before giving much advice. Is it a container garden, or a plot in a shared garden? What are the boundaries, shade, watering abilities and time constraints for example?
Growing herbs and salads are often the most rewarding in both taste and financial terms, the latter being more vulnerable generally to pests. I like your idea of compost holes, and a cold frame to get an early start.
If your friend loves cooking, I think herbs are a great starting point, depending on where they live. Most herbs are pretty tough and can deal with less than idea conditions. Fresh herbs are expensive and dried herbs can be full of heavy metals and toxic stuff. Your friend can start the herbs inside for now and get ready to transplant when it gets a little warmer.
They could take a look at the book, Square Foot Gardening (telling them some better resources about soil fertility and stuff, and to ignore the parts about chemical fertilizers). It's a good start for a single 4x4 bed, showing how much you can fit in a tiny space, with how closely you can plant things, especially once you start interplanting things and succession planting. I think a good thing to teach is the concept of living mulch... the more you plant, the less you need to weed and water.
They should also familiarize themselves with what to start and when for their area. Help them find planting and seed starting schedules with a little bit of googling. It was really disappointing when I first started gardening and my tomatoes that I grew from seed never got bigger than 4 inches tall since I started in June outside, when for my climate I should have started them inside in January or February.
I let each of my children have a 4x4 section of raised bed to grow in last spring. They all wanted a little bit of everything so they had quite a jungle of plants that we forgot some of the things they planted but it was so much fun and you get to see what thrives and don't focus so much on the failures. So much more encouraging then planting just a 4-6 plants and then if you are unlucky all but one die. They all had at least a dozen different types of plants, possibly more. Let's see, in one child's bed, lemon grass, basil, chamomile, sunflowers, bush beans, acorn squash, bread seed poppies, safflower, chrysanthemums, carrots, fennel, balsam, dill, and coriander. And that was the oldest most restrained child! LOL! The only thing that didn't grow well were the beans but they probably would have done better if they were pole beans instead of bush beans so they could have climbed up. Even the carrots did ok, hiding and biding their time until things started dying in the fall.
(I'm trying to post pictures but having issues)
If I were to advise a new gardener, I would suggest planting cabbage.
It is versatile and can be eaten in so many different ways. I read that cabbage has great health benefits.
My next advice would be to start collecting as much compostable as available. I would suggest some sort of small composting like bokashi or just using a container.
I am wishing your friend the best with that garden!
Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner
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