This Land Is Your Land — Start Your Garden!（英文）

By Mark Banaszak

2025年4月至5月

此内容暂无简体中文译文，以下为英文原文。

Tomato illustration accompanying garden article.

Historical April–May 2025 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.

If you haven’t already, it is time to start your garden this year. Growing your food is a great thing to do; it is not difficult to get started, you can start small, and the rewards are worth it. Homegrown tom-atoes, for example, taste better than most of the ones you can get at the store. Since you pick homegrown tomatoes at the height of ripeness, you get the best flavor. Grocery store tomatoes have a longer journey from the plant to your table, so they must be picked before they are ripe and carefully stored.

When you grow them yourself, you can pick them much later. You just have to be quicker than the squirrels and birds. You can get more variety if you grow vegetables yourself, too. You can’t get many types of vegetables in stores because they don’t transport well or there isn’t enough demand for the stores to carry that item.

In addition to those who claim that tomatoes are the best homegrown vegetable, many gardeners claim that peas, cucumbers, strawberries, or lettuce are best. One thing is clear – they usually taste better and are fresher if you grow them yourself. That last week or two of ripening on the vine makes all the difference. You also know exactly how they are grown. Many common pesticides and fertilizers have cumulative negative consequences for our natural surroundings and health. Gardeners with less yard space or small spaces can choose from a variety of simple methods. You can start with a few big pots on an apartment landing.

Some people in apartments now use grow bags, which are big fabric pots that let you grow crops like tomatoes when you only have a few square feet of space. Fabric pots are generally cheaper and more easily moved than large pots, but there are a few things you should do to work with them. For plants like tomatoes, you will need larger sizes like 20 gallons.

This is to give the plant plenty of room to root well. Make sure the pot is set up for good drainage by putting a bottom layer of sticks or rocks. Use a soil mix intended for container gardening, and mulch the top with bark or straw.

This helps keep the soil from drying out, which is one of the most important things to monitor. Check the top inch of soil every day if possible, and if it is dry, water.

Some crops, like tomatoes, are heavy feeders, so supply plant food as necessary. People also regularly grow tomatoes in bales of straw, which can be moved around to make flexible use of available space, just like fabric pots.

The straw bale method has the additional benefit that the straw composts over the growing season, so you can add it to your soil when you are done.

The bales must be treated before planting, so this method requires a little planning. Starting 10-14 days before planting, loosen spots where you will put in plants, wet the bale, and sprinkle with fertilizer (usually bone or fish meal). Continue wetting them down and fertilizing them every few days until it is time to plant. Then, widen the spots where the plants go in and put them in. Bales, like fabric pots, need to be watered frequently if the weather is dry. Although this method is less neat than fabric pots, growing in straw bales has the benefit that the bales compost over the growing season and can then be worked into the soil. Many people in our neighborhood also use raised beds.

They are easy to build, but their advantages don’t end with that. Because you add the soil to the bed, you typically have much better soil than if you gardened in the ground. Raised beds also offer better drainage and less compaction, which are very important for young vegetable plants. Non-compacted soil is easy to weed, and the weeds that might pop up are easier to reach.

This means raised beds are often easier to keep organized and neat.

All of these advantages can mean there is more food to harvest from a raised bed.

If you are not up for gardening in your yard, our neighborhood has two great community gardens, one on the 59XX block of McPherson and one on the 58XX block of Westminster. For a small fee each growing season, you can rent a raised garden bed, so you don’t have to build it yourself, and you also get access to a community of other gardeners who are happy to offer all kinds of gardening wisdom. Information about both of the neighborhood gardens is on the Skinker DeBaliviere resource page (https://skinkerdebaliviere.wordpress.com/programs/community-gardens/). So get ready – it’s time to start your garden!