6 Tips to Maximize small garden productivity

June 18, 2021 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

A well-planned and cared for small garden can be more productive than a poorly tended larger one. If you’re short on space, there are several ways you can maximize your garden’s potential and productivity.

Choose Compact Varieties

You might not be able to grow giant pumpkins that will win prizes at the state fair in your tiny backyard, but there are many varieties that are more suitable for small plots. Some of our favorites for small space growing include:

We love Alston Everlasting Cherry Tomatoes for small spaces because they’re are a large cherry that keeps for up to three weeks after harvest. Sally’s Hot Peppers bear lots of colorful peppers with medium heat and their small stature and beauty means they’re easy to tuck into a landscape or container garden. Table Queen squash is a wonderful way to put up some winter squash without long, trailing vines. Rainbow Chard won’t bolt in the heat and is beautiful and flavorful. These varieties and many more compact choices bring a lot of flavor to small spaces and container gardens.

Don’t Be Afraid to Mix Vegetables and Flowers

If you’re trying to get the most out of a small garden, it can be tempting to forget flowers altogether. However, flowers improve more than the look of a garden. They help to attract and support pollinators and beneficial insects.

Grow edible flowers like nasturtiums, Johnny-jump-ups, and bachelor’s buttons to add to salads or use to decorate baked goods. Plant tall, sturdy sunflower varieties to use as trellises for pole beans. Grow morning glories in window boxes and let them trail around porch railings. Plant marigolds in between vegetables to help deter whiteflies and nematodes. There are many ways to add flowers to a small space.

Use Containers or Raised Beds

If you don’t have a lot of open ground, consider adding containers or raised beds. Containers and raised beds can allow you to grow on patios, rooftops, and even unused parking spaces. Just make sure that if you’re growing on a surface that could contain harmful chemicals (like pavement), your bed has a non-permeable barrier at the bottom. Check out our best tips for container gardening here.

Grow Vertically

Trellising crops is a huge space saver. Pole beans, cucumbers, peas, indeterminate tomatoes, melons, squashes, gourds, and various flowers can all be grown on trellises. You can utilize existing fencing on your property or check out our vertical gardening blog post for more trellis tips.

Don’t Forget Perennials

Perennials add a lot of productivity to your garden for relatively little time and effort. You don’t need the space for a full-fledged orchard to enjoy their benefits.

Chives, walking onions, rhubarb, salad burnet, thyme, lemon balm, strawberries, and asparagus can all be grown in small gardens. Thyme and strawberries make excellent ground cover beneath other plants.

You can also espalier dwarf fruit trees or use them to create a fruit tree guild, grow grapes or hops on a trellis, grow raspberries or blackberries along a privacy fence, or plant low-bush blueberries along a border.

Succession Plant

Spreading out your planting and re-planting beds as soon as a crop is finished will ensure you can enjoy your harvest over a more extended period. Last year, Pam Dawling contributed a post to the SESE blog, “Summer Succession Planting: Avoiding Gluts & Shortages,” which is an excellent resource for learning more about succession planting.

Garden Advice

Cottage Garden: Growing Hollyhocks

June 8, 2021 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Hollyhocks are tall, easy to grow, biennial flowers. They’re perfect for adding a colorful backdrop to garden beds and look excellent along fences. Hollyhocks are a mainstay in English and cottage-style gardens and are great for attracting bees.

As biennials, they don’t bloom their first year. They spend the first year growing attractive dark green rosettes of foliage and storing energy. In the second year, the tall stalks grow, and the hollyhocks bloom and produce seed. They typically bloom from around June until August.

These incredible flowers are native to Southwest and Central Asia. Their roots were often used in herbal medicine. The blooms are also edible and can be used to make tea.

At SESE, we offer two hollyhock varieties.

Black Hollyhocks

This dramatic heirloom is a show-stopper in any cottage garden and dates back to pre-1830. It features magnificent spikes of satiny blue-black single flowers that form the second year from first-year leafy 18 inch leaf rosettes.

Find seeds here.

Outhouse Hollyhocks

This mixed-color beauty was traditionally grown around outhouses. The spires of single pink, white, red, and burgundy flowers grow up to 9 feet tall and made perfect screens for outhouses. You didn’t have to ask where the bathroom was; you could just look for the hollyhocks!

Find seeds here.

Planting & Care

Hollyhocks can be grown with relative ease. They can be started indoors or direct sown. They germinate best when the soil temperature is around 60°F. Germination can take 14 to 21 days; you’ll have to be patient with these flowers!

Location

When planting out, select a location with well-drained soil and full sun. As tall plants with heavy flowers, Hollyhocks do best in areas sheltered from the wind. They thrive in fertile soil with a neutral pH.

Spacing

Hollyhocks are large, tall flowers, so proper spacing is crucial, plant them 12 to 24 inches apart. If they’re too crowded, hollyhocks are also susceptible to rust (Puccinia malvacearum), a fungal disease that typically begins on the lower leaves.

Watering

Watering your hollyhocks is most important when they’re germinating and newly planted. Keep them consistently moist during this time. After they’re established, hollyhocks are quite drought tolerant. Over-watering established plants can make them more prone to lodging and diseases.

Staking

Hollyhocks benefit from a bit of support and can be prone to lodging, especially in windy areas. Grow hollyhocks along a fence, trellis, or use stakes to keep flower stalks upright.

Should I Deadhead Hollyhocks?

As with many flowers, deadheading hollyhocks isn’t necessary, but it can encourage them to bloom more. However, deadheading hollyhocks means you will get fewer seeds. Many gardeners like to save seeds from hollyhocks and re-plant or let them self-sow. Allowing plants to self-sow or re-planting them yourself will ensure that you have some hollyhocks blooming each year.

Soil Care

Hollyhocks aren’t super heavy feeders, but you still need to take care of the soil, especially if you allow hollyhocks to keep re-seeding in the same bed. Adding a layer of compost each spring can help keep the soil healthy.

Hollyhocks are a fun, easy-to-grow flower great for adding lots of color and height to your garden. Following these tips can help you have success with them.

Garden Advice

Garden Water Management

June 3, 2021 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Water may seem like one of the easiest elements of a garden to manage. Pulling out the sprinkler is undoubtedly easier than pulling weeds! Unfortunately, as many gardeners have discovered, water can cause a host of issues in the garden if you have too much or too little. Here are a few ways you can improve your garden to cope with water shortages and surpluses.

Too Much Water

Erosion Control

Many gardeners lucky enough to call the Appalachians home have to cope with less than flat garden plots. Even with a slight slope, erosion can be a significant cause for concern.

Erosion damages garden soil by washing away organic matter and essential nutrients. It’s also damaging to local watersheds. When excess soil nutrients end up in streams, lakes, and rivers, they can cause algal blooms, which harm fish and other aquatic life.

Swales & Terraces

For severe slopes or areas you know are prone to erosion, building contour swales or terraced beds may be worth the time and work invested.

You can create terraced beds with a variety of materials, including boards, logs, or rocks. You want to create a wall that is parallel with the slope. Then you can flatten the soil behind it by raking it against the wall. This method is a great way to be able to grow annual crops on hillsides.

Swales are essentially mounded beds with ditches behind them. Larger swales are typically built to follow the contour of a slope. Swales help prevent erosion and retain water. The water that collects in the ditch slowly seeps into the mound, providing moisture to plants over a longer period. You can learn more about building a swale of your own in our post, “Let’s Talk About Swales.”
Cover Crops

Another critical factor in preventing erosion is never leaving soil bare. Cover crops help prevent erosion because their roots help hold soil in place, and take up some moisture. Sow cover crops in pathways between beds, in areas not currently in production, and during the fall to keep your soil covered during the winter and spring. Learn more about which cover crops you should plant in this blog post.

Water-Logged Soils/Standing Water

Another issue common to the Southeastern US is heavy clay soils. These types of soils are prone to becoming water-logged during the spring rainy season. There are a few things so can do to combat this issue.

Add Organic Matter

Organic matter dramatically improves how your soil handles water. It soaks up water during rains and allows plants to access it slowly over time. The fastest way to add organic mater to your garden is to top dress your garden with several inches of well-aged compost.

You can also add organic matter by using cover crops and mulch. Natural mulches like straw, leaves, grass clippings, and wood chips slowly break down adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil.
Go No-Till

Like adding organic matter, reducing the amount you till helps improve drainage and allows plants to access moisture over a longer time. Ditching the tiller keeps soil structure intact and reduces compaction, a major problem with clay soils.
Raised Beds

If you struggle with wet spring soils, you might consider building raised beds. You can create raised beds from scrap lumber, logs, rocks, and other cheap or free materials. They drain well and warm up quickly in the spring, helping you to get an early start. Keep in mind they also dry out faster during the hot summer months.

Too Little Water

Water Efficiently

Not all watering schedules are created equal! Watering in the cooler early morning or evening helps decrease the amount of water you lose to evaporation. You can further reduce evaporation by using drip irrigation or soaker hoses.If you often forget to turn off your watering system, consider purchasing a timer which will shut it off automatically. Alternatively you can set a kitchen timer or timer on your phone to remind you.

Mulch

Mulch helps keep soil cool and moist, reducing evaporation. You can use many cheap or free materials as mulch including cover crop residue, grass clippings, straw, leaves, and wood chips.

Collect Rainwater

Rain Barrels

Rain barrels are an excellent asset for any backyard garden. You can add gutters to your home or garden shed and collect the water in a barrel to use for watering plants. Rain barrels don’t need to be fancy; cleaned trash barrels with holes drilled in the appropriate places will work if you don’t mind a DIY project.
Swales

As we mentioned above, you can also use contour swales to collect rainwater. The water fills the ditch behind the mound and slowly seeps into it, allowing plants to soak up the water over a longer time.

Choose Water-Wise Crops

If you have an area of your garden that is hard to water you may want to plant crops and flowers that don’t require much. These include native flowers like echinacea and food crops like flint and dent corns.

Whether you struggle with too much water or too little these strategies can help make your garden more productive. Proper water management is key to a healthy garden and a healthy local ecosystem.

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