If you’ve been following Project TWH, you’ve learned how to find room to homestead, performed a suburban homestead site survey, planned your summer garden and maybe even used the kill mulch technique to get your garden area ready. Now it’s time to really get your suburban homestead moving in the right direction – we’re going to plant your summer garden!

If you refer back to The Weekend Homesteader, you’ll see that planting your summer garden has four main components to it:

• Knowing When To Plant
• Succession Planting
• Knowing How To Plant
• Garden Maintenance

When To Plan Your Summer Garden

Determining when to plant your summer garden is probably one of the most frustrating parts of starting a suburban homestead garden. Plant too early and your crop is prone to late freezes that could kill it off early. Plant too late and your crop might bolt right to seed and have a horribly small yield.

What’s a gardener to do?

If you remember the 5 Tips To Start Your Garden that I provided a while back, you’ll remember that the first tip was to know your zone.

Your hardiness zone is a good indication of when last freeze and first freeze occur in your area and it also will have information about when to plant different species relative to these dates.

You can find more information on your hardiness zone by clicking here: USDA Hardiness Zone Map.

Back in the article on Planning Your Summer Garden, I gave you five or six different vegetables that I considered ‘easy’ to grow. In general, the swiss chard can be started about a month before last frost and the rest can be planted after the frost-free date. Mint can be planted just about any time of the year.  You should consult with your seed providers and local nurseries for tips specific to your area.

Succession Planting

What’s worse than having a small harvest? How about a HUGE harvest that all happens at the same time? What are you ever going to do with ALL of these vegetables when they show up at the same time?

By staggering your planting, you will pretty much guarantee that not all your crops show up at the same time. How you use this method is up to you. Personally, I try to stagger plantings every week or so. That means that when the crop in one area is harvested, I’ll have some more coming up in another area a week later and a week after that in another area.

You can also use this approach to work with your schedule. Are you a teacher with the summer off? Plant so that there’s no harvest until mid-June. Or, if you plan to be on vacation mid-August, plan out your plantings so that nothing will be ready for harvest then.

How To Plant Your Summer Garden

You just dig a hole and throw the seeds or seedlings in. Right? Well, it’s not quite that simple, but it’s not terribly difficult either.

Here’s the really simple approach I recommend:

1. Rake back the mulch
2. Depress the soil as required
3. Place seeds in ground
4. Fill hole, tamp in place

It’s really not that hard. All you really need to remember is that the seeds you’re using need access to soil and water so making sure they are planted deep enough (but not too deep) is important.

If you’re using the Square Foot Gardening approach, I recommend building the garden stamp shown in the following video. Super easy to make and VERY useful:

[youtube_sc url=”yOZNRvlECic”]

If you’re using seedlings (or sets as others call them), I recommend planting them so that the first set of leaves is right above the soil. This approach gives the best chance for roots to grow and will also give your stems the most stability as they grow.  You might want to consider some fertilizer when you plant your seedling as well.  The application of fertilizer during planting will typically destress the situation for the young plants and give them the nutrients they need to begin growing in their new surroundings.

Summer Garden Maintenance

Again, this step isn’t rocket science. If you take the time to mulch, it will definitely help. You’ll spend much less time weeding and the water you apply to your summer garden will be retained much better.

Basically, you need to do three things to keep a garden in good order:

1. Weed
2. Water
3. Harvest

You don’t have to worry about harvesting (with the exception of beans lettuce) for a while and the other two steps are relatively straight forward. It’s really hard to screw up a garden once it’s set, so take it easy and have fun.

Wrap Up

There you have it, how to plant your summer garden. It’s not terribly difficult and really is one of those things that you learn to do by doing it. So, please, go out and get your hands dirty this weekend! You’ll enjoy it!

Please let us know any tips you have for planting your summer garden in the comments or on our Facebook Page.

photo credit: Distant Hill Gardens via photopin cc

Over the last few weeks, I’ve talked about Finding Room to Homestead and how to perform a Suburban Homestead Site Survey. Now that you know how you’re going to approach your suburban homestead and where on your land you’ll be conducting different suburban homesteading activities, it’s time to plan your summer garden.

For most suburbanites, setting up a garden is the first step to a suburban homestead. Guidance from The Weekend Homesteader is quite useful in making sure that you avoid a few pitfalls and are aware of a couple of tricks and tips for this otherwise simple task. With that thought in mind, we’ll be covering the following topics in this post as well as talking about how we implement these areas of knowledge on the Suburban Steader Homestead:

• Garden Size
• Garden Location
• Garden Layout
• Simple Vegetables and Herbs

Garden Size

If you remember one thing from this post, remember this:

You don’t set and forget a garden

You will be working this area extensively throughout the season – weeding, harvesting, planting and maintaining. The reason I emphasize this point is because the biggest mistake you can make when you plan your summer garden is to bite off more than you can chew. Designing a space that is too large will be more detrimental to your suburban homesteading success.

Why is too big worse than too small you ask?

The answer lies in availability of time. You only have a certain amount of time that you can spend gardening. This fact is especially true with suburban homesteaders as they are not working the homestead all day, every day. Typically a garden is a weekend and/or after work activity for most of you.

So, how big of a garden should you build?

If you’ve never gardened before, I suggest you plan your summer garden in an area that is roughly four (4) feet by eight (8) feet. This approach will give you forty-eight (48) square feet of gardening space. Anything more than that is going to be too intimidating. You can have a few side items if you like outside of this area (potted tomatoes, blueberry bushes, etc.) but the majority of gardening should happen in this area.

Note that Anna Hess disagrees with me. She recommends beginners can go up to one hundred forty-four (144) square feet – three times what I recommend! All I can say to that is remember that it’s always easier (mentally and physically) to expand your garden than decrease its size.

Suburban Steader Homestead Garden Size

For the last half decade or so, I’ve used a roughly forty-eight square foot area for my garden. By using the space efficiently – I implement Square Foot Gardening principles – I have successfully offset my family’s vegetable consumption by a significant margin. Please do not take that to mean that we are anywhere near self-sufficient.

I’ve doubled our garden space this year with the addition of a four foot by eight foot raised bed. In addition, I have some perennials (blueberries, strawberries, etc.) on other locations which are above and beyond this ninety-six square feet of garden area we now have.

Garden Location

In my last post, I talked extensively about how to lay out your suburban homestead based upon a long list of factors. There’s not much more to be said here that hasn’t been outlined in that post. The one bit of advice I would give is to plan your summer garden so that it is not far from the house. The closer you are to your garden, the more apt you will be to work on it and the better success you will experience.

Suburban Steader Homestead Garden Location

As you’ve seen in this picture, the new garden box I put in is right next to our patio. The old garden box is about as far away from the patio as you can get on my land. This update is already paying dividends. I spend a few minutes each day tending to the closer garden box whereas I don’t walk out to the other one as much. This little bit of knowledge has taught me that I’m going to put the more needy crops in the closer box.

Garden Layout

I have two main tips when you plan your summer garden on your suburban homestead:

1. Remember the Two Foot Rule
2. Visual Record Keeping

The Two Foot Rule

This rule is something I learned from Mel Bartholomew in his Square Foot Gardening principles. Most people cannot reach into a bed more than two feet. If you design your garden so that you can reach every piece of soil with this rule in mind, you’ll never have to walk on your garden (compressing the soil) and you’ll be able to utilize all your land. That’s part of the reason I recommend four foot by eight foot beds. As long as the maximum dimension on one side is four feet, you’ll be able to reach the middle on either side.

Visual Record Keeping

I’ll be perfectly honest – I have a crappy memory.

I can’t remember what I planted or where I planted it, especially if I’m starting from seed. That is why I use a visual record keeping system. Not only does it remind me of what I planted where, but I can track when I planted it, how many plants/seeds I planted and plan accordingly.

I use a piece of software called Garden Planner from GrowVeg.com. While I’m a kind of tech geek, there’s nothing wrong with good old paper and pencil to keep track of your garden layout.

Simple Vegetables and Herbs

All this work to plan your summer garden and you don’t even know what you’ll be growing yet. Not any longe!.

It’s time to pick your produce!

As a novice gardener, Anna Hess and I agree that picking simple, easy to grow vegetables will give you early wins and build your confidence. With that thought in mind, we recommend the following items:

• Swiss Chard – A summer green that is virtually work free. Cooks up like spinach but much easier to grow.
• Summer Squash (inc. Zucchini) – Big and beefy, these veggies will provide you with lots of produce as well as lots of confidence. There’s something boastful about growing a plant as big as summer squash can get. With that in mind, summer squash does take up a lot of room, so if space is at a premium, you might want to think this one over.
• Green Beans – Quick to sprout and quick to harvest, these guys will give you a quick, bountiful victory. Bush beans don’t need a trestle but will grow very quickly meaning you’ll be replanting a lot.
• Tomatoes – They love sun! While they’re a bit more finicky than some of the other veggies mentioned, you can’t beat the taste of a homegrown tomato. Buy them in seedling sets and plant them deep. Too much water is a problem for these guys.
• Mint – A quick grower and a perennial to boot! Mint will take over your garden if you’re not careful so make sure you have a root barrier in place or, better yet, start it in a pot.
• Basil – Drop the seeds, water and walk away. You’ll have fragrant leaves all summer.

Anna also recommends okra – I can’t really comment on that as I’ve never grown it. I will say that the items I would add to the list are romaine lettuce and broccoli. Both grow rather easily from either seed or seedlings.

The most important thing to do when picking what you grow is remembering what you eat. It’s a shame to grow tomatoes if your family dislikes them. At best, you’ll have a harvest and not know what to do with it and, at worst, you won’t work your garden because the outcome doesn’t interest you.

Wrap-Up

There you have it – how to plan your summer garden in a few simple steps. Remember that, at the end of it all, gardening should be a relaxing endeavor, not something you feel is a chore. That’s not to say it’s not a lot of hard work, but if you find yourself resenting the garden, take a step back and figure out why. You should be enjoying this work – you get to reap all the rewards!

Please let us know any tips you have for planning your summer garden in the comments or on our Facebook Page.

I spent some time this weekend cooking for the family and decided to make one of my favorite dishes – penne alla vodka. While it’s not one of the most rustic dishes I’ve ever made, I did use a cast iron skillet to make it so it has some ‘suburban homesteading credibility!’

I have made this dish a few times, slightly tweaking the recipe every time. This weekend’s version was the best yet and I decided to share it with you.

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Recommendations

This penne alla vodka dish is always a crowd-pleaser – whether you are cooking a romantic dinner for your better half or making dinner for a house full of guests.  Hearty and filling, it really hits the spot and goes great with a nice cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir.  Add a little fresh grated parmigiano-reggiano and you have a restaurant quality meal that you can make on a budget in about 45 minutes.

Even though this dish is great the way it is, there are a few ways to tweak it.  The first tweak is the amount of sausage you use.  Personally, we like a meal with a lot of meat so we use a full pound of sausage.  If you want more of a pasta dish without meat, try using a lesser amount like 3oz (2 links) of sausage.  Secondly, this dish has a slight hint of heat thanks to the red pepper flakes.  If you want a milder meal, remove the red pepper flakes and if you want a bit spicier meal, use hot sausage and take the red pepper flakes out of th recipe.  Whatever you do, don’t use spicy sausage AND red pepper flakes.  I made that mistake once and it caused the dish to be super hot and not very enjoyable.

Go and try this spicy penne alla vodka recipe and let us know how it worked out for you!