By Shermakaye Bass

So you want to plant a vegetable patch, and you’ve already found the sweet spot in your yard. But, exactly how will your garden grow? What should it grow? And when should it grow?

The key, say our experts from two states with very different climates, is to start simple and pick plants that are easy and relatively cooperative.

They say that, while taking the plunge can be daunting for newbies, the potential rewards are many-fold, and the result, literally, can be a horn of plenty – whether you want to re-create the nostalgia of a rural childhood when your parents or grandparents had a garden, or you want to know and control exactly what goes into your food and tummy.

Having your own “plot” is also perfect for erstwhile gardeners on a tight budget (saves money on grocery bills). It’s a great way to relax, and it’s a strong community/neighborhood uniter, because when the harvest is in, everyone around you benefits.

“Having a garden has a wide range of things – one thing I tell people is it’s great stress relief. You get out there with a sharp hoe and start chopping away at the weeds. If you did that with your children or pets, you’d get thrown in jail! So, it’s a stress relief,’ says agriculture professor John Masiunas, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champain. “But it can also be a social activity. You know that large zucchini that your neighbor brought over last year? Well you can return the favor.”

But there’s one absolutely indisputable benefit of growing your own: Fresh produce from indigenous soil simply tastes better than non-local veggies, and it’s even more divine when it comes from your back yard.

Masiunas and Dallas-based organic-gardening radio personality “Tropical John” Thomas have shared their top five choices for first-timers. Both say the most important thing this time of year, (throughout March into early April), regardless of your climate area is preparation, preparation, preparation.

Note that we’ve divided the United States into north and south regions, with general guidelines according to “hot” or “cold” climate. If you want to get more specific, refer to this map of the country’s “climate zones” to guide you.

Prep that soil now, Thomas says, and you can plant from mid-March through summer, then enjoy your personal cornucopia through fall. (His organic soil-prep recipe is after our crop list.) As far as gauging the weather, a good rule of thumb in the south is “if your nighttime temperatures are staying in the upper 40s and 50s for more than a week,” Thomas says. “In colder climates, you can refer to your county agriculture extension service, but in general, if nighttime temps are above 45, then that’s probably good.”

Northern United States
Top 5 Easy Veggies (plus a bonus round) per John Masiunas:

1. Tomatoes (beefsteak, Brandywine, Cherokee purple, Sungold cherry tomato are good choices.) “We’d get the tomatoes in the ground around late May, since tomatoes are a hot-weather plant. You want to have warm soils.” Start harvesting within weeks.
2. Early peas (pea-pods are best, Masiunas says): Get in the ground by late March, harvest beginning early to mid May.
3. Broccoli. Put it in the ground anytime in August, up to the end of August. “If you want full-size heads, you’d probably harvest in late September to early October. If you just want sprouts from it, you can harvest mid to late September.”
4. Chinese yard-long beans (same species as black-eyed peas, but common to Asia). Plant in late May or early June. “You should be able to harvest probably late July or early August – you can pick them over a period of time.”
5. Swiss chard. “Get this going around mid-April, and harvest starting in May, throughout the summer. You don’t want to let the leaves get too big. They get tough.”
6. BONUS ROUND: “For the south, I would do a tomatillo. Or another version, for colder climates, a related species called a strawberry tomato – something that our grandparents made into jam. It’s a sweet fruit, not a tomato, and you can actually use them to dip in chocolate. It’s harvested and grown like a tomato.”

Southern United States
Top 5 Easy Veggies per “Tropical John” Thomas:

1. Green beans. “I’m not real picky, I always plant a different type each time. Green beans in general. Plant them in warm ground temperature – generally after April 15. They’ll sprout within 6 to 8 days, about 60 days is when they should harvest
2. Crooked-neck squash. “We’re looking at putting them in mid April, 7-10 day germination, 53 to harvest.”
3. Peppers of any variety. “I’m a jalapeno man, myself. But they’re all, including green bell, all the peppers are pretty easy to grow. But don’t put a hot one next to a mild one. Do tomatoes and peppers transplants, spend the 50 cents
4. Tomatoes. “Romas are easiest. I’ve actually already planted some. Look for the last average killing frost, March 21 in Dallas. Start harvesting within about 50-60 days, and they enjoy the heat, so they’ll keep going throughout the summer.
5. Okra. “Clemson Spineless is the most popular. Planting times, any time in April. That is a very warm-ground plant . . . You’ll see this stuff pop quick, then you’ve got about 55-65 days before the first harvest, and then they’ll just go and go until about July and August, when it gets really hot. They’ll start getting tough. Harvest those when they’re about 3-4 inches long. You’ll be picking those things every day.”

In order to get started, follow Tropical John’s soil prep recipe, at the end of this story. But even before pulling that first unwanted weed, there are several things to consider.

“I would say to start slowly,” says Illinois’ Masiunas. “There’s a tendency, particularly up here where we’re kind of in the last throes of winter, to want to just plow up the back yard and plant the whole thing with vegetables. But people are really better off deciding what they want to grow. The real work, generally, is not the planting of the vegetables, but the weeding, thinning and maintaining through the summer. Those two – thinning (veggies as they grow) and weeding are the two jobs that people new to gardening don’t tend to like.

“Plus, people are busier now than I think our grandparents’ generations were, and the last thing you want to do after a long day is get in the back yard and spend a couple of hours pulling weeds. But you sometimes have to.”

Masiunas says he has two major bits of pre-planting advice: Adjust your expectations for what is realistic (”We have expectations after going through the produce aisle in our supermarket or the farmers’ market, where everything looks pretty, and that’s not always the case” for new gardeners); and get the site ready for planting, picking an area in your yard that gets plenty of sun and has proper drainage.

“It’s not that you walk out into your back yard and find a place where grass is growing or (consider) that bare spot where nothing will grow in. Those aren’t easy places to start a vegetable garden.”

Places where your lawn grows heartily aren’t ideal because tender young veggies will have to compete with already established grasses; and places where the yard is already bare won’t be very accommodating to your little shoots either.

If you’re not in a big hurry, the Illinois gardener adds, it’s not a bad idea to start prepping and planning now for next spring. Otherwise, get rolling!

“This is actually the perfect time to start planting things,” says the Thomas, the organic-gardener radio host. “The average last freeze in Dallas is around March 21. The old-timers would say, ‘Well, you’ll always have that Easter freeze, but generally speaking, right now is a good time to start. Aim for about April 15 to get seeds in the ground.

“In our area here (and to the south), we get two growing seasons,” ‘Tropical John’ explains. “Peppers will continue to grow, and once they start to produce, they’ll produce until the first frost in the fall. Tomatoes, you’ll want to replant in July. You can replant green beans again in mid-September. Squash is done by July 4, but then you can plant heartier squash for fall. Okra is a really warm weather plant, and it gets stringy by mid summer. So it’s done by then.”

Another important thing to watch out for is that your planting beds or rows have proper drainage.
In the north, a good way to ensure that, Masiunas says, is to create raised beds, spaced. “Once the soil preparation is done, you want to end up with a nice, easily worked soil that’s well drained, particularly up here in the north. You may want to go with raised beds – from 4 inches to a foot. Some people will line most beds with wooden posts, and in a raised bed, the soil’s going to warm up faster so you can get a little bit earlier planting season.

“And, depending on how you want to approach your garden, if you plant in beds, instead of in straight rows like our grandparents had, you can space the plants without having so many aisles. You could have an aisle every third or fourth row. That way you can get to your plants better.” (Masiunas suggests using planter cages for tomatoes, so you can keep them growing upward.)

Both experts say that using organic materials for soil preparation and even herbicides and insecticides are critical to having the freshest, tastiest and healthiest crop.

Ready to get started? If so, follow the ‘Tropical John’s’ Recipe for Bed Prep (from Living Natural First radio and website; a $24.95 annual membership is required for the latter) and then get that garden growing!
2-3 inches of high quality compost
2-3 inches of expanded shale
Organic fertilizer (he suggests high-mineral content fertilizers, such as volcanite, which contains four types of crushed rock; from Texas, he suggests Rabbit Hill Mineral Plus)
Dried molasses (it nurtures microbes that enrich soil)
2-3 inches cedar or hardwood mulch

Instructions:
Till the soil 4-6 inches deep. Add compost and shale to specified quantities. Add organic fertilizer at 20 lbs. per 1,000 sq. feet. Apply Mineral Plus or Volcanite as a light dusting over the entire area. Dried molasses should be added at 10 lbs. per 1,000 sq. feet. Roto-till entire area until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Do not remove any existing soil unless the bed area needs to be lowered in order to add these ingredients.

The final bed should be no higher than your existing foundation line (bricks meet the concrete). Away from the house, there are no limitations to the height of the beds. I do not recommend the use of peat moss or pine bark mulch as a compost additive. A high quality compost, that may cost a little more, will pay off in the long run. Rake entire area smooth and add a light layer of organic fertilizer prior to planting. Once you have planted, always top dress with a shredded mulch. Top dress of choice would be hard wood or cedar mulch, to a depth of 2-3 inches.

Note: Due to beneficial fungi in the soil, Tropical John says he no longer recommends adding horticultural cornmeal to basic bed prep. If beds are prepped properly, fungal issues should not be a problem. If they occur later, you can add the cornmeal at that time.

RELATED WEBSITES:
LivingNaturalFirst
TropicalJohnsGardens
To find out what veggie varieties may grow best in your garden, go to Cornell University’s “Citizen Science” program site, which allows fellow greenthumbs to share and glean information.

For information on the natural insecticide (particularly useful against leaf and needle-feeding caterpillars, fly larvae and leaf beetles) Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) - a bacterium that is the world’s only microbial insecticide.

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