A good way is to start small and increase your garden areas as you increase your expertise. Of course, this may not be the way for all, but it has worked our well for many gardeners in Sacramento.
Investigate what areas of your yard get the most sun, or morning sun, mid-day sun, dappled sun most of the day, light shade, or deep shade. You will want to check this out for each season. NOTE: The sun rotates high in the sky from the east to the west during the summer. (this bakes direct west facing garden beds.) During the winter the sun is lower in the southern sky and of course not as intense.
Decide the types of plants you want to start growing and choose an area (a garden bed) that would provide the type of light these types of plants need. Sacramento has such intense sun, even plants that are said to need full sun usually want some light shade part of the day during the summer.
Many vegetables need up to 6 hours of sun. Though even tomatoes do not do as well in all day full sun in Sacramento.
After you choose the area to plant, figure a 12" path or space around it used for working this area. It is best not to walk in garden beds.
Many people like making raised beds from redwood boards or some other landscape material. There are many sustainable materials on the market now. If you do, it is best not to make it wider/deeper than 4 feet so you can reach into it easily to plant, prune, harvest and weed. |
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* Try to pull out most persistent weeds, such as nut grass, bermuda grass, or crab grass before you start. Dig down with a hand tool to get their roots as much as you can. For very poor, heavily compacted soil conditions this can open up the top few inches without completely destroying any soil structure. If the area is thick with the above weeds, read about weed control below.
* You will want to add living material to your existing soil. For example, add a layer (a few inches) of compost or worm castings. Some garden writers say to mix the organic matter into the top 4"-6" of soil, but the latest method is to put it on the top of your soil, which is also less work. Actually tilling and double digging can damage the soil structure and kill some/or most of the beneficial microrganisms (microherd) in your soil. (see below)
* If you want to feed a very poor soil with more than quality compost or worm castings, you could add other organic amendments that nourish the soil microbes slowly for steady growth. Examples are blood meal, bone meal, alfalfa meal, cottonseed meal, fish meal, or kelp meal. One or more of these amendments could be mixed in with the compost layer. These should be added very sparingly. Most of the time they are not necessary and if too much is used they can be detrimental to the soil biology.
* Mulching the soil with wood chips/shreds, partially composted leaves and other woody materials helps cool the soil, as well as leaving a slow release source of food for the microorganisms (microherd). |
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Choose the best type of watering system for your needs, as well as for the type of plants you want to grow.
You can set up a drip system of watering with the little inline drip/sprayers and/or laser drip lines. Another option is to use the 1/4 inch "spaghetti" tubing soaker hoses. A third option is to use the wider (2 sizes available) soaker hoses that are similar to regular hose diameters and look like they are made from car tires.
A traditional sprinkler system can be converted to provide water for a drip irrigation system. Garden stores can help with more information; it is not difficult to do yourself.
Many timers have wonderful capabilities to set different run times. Some control modules has 3 or more separate and independent programs, with 3 daily start times per program. This allows some areas to be watered once a week, or twice a month, and still be able to water some areas twice a week. They have made it easy to use water-wise techniques in your gardens, save water and have healthy plants.
Most plants do not like overhead sprinklers (except ferns and plants that like high humidity). An overhead sprinkler system wastes more water than drip systems.
You can hand water, but this does take being mindful of a regular watering schedule. The positive side of hand watering is that during this time you can spot and pull new weeds emerging, or a plant that needs a stick for support, and the general health and growth of your garden. |
One important concept to remember about keeping soil healthy is that we need to put back what we take out of our soil.
This means leaving the leaves, twigs, etc. from a tree to mulch the area under the tree. This way, the nutrients that the tree took from the soil are returned and this keeps the soil nutrients balanced.
The same goes for vegetable or fruit gardens. When the tomato vines die at the end of the year, the stem is broken from the roots and the roots are left in the soil to feed the microherd that which was taken from the soil to grow the tomato. The dried upper plant parts can be broken up and used for mulch on this bed along with other mulch.
This process keeps the soil healthy and alive with active microorganisms, as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and more - all part of the Microherd.
Some people grow what is called a cover crop on a bed when it is not being used to grow food. Cover crops can put back many nutrients which could be depleted from "heavy eater" crops.
Your "gardener's gold" or commonly called compost, is the most perfect support for keeping your soil community/microherd alive and healthy.
Notice the microherd in the soil. They are diverse organisms all doing their job making healthy soil/humus.
Our job is to keep the organisms supplied with raw food and to keep them alive and well in our soil.
The underlying principle is that good soil contains copious amounts of organic matter to feed the soil organisms which, in turn, excrete the nutrients that plants need, in a form that plant roots can take up.
All these organisms eat organic matter or consume other organisms. As they digest this material, nutrients are converted from one form to another (in the same way that the food we eat is changed by our digestive enzymes). The organisms retain what they need for their own growth and reproduction; what they excrete contains nutrients now in a form that plant roots can take up.
Besides opening up and softening the soil, organic matter is essential to form a sponge in the soil which will trap water from rain or irrigation and prevent it from quickly percolating down out of reach. At the same time it retains any soluble food materials which are being carried down by the water.
THINGS TO AVOID
Chemical fertilizers negatively impact the soil food web by killing off entire portions of it. Note what table salt does to a slug. Fertilizers are salts; they suck the water out of the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in the soil. Since these microbes are at the very foundation of the soil food web nutrient system, you have to keep adding fertilizer once you start using it regularly. The microorganisms are missing and not there to do their job of feeding the plants.
Once the microorganisms die, the other members of the microherd will leave to. For example, earthworms, will leave when they lack food and are irritated by the synthetic nitrates in soluble nitrogen fertilizers. All of this impacts the nutrition, as well as the structure of the soil. Watering becomes a problem because the sponge has broken down and pests and diseases are able to establish themselves. Gardening like this is a lot of work and you are not gaining the nutrition you were hoping to get.
If the salt-based chemical fertilizers don’t kill the microherd, then rototilling will. This process breaks up fungal hyphae, kills worms, and rips and crushes arthropods. It destroys soil structure/soil sponge and eventually saps soil of necessary air. Air pollution, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides also kill off important members of the microherd/food web community or cause them to find a better place to live. The soil stops functioning.
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A homemade wooden compost bin. Compost bins come in all sizes and shapes. Most homemade compost bins or designated spaces need to be constructed so that the pile can be about 3-4 feet square and a good 3-4 feet high to start with so the pile can heat up while it makes compost. As the microherd works and does its job, the pile will shrink.
As someone once wrote "compost happens!", it is the way the world runs with the whole planet as a vast recycling machine. In fact ANY pile of organic matter will eventually rot down, whether it is a nicely-balanced mix of approximately equal bulk of "greens and "browns" in a fancy bin, or a pile of odd weeds left in a corner, or even a collection of twigs piled up somewhere. What formal composting is supposed to achieve is a pile of good finished compost in as short a time as possible. First, a few definitions:
The microherd - An informal name for all the varying organisms, from visible creatures like worms and pillbugs right down to microscopic bacteria, which between them convert the miscellaneous remains of vegetation into a fine earthy dark brown material known as humus.
Finished compost - Compost almost entirely converted to solace humus (some woody bits won't break down in one pass through a sieve and may remain). This is the material which will build up soil to a high state of fertility, contributing both to its texture and its food content. With enough humus in your soil and an initially good and complete kit of balanced minerals virtually no other amendments should be necessary to get a good crop.
"Greens" and "Browns" - The two essential groups of components for making good compost. Greens comprise of all the nitrogen-rich plant remains, essentially the protein-rich tissues from the living parts of any sort of plant (including seaweeds). They may also include other N-rich materials from animal sources, such as manure (not from cats or dogs), hair or ground up remains of fish (as fish meal). Waste woolen materials are another good source of nitrogen, such as discarded sweaters or old carpet (woolen, not synthetic of course!) These materials provide food for the organisms that are doing the breakdown and the process is in fact a continuous cycle of organisms feeding and dying and their bodies being fed on by other members of the microherd until all the structures of the original materials have been broken down and the remains finally become humus. In order though, to break down the "greens" the organisms need energy food as well and this is provided by the "browns" which are very high in carbon and include such things as wood and its variants such as wood shreds, chips or sawdust, straw, fallen leaves, cotton waste (not synthetics though) and paper or cardboard. Roughly equal parts of greens and browns are required to get the best balance for quick breakdown to occur. This process, unless hastened by forced draft (forcing sufficient oxygen into the mixture to ensure rapid decomposition) and other measures in commercial practice, usually takes around six months to a year to complete, depending on various factors such as the proportion of greens to browns, the ambient temperature and so on. I find six months is about right for compost in my garden made over summer, but a pile started just before winter, with no special protection from cold is not likely to be ready inside of nine months.
Sheet Composting - Not all compost has to be made in a bin or even by piling the makings up somewhere. Some of the best and most nutritious composts are those made right where they are going to be used, by the method known as sheet composting. This is after all what nature mostly does since she is unable to gather waste into neat piles without human help.
By Moira Ryan - Organic Gardener & professional botanist - Zone 9
* For more information visit our Garden References page  |
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"Weed" is not an exact category of plant, only a convenient way of referring to a plant for which you can at present find no use!! Moira Ryan
Weeds - pull up the offenders, then mulch, mulch, mulch.
For difficult weeds, like bermuda grass, crabgrass, or nutgrass, the process is a little more difficult.
In controlling nut grass, which seems to be the worst offender, you have to go through several steps.
First you need to pull out as much of the weed as you can. The weed is attached to little thin roots that have nuts in the ground that are supplying food to the upper part of the weed. When you carefully dig down, you need to follow the root and get as much of it and the nuts as you can. The soil needs to be moist (not soaking wet) as you do this.
Then, you soak newspapers in a 5 gallon or larger bucket and lay the sections or the whole thickness of the complete daily paper at a time. You want to completely cover the bed by overlapping the papers to more than an inch thick. You need a lot of newspaper for this, but do not use the shiny advertising sections.
Next, you cover the newspaper with cardboard that has been soaked. If you can get the cardboard from large appliances, this is best as it is very thick and large. Remove packing tape, metal staples etc. Soak this in 30 gallon garbage cans. Overlap it as you did the newspaper. Then cover the whole bed with mulch to a good three inches or more. Continue to keep the bed moist (don't let it dry out) to keep that barrier solid and the microherd happily breaking down the organic matter therefore developing good healthy soil.
After six months to a year the mulch will start to disappear and you will need to add more. If a weed makes its way through (you should not get but a couple), then pull it carefully and make sure the spot still has paper and mulch covering it.
For nutgrass, the soil may need to be covered like this for up to 2 years. There is no other natural alternative to get rid of nutgrass other than digging out all the soil down about 6 feet deep and replacing it. Not really an option. Chemicals don't do the job either, if you were willing to do that to your soil.
For other weeds, like bermuda grass, crabgrass, or dallisgrass your problem should be taken care of the first year.
Pest and Disease Control
Healthy soil and diverse plantings of healthy plants resist damage from unwanted insects. These pests are not as effective and may even be confused, as well as controlled by the beneficials drawn by the diverse plantings in the yard.
Healthy soils breed healthy gardens that are not as susceptible to various attacks from insects and disease.
In spring especially, slugs and snails are attracted to new growth. Containers full of beer divert slugs and snails, they crawl in and drown. You can also go out to your garden at midnight with a flashlight and kill many of them, or help them into the saucer. After a couple midnight visits, the plant saucer or tuna can full of beer should keep down any problem. They like “Budweiser” beer best and it can be old (even over a month old) and flat or even going moldy, they still are attracted. If your slugs and snails don't like the beer, try spraying the foliage with caffeinated coffee; it works in Hilo HI.
Early in spring, aphid queens (they can fly) lay eggs on some tender new growth on plants. The young aphids can be washed off (with a hose) the new rose buds, or other new plant growth and are unable to crawl back up the plant.
If you get mildew on a plant, it could be that there is too much overhead watering from sprinklers or from mother nature. Spray with a solution of 1-to-3 milk to water. This is the recommended level in the Netherlands where milk is a Dept. of Agriculture approved fungicide. This also works for black spot and rust on roses. Many people use kelp spray (Maxicrop) which strengthens the plants. It is best to pick off leaves that are heavily covered with black spot or rust and remove any of these dropped leaves from the bed.
Every year that you garden organically the garden becomes more healthy and pests and diseases become less of a problem. Eventually, with simple management practices, there are no real problems; just an ever-changing ecosystem.
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