The Garden Media Group—which dictates garden trends the way Pantone does colors—cites "GIY" (growing it yourself ) as one of 2009's hottest trends. Which is great, unless your gardening experience is limited to cursing the zoysia and putting out a few pots of hardy mums in the fall.
Nathan Brandt, horticulture specialist with the University of Missouri Extension; Chip Tynan, manager of the Horticulture Answer Service at the Missouri Botanical Garden; and master gardener Van Spurgeon have all noticed a definite increase in inquiries from first-time gardeners in the past year. Their first piece of advice? Start modestly, and don't set yourself up for spectacular failures. Then get methodical.
Mind the Soil
All three of our experts agree that before doing anything else, you should order a soil test. "There are 16 essential elements that plants need in order to grow," Mr. Spurgeon says. "And if the pH is too high or too low, it's impossible for the plant to get the food it needs out of the soil, even if the food is there." MU Extension offers soil tests to analyze pH and soil nutrient content, and for an additional fee, it will test for lead, cadmium, or other heavy metals, a particular problem for urban gardeners. The Kemper Center for Home Gardening at MoBot also offers soil tests, and its walk-in Plant Doctor service will test pH for free.
To prepare your sample, "take eight or 10 small samples from around the area that you are planning on using as a garden," Mr. Brandt says. "You usually want to have a 1-inch-square slice about 3 to 4 inches deep—though deeper, up to 6 inches, is fine. You take those samples, mix them up in a plastic—not metal—pail, then submit one pint of that to us." (You can call the St. Louis County Extension office at 314-615-2911 or the Kemper Center at 314-577-9562 for more information, including fees for various tests.)
"Rain and other things put elements into the soil as well, we don't realize that, and grass clippings die, and they put elements into the soil ... Nature is trying to take care of itself, but if we put in a crop of vegetables, boy, it sucks those nutrients out of the ground," Mr. Spurgeon says. "One of the most common questions I have had this last year: ‘My garden didn't seem to do as well this year as it did years past.' The first thing I ask: ‘Did you water appropriately?' ‘Yeah, I took care of the watering.' Then: ‘When was your last soil test?' Dead silence," he chuckles. When your test results come back in a few weeks, they will include specific advice for correcting soil imbalances; area nurseries can help you find products to help lessen the alkalinity of your soil (a big problem in Missouri) or add nutrients.
Plan Your Plot
Though you don't have to produce an elaborate inch-by-inch rendering of your garden on graph paper, do draw it out. "Just make a rough sketch of what you would like to grow, keeping in mind that it is a good idea to keep taller plants on the north side of the garden and shorter plants towards the south, so you don't end up with the corn in front of the green beans that now don't get any light," Mr. Brandt says. Estimates of how much space each plant will need can be found on seed packets, on the plastic spike that comes in starter pots, or at MU Extension's website (extension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/hort), where you'll also find information on when to plant what and how much light or shade each plant needs. Vegetables, for instance, need at minimum six hours of full sun, but ideally eight. Also check to see whether each plant is appropriate for your USDA hardiness zone (St. Louis is in Zone 6a). "You definitely have to analyze your site," Mr. Spurgeon says. "Is it going to be full sun, and is that a half a day, or do you get six to eight hours of full sun? Because that tells you what you can plant." After taking all of these factors into consideration, you may identify an ideal corner of your yard and discover that it's ... well, covered in grass. Mr. Tynan advises just using a sod cutter to remove it. "That stripped sod can be recycled elsewhere in your lawn, to fill in any thin or bare patches, but could also form the basis of your first compost pile," he says. The other approach is to build a raised bed, which not only offers better drainage, but also is the safest route for those with contaminated soil. (Detailed instructions on how to build a raised bed can be found online; for example, see wikihow.com/Construct-a-Raised- Planting-Bed.)
Mr. Tynan advises gardeners to throw out the idea that they must plant in rows, a technique that has its roots in industrialized agriculture ("You can't go sticking plants in the middle of the row where the tractor wheels are going to go"), and advises gardeners to plant in triangles, which is a more efficient use of space. "There are a lot of cultures, including French intensive gardening, that utilize these wide-row, raised-bed type plantings," he says.
Mulching & Composting
Though Missouri clay gets a bad rap, both Mr. Brandt and Mr. Tynan say it can be productive if you know how to work with it. See page 46 for more advanced methods of dealing with clay soil; for beginners, there are simpler, albeit slower, methods.
"You won't have clay soil for long if you keep putting compost on there twice a year," Mr. Spurgeon swears. "Really! And when you till it the first time, spread about a 4- to 6-inch layer of compost on top—which means you probably need a truckload." Mr. Spurgeon gets free compost and leaf mulch from University City; other municipalities, including the City of St. Louis, have similar programs. Mr. Brandt and Mr. Tynan are both fans of home composting, though that requires a bit more attention. Mr. Tynan, who teaches classes in composting, suggests creating an outdoor bin from sturdy hog-wire (available from Rural King, Orscheln, or Charlie's Farm and Home Center), then filling it, at least at first, with equal ratios of "brown" and "green" organic materials.
"The dried things are brown, though the exception would be something like cow manure. Its color is brown, but it's green because it contains a lot of nitrogen," he explains. "The browns are materials that are high in carbon." Once your compost pile is established, you can gear down to one-third green, but in the beginning, a one-to-one ratio ensures the pile "cooks" and breaks down quickly. "And there's nothing that stokes a young gardener's confidence like making hot compost," Mr. Tynan says. Be careful, however, to avoid dumping fresh materials into planting beds. "Let's say someone has a great source of sawdust, and they wanted to mix that in to aerify the soil and add some organic matter," Mr. Brandt says. "They would find those plants growing awfully in the first year or two, because as that wood product breaks down, it takes nitrogen out of the soil." The EarthWays Center (3617 Grandel, 314- 577-0220, earthwayscenter.org) offers hands-on classes on composting, including guidance on how to build your own compost bin. "Beginning gardeners underestimate the importance of it," Mr. Spurgeon says of composting and mulching, adding that he does both, twice a year.
Watering
"I like to caution against recreational watering," Mr. Tynan says, "which is usually a guy with a cold drink in one hand, waving the hose around with the other, dribbling a little water on the ground, not really letting it soak in." Also, the conventional wisdom about watering in the evening is—yikes!—not so wise. "If you are doing any kind of overhead watering, if you do it at night, that water sits on those leaves and will not be evaporating," Mr. Brandt notes. "Whereas if you do it in the morning, 6 to 8 a.m., that water is going to evaporate quickly, and you will have fewer disease problems." (You will also have fewer slugs; they like nothing better than a cool, damp spot.) Most gardens, Mr. Spurgeon says, need about an inch of water a week, and the only way to judge this is to place a rain gauge, or even tin cans, near your beds, so you know how much to apply in addition to rainfall. And then, when you water, target the roots. "We recommend putting a wand on the end of that hose," says Mr. Spurgeon. "Some plants are highly susceptible to leaf mildew, others are not, but the smartest thing is not to waste your water." Try to keep track of the time that it takes for water to pool on the surface of the ground, then return 24 hours later and see how deeply the water has permeated. You want to encourage deep rooting; 6 to 8 inches is ideal. Once the water has permeated to that depth, you don't need to water again until several inches of soil are dry. "Check it with your own sense of touch," Mr. Tynan encourages. "You can use a trowel, but the tips of your own fingers work, too. We're gardeners—our friends expect us to have dirty fingers."
For those with extremely dense clay soils, Mr. Brandt advises watering in short intervals, so that the water has time to sink in. "Or you can use a really slow delivery method like drip irrigation," he says. In his own garden, Mr. Brandt fashions a "basin" in the soil around each plant, so the water funnels straight to the roots.
Weeds & Pests
Mulch your beds, keep water off your leaves, and buy healthy plants, and your garden will have a much easier time resisting weeds and pests. But those things will never disappear entirely—and that's a good thing.
"Bugs and microbes are the critters that break down the organic matter," Mr. Tynan says. "If you have enough good guys, they keep the bad guys at bay." (Good guys include ladybugs and praying mantises, available from The Bug Store, 4474 Shaw, 314-773-9251.) Mr. Brandt recommends various other biological controls, including the addition of specific fungi and bacteria, for heavy infestations, but says the best way to avoid having those problems in the first place is just to spend a lot of time in the garden. "If I see bugs chewing on my plants, I'll squash them or pick them off, or pick off that part of the plant and get rid of it," Mr. Brandt says. "Mulching helps to keep the weeds down, but you're just going to have to pull some of them," says Mr. Spurgeon. "So you still need to weed every week, because weeds invite insects. If you do it every week, it's not a big job. But if you let it go for a month, you've got a mess on your hands."
Flicking a beetle over your garden wall and pulling up crab grass are not always fun, but diseases can be absolutely overwhelming for a beginning gardener.
"When I first came to St. Louis, growing tomatoes was a no-brainer," Mr. Tynan says. "People would just plant and harvest. I've seen a great rise in the frequency of various diseases...I think high on the probability list is the fact that a lot of gardeners don't get what our grandparents all knew: You gotta continue to add organic matter to the soil. People are now tilling plots of land that have utilized a lot of chemicals over the years, and have burned off all their organic matter." The best solution, he says, is to proactively mulch and compost. And if your plants begin looking sick despite your best efforts, bring cuttings to the Kemper Center's Plant Doctors for diagnosis and advice.
What to plant, and when to plant it
"When people ask me, ‘What should I plant?' I go straight to the Plants of Merit book," Mr. Spurgeon says, referring to MoBot's list of native Missouri plants (see more on page 57). "I recommend putting in half your plants as perennials. Use the native perennials as much as you can; it's less water, less maintenance, and they can stand the Missouri and Illinois heat." He recommends hostas, ferns, and impatiens for shady spots, begonias for indirect sun. Other good varieties include speedwell, salvia, black-eyed Susan, and purple coneflower.
"Low-maintenance gardens are more practical for ornamental horticulture than for growing food crops," Mr. Tynan says. "But you can grow varieties that are adapted to our area of the country. For instance, for tomatoes, Better Boy, Celebrity, Mountain Delight, Show-Me—these are all great varieties that do very, very well locally. For beginning gardeners, I would strongly recommend they seek out the varieties that are in the vegetable planting calendar put out by the University of Missouri Extension."
Of course, not all of those plants will be available at nurseries. "That means you then enter the vegetable-garden dream world," Mr. Tynan says. "It's a period of three months from the first frost until the last frost, when we just sit and dream over seed catalogues." Contrary to popular perception, it's not that tough to start from seed. "As long as people make sure the seeds stay wet until they are germinated, they will have no problem," Mr. Brandt says. "That's the key thing. Once you've planted them, they just need to stay wet. Every plant that I can think of that you can grow from seed falls into that category." He notes that some plants prefer being grown from seed, like carrots, while others are just better as starts. If you're growing vegetables, note that you can do more than just plant in spring and harvest in the late summer or fall. "You can start really early, as early as February, with some crops like broccoli and cauliflower," Mr. Brandt says. "Into late March, you could be putting in things like tomato, eggplant, and peppers. Late April, you could still be planting things like cucumber, cantaloupes, watermelon, squash. All of those things can be grown from seed." The other advantage to seed for beginning gardeners is the extremely low cost; a $2 packet of carrot seeds, versus $45 in nursery plants, allows a lot more freedom to mess up. Of course, even when you do seemingly everything right, things will go wrong. And that's OK, says Mr. Tynan.
"The main thing is just to go out and do it and not be intimidated by it, because every single plant that I've ever killed, I've learned something about that plant," he says. "Every brown thumb that's exercised in the garden eventually turns green."
