Growing your own food isn’t nearly as hard as you may think! Follow this how-to and you’ll be producing your own veggies, fruits, and herbs in no time.
1. Choose a site
It may seem that the college lifestyle isn’t conducive to putting down roots (pun absolutely intended), but it’s much easier to fit gardening into our lifestyle than many realize. Your garden can be anywhere: your front yard on campus (clear it with your landlord!), your friend’s house, or a local community garden. Apartment-dwellers with a sunny window can enjoy growing herbs, and tomatoes do just fine in a pot on a balcony.
Other Factors you should look into:
Sunlight: Most garden plants do best in full sun.
Drainage: Easy to fix poor drainage by mounding soil and compost into raised beds
Soil quality: Look for plenty of earth worms and that beautiful dark Illinois topsoil when digging in your garden as a sign of good soil health. There are many do-it-yourself tests to determine soil texture, nutrients, and drainage, or contact your local extension office to get your soil tested.
2. Plan It
What are you going to grow? Go as crazy or simple as you want: potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, beets, cabbage, tomatillos, kohlrabi, chard: all of these and more are fairly easy to grow in Illinois soils and are worth a shot! Look for there specifications online or just trust the seed packet- gardening isn’t a science!
How will you grow it? Will you need trellises or cages? Soil amendments?
When? I start with a planting calendar, and build in when I plan to weed, harvest, etc.
Where? A garden map is useful here. Don’t forget to include paths!
3. Prep It
You will probably have to kill the existing vegetation, which you can do by turning it under with a spade and killing any weeds with a hoe.
Organic matter in the form of compost or composted manure can be a huge asset, and more is better. Asking for advice is a great way to get to know the folks at your local organic gardening store!
Other soil amendments such as nutrient fertilizers will help your plants (though chances are you’ll be just fine without them). Work the soil with a spade down two spades deep to loosen the rooting space, or build up mounds of loose soil to improve drainage.
4. Buy your seeds
You’ll get your best varieties online and through seed catalogs such as seed savers exchange, Seeds of Change, or Johnny’s Seed Company. The easiest choice is to buy pre-started transplants from a garden store or farmers market, though these will cost more and you’ll have less variety to choose from.
5. Start growing your plants
Many plants do best by simply dropping seeds in rows, patting them down firmly, watering, and letting them be. Tomatoes, peppers, chard, some green onions, and other plants are best started indoors and transplanted outside when conditions are favorable. This can be accomplished using a sunny window, but best results come from building your own indoor growing bed. Try repurposing a beer pong table with two saw horses, two 2*4*8s, and four 2*4*2s, cheap shop lights, and a bunch of old textbooks.
Most gardeners in Illinois will transplant tomatoes and other frost-hating garden plants sometime in May. Some garden plants can survive a frost, while others cannot, so be sure to read the seed packet.
6. Relax!
Gardening is easy and fun, you can put in as much time and effort as you have or want.
You’re not alone! Here’s some great resources for first-time gardeners:
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/soiltest to see where you can gat soil nutrients tested
Some simple home soil tests: http://organicgardening.about.com/od/soil/a/easysoiltests.htm
Urbana Park District Meadowbrook organic community garden: http://www.urbanaparks.org/documents/dbe734914e1a663c4c2567a90b27bfc9/2011_Gaden_Manual.pdf urbanaparksdocumentsdbe734914e1a663c4c2567a90b27bfc9/2011_Gaden_Manual.pdf
-Matt Rundquist
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