Simple Steps to Gardening: Grow Award Winning Vegetables

By John O Manry

As the title suggests, this book covers steps to make it simpler for a home gardener to successfully grow the vegetables they can enjoy. Starting with soil preparation and understanding of pH value of the soil, fertilizing, methods of mulching, cultivating, and watering will provide the steps to have that perfect growing condition. 

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Writers Branding LLC
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781639451630

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Copyright © 2021 by John O. Manry

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-63945-162-3 (Paperback)

978-1-63945-163-0 (E-book)

The views expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

SOIL PREPARATION

Know your soil

Fertilizing

Nitrogen

Phosphorus

Potassium

Soil Acidity and Alkalinity, Adjusting Soil pH.

Soil Enrichment

Mulching

Composting

Green Manure

Cultivation

Watering

CHAPTER TWO

GETTING READY TO PLANT

Selecting Seeds and Plants

What to plant

Seed Selection

Planting Methods

Types of Rows

Types of plant supports

Planning on Paper

Location

Planning the garden

Plant Rotation

Indoor and Outdoor Planting

Starting Indoors

Transplanting

Cold Frames

Hotbed

Pests and Plagues

Common Pests

Plagues

Tools

Different Climates

CHAPTER THREE

PLANTING THE GARDEN

Asparagus

Beans

Beets

Broccoli

Brussel Sprouts

Cabbage

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Collards

Corn

Cucumbers

Eggplant

Garlic

Kale

Kohlrabi

Leeks

Lettuce

Melons

Okra

Onions

Parsnip

Peas

Peppers

Potatoes

Pumpkins

Radishes

Raspberries

Rhubarb

Rutabagas

Shallots

Spinach

Squash

Strawberries

Sweet Potatoes

Swiss Chard

Tomatoes

Turnips

Glossary

A Word from the Author, John O. Manry

CHAPTER ONE

SOIL PREPARATION

Know your soil

Our sustenance is derived from the top few inches of the Earth’s surface called soil or topsoil. Your garden plot can be as fertile as loam, helping you to raise an abundance of food in a natural way with very little costly outside supplies. In attaining a fertile soil organically; you can achieve a lower cost without human intervention. It will not be easy at first, you will need all the motivation you can get.

Resources are unlimited and you can show aptitude of wisdom through wise use. Nitrogen is a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. Mineral sources of phosphorus and potash are ample, but not unlimited. Phosphoric acid is derived from animal bones; it is a renewable source, but a meager one. Small amounts of potash occur in many plant fibers, especially wood, and also in manures. It also occurs in some organic mineralized deposits but should be used as sparingly as well as phosphate rock deposits.

Home gardeners have become independent and have received an economic savings as well as satisfaction from raising their own food. It is worth the energies expended to accomplish this rewarding task. One-third acre or more and knowledge is all any homeowner needs. Here are a few soil tips:

Soil appearance is not a reliable source of value; even a gravelly soil can be veryproductive.

Red soil can be as fertile as black or brown soil, color does not dictatefertility.

Poor soil is costly and time consuming; places where good gardens have already existed are good places togarden.

Erosion of soil is America’s most costlypollutant.

Soil can be loamy, gravelly, clayey, mucky, or sandy, with varying combinations. All tilth is governed by organic matter, the more organic matter the better the tilth. Soil can have a pH as low as 3 (very acid) to as much as 10 (very alkaline), the amount of acidity determines what you can or can not grow in a soil. Plants’ ability to use the nutrients in the soil is determined by the pH of the soil, a pH of 6.5 to 7.0 is ideal for most vegetable gardens. Acids, bacteria, and microorganisms, chemically turn nitrogen, potash, and phosphoric acid from the minerals and organic matter into food for plants.

A deep silt loam of good tilth is the kind of soil gardeners’ hope for. It should have adequate drainage but not so quickly that drying out is a constant worry, and contains five percent humus, 25 percent water, and 45 percent minerals with good aeration of 25 percent air to soil. Add a couple of tons of rock phosphate to the soil, two years ago, and fertilized with about fifteen tons of matured manure per acre, get it to a pH value of 6.5 to 6.8, then you would have the perfect soil.

Soil appearance is not a sure proposition. The important part of evaluating a scrupulous soil is in assessing the cost of producing a good crop on it, both in time and money.

You should proceed as follows to pass judgment:

Observe what is growing on top of the soil; cattails could tell you the soil is wet and marshy with nearly no gardeningpotential.

Look at the soil’s characteristics under the surface, several feet of core sample will reveal the soillayers.

Analyze the soil for nutrient content, rich or poorsoil?

Check out the surrounding area; look at the terrain for good drainage after a heavy rain, a septic tank leach bed problem or is it in a floodarea.

Clay, sand, and silt, in varying proportions, determine the texture of soil. Sand is grainy; silt is fine, like graphite powder; clay is oily when wet, hard when dry. Sandy soil is a good planting medium, it can drain quickly and can be worked early, but nutrients and moisture seep out too fast. Clay soil forms a hard clod when dry. Somewhere between sand and clay is loam, the most sought-after soil as to texture, contains 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent clay. Any kind of soil can and should be improved or revitalized by replenishing the amount of organic matter yearly and correcting the soil’s acidity level.

Fertilizing

The main reason for a soil test, besides your pH, is to message the nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potash (K) content of your soil. These three elements are so important to plant life that your gardening efforts are to no avail without sufficient amounts of them.

All fertilizers have a three-number notation, it refers to the percentages of (N), (P), and (K) respectively in the fertilizer. For example, 15-10-5 is fifteen percent nitrogen, ten percent phosphorus and five percent potash. The remaining 70 percent of the material is filler. Slow-release fertilizers are chemically identical to the granular fertilizers, but they are coated with a water-permeable material so that the nutrients are released more slowly. Foliar fertilizers are meant to be mixed with water for such uses as transplant solution or on plants that need more help. As a general rule, fertilizers should be applied sparingly rather than generously. It is possible to over-fertilize plants, causing mostly leafy growth with low fruit production.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen is responsible for rapid growth, dark green leaves, and is produced during decomposition of organic matter. Soils rich in organic matter are seldom deficient in nitrogen. The amount of nitrogen might not be adequate to produce top yields. Legumes will put additional nitrogen in the soil by the action of bacteria living on the legume roots and should be planted periodically. Rotating crops is one way of accomplishing this feat. With organic help, the natural process which takes years to restore a soil’s fertility can be quickened. You should put back as much as you take out of the soil, so you are not losing ground.

Plants can not use nitrogen in its raw form, acids in the soil must change it to a nitrate form first then the roots then consume it. Plant cells combine the nitrate salts they converted to amino acids to form protein. This process can be upset by either providing too little or too much. Too little makes plants spindly and yellowish; too much and they become rank, producing little fruit and lots of foliage.

Nitrogen Deficiency

You can likely spot nitrogen deficiency by color. Vegetable plants with adequate nitrogen are a rich, dark green and grow fast in warm, humid weather. A plant is most likely short on nitrogen when growth is slow and plant color is yellowish-green. The leaves yellow first, then the stems. A tomato plant lacking nitrogen grows much slower. The younger leaves on the top of the plant will not reach full size, they will begin to yellow, and flower buds will shed. Yellowing of leaves can occur for other reasons, on ground with improper drainage, yellowing can occur if nitrogen is not available to the plant because of the excessive moisture and lack of aeration.

Nitrogen Surplus

In a pasture where domestic animals feed you can often see grass grow lush and heavy around manure droppings. Cows will seldom eat this grass even though it looks very appetizing, Excessive amounts of nitrates from the manure have been taken up by the grass, creating the possibility of nitrate poisoning. The cow knows she doesn’t like the taste of that grass. In the same manner nitrogen can build-in certain amount of bug resistance to a plant; although, it has the opposite effect in regard to fungal diseases.

Long-lasting, slow-release nitrogen is so good it goes on working in the fall when you would just as soon it did not. Bush fruits, like raspberries, will continue to grow vigorously in the fall and become susceptible to winterkill. Apply these fertilizers to such plants in the spring or early summer.

Nitrogen Sources

Organic methods can be a better way to handle the soil than with a bag of chemicals. As to which kind of soil, chemically treated or organically handled, produces the tastier vegetables and fruits, too much nitrogen, especially if accompanied by lots of water and not enough potassium, produces less tasty vegetables, especially corn and melons. This is particularly true if the water is from irrigation rather than rain, and the nitrogen comes from a bag of chemicals.

Although manures can’t function as complete fertilizers, since they do not contain enough nitrogen, phosphorus, or potassium, animal manures do remain the best all around organic fertilizer. They are available