The season of giving is upon us! And friends, do I have some giving for you. This week I’m doing a couple of great giveaways just in time for you to show some holiday love to your favorite gardener. If you win and decide your favorite gardener is you and you’re keeping the loot, no one will judge. Promise.
Today, I’m happy to be sharing Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Crops at Home. If you’ve been a reader for a while, you might remember the authors, Colin and Brad, from my original giveaway post of this same book last summer. They are the founders of the Seattle Urban Farm Company, and have written Food Grown Right, a really excellent beginner’s guide to backyard-scale edible gardening.
When Seattle Urban Farm Co. asked if I would be interested in doing a second giveaway of the book and I was like, “Do cabbageworms in my bok choy drive me crazy? Of course I would!”
That’s Colin and Brad.
Food Grown Right is optimum for new-ish veggie gardeners. If you already have a giant bookshelf full of gardening how-to, how-come and oh-now-what? books, you may find the info in Food Grown Right to be a little duplicative, but you might also appreciate having all the basics, from layout, planning and irrigation options to crop-specific growing information nicely laid-out and condensed into one easy to use reference.
Find a slightly more comprehensive review at my original post, or check out what other people think.
Year Round Vegetable Gardening Like The Pros
So, the season of giving is fine and all, but it’s also the season of garden planning, right? This is when the seed catalogs arrive, and the graph paper comes out and everything is all full of potential. So while I had Brad and Colin on email, I also asked how they manage their year-round gardening and came away with some great tips.
Year round planning for year round harvesting.
If you strive to eat from your garden year-round as a cold-season gardener, right now is the best time to take stock of your successes and challenges. Look around your garden and ask how you’d like things to be different this time next year. What are you already out of and what aren’t you loving enough to actually go pick in the rain? I can already tell I need to figure out a way to get more giant kohlrabi in my life.
It’s hard to imagine since nary a spring pea has been planted, but if you want to eat your own cabbage in December you have to be kinda aware of that goal…the prior December. Why? Well, in the Pacific Northwest at least, the fall and winter crops usually go into the same ground that held the earliest spring crops. So when you are thinking about how much space to give to peas and spring radishes vs. tomatoes and cucumbers, you should keep in mind that your fall garden will probably be bounded by the space you gave to spring. By the time the summer crops wrap up it will be too late for most fall and winter crops to go in.
If that kind of seasonal think-ahead seems daunting, don’t worry, it becomes much more normal after you’ve been through the rhythm a few times. It might also help to see how everything sort of fits together. My free Year Round Planting Guide spreadsheet may help with that. Just scroll down until you see it about half way down the Downloadables section.
In the meantime, incorporate these Pro Tips for Year-Round Gardening from Brad and Colin into your four-season planning.
How should a beginning gardener who wants to begin planning and planting for year-round growing in the maritime northwest get started?
Eliot Coleman’s book Four Season Harvest is a detailed introduction to the principles of year-round growing; I strongly recommend that anyone interested in growing fall and winter crops check out this book. Our book also gives you fall and winter planting suggestions in the Month-by-Month chapter, so is a good resource to have on hand.
What is the one thing beginning gardeners get wrong when growing crops for fall, winter and over-wintered harvest?
The biggest mistake we see with beginners growing fall and winter crops is that they assume that they’re actually growing the crops in the fall and winter. To have a successful winter harvest, you need to be growing your crops in mid-summer through early fall (mid-July- September). This way, they’re sized up and almost ready for harvest before the low light levels of October set in. Because of the cool weather, fall crops don’t bolt or lose eating quality through the winter. Winter gardening is kind of like turning your vegetable plot into a giant refrigerator. If you plan properly, you can be harvesting from the garden all through the cold season and into the early spring!
What can a gardener do to ensure a great cool-weather growing season next year?
Start planning early! Planting for your fall and winter crops starts in mid-July, with the bulk of the crops planted in late August and early September. As your spring crops mature and are ready to be removed from the garden, some space will open up for fall crops. Early June is a good time to talk to nurseries and find out if they carry fall vegetable starts, and a good time to buy or order seeds for your fall crops.
What are a few of your favorite cool weather varieties?
For spinach that grows well through the fall and winter and resists downy mildew, try “Lombardia”. Claytonia is an excellent green for winter gardening (similar in taste to lettuce, but will over-winter without protection in our climate). Purple Mizuna is a beautiful, mild-tasting mustard green that also grows well during the fall and winter. “Red Russian” kale is our favorite kale variety; it does well and tastes amazing spring, summer, and fall. “Cherriette” radishes size up quickly and uniformly for September and October harvest.
Thanks, Colin and Brad, for sharing your insights!
Enter To Win A Copy of Food Grown Right, In Your Backyard
Contest open until Tuesday, December 18th at 6 pm. Continental U.S. residents only, sorry international readers. Good luck!
Pssst…you know how I said a couple of great giveaways this week? Check out Thursday’s post. Free organic seeds! That’s all I can say right now.
Update: Contest now closed. Thank you to everyone who entered, and congrats to seed-hoarder Natalie M., the winner. Natalie, check your email for instructions on how to claim your prize!
How to keep the wild bunnies and my small flock of chickens out of my garden!
My biggest gardening challenge is the weather. My seedings and transplantings get so confused with the weather I plan on that rarely occurs. If nothing else, gardeners are flexible.
If I could, I would rototill (sp?) my entire backyard, but challenges would be 1) I have clay, major clay (like we used to have a brick factory a few blocks from my home) and 2) trying not to take up too much play area for the kids. Oh and the wildlife too ( I had never seen a groundhog climb chicken wire until this sumer)…Thanks!
I always over buy seeds, thinking I have more space to work with than I actually do!
My biggest gardening challenge is finding a neighbor that’s reliable and knowledgeable enough to keep things going while I’m on vacation.
Deer and rabbits….The book looks great!!
Wanting to plant more tomato plants than I actually have room for.
YES.
Our biggest challenge is probably getting a good rotation pattern established for our raised beds. I’m hoping that following your pattern in your garden planner will help solve that this year.
Also, our apparent inability to kill off any volunteers of anything. Via our compost, tomatoes sprout up anywhere and everywhere in our garden and by the end of season, we are overrun with them. I know, not really a bad “problem” to have, but it can be overwhelming at times.
The weather is so unpredictable! How do I start cool weather crops early enough to be almost ready in fall when it is too hot for them in July/August? If I start too late, they don’t mature in time; if I start too early they mature too early and bolt. And what’s worse – sometimes July/August/September are cool and rainy and other times hot and dry. How can I plan for that?
My biggist problem is the size of my lot, I try to fit as much as I can without overcrowding, into a very small space and use the patio for planter gardening. 12′ x 30′ is the size of my gardening space. There’s just me, but I love fresh produce.
My biggest challenge is that I do not know where I will be, come April. We know we’re moving from this place, in part to get more space to grow plants, but we don’t know what we’ll have & won’t until March or so. There’s some chance we’ll be moving across the country, so we don’t even know exactly what climate or microclimate we’ll be dealing with.
Sooooo…. Maybe someone else should win this book.
I have got to win this book! I checked it out from the library and it is awesome!! My biggest challenge has been and will be (until I become wise) soil fertility. Also one plant needs a different food than the other.. That has been difficult for me to figure out properly.
This was my problem for a number of years until I got over my cheap streak and started adding a few inches of Cedar Grove compost to my beds every year along with soil testing and adding supplements to correct deficiencies. That along with adding a handful of crab meal/blood meal when planting out starts has made a huge difference in productivity.
Soil fertility (for nutient density) has been my lastest kick. If that’s your concern, I HIGHLY recommend The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient Dense Food by Steve Solomon.
I’m half way through the book, and LOVING what I’m learning.
Keeping the aggressive deer out of the garden is my biggest challenge. I need a new deer fence!
My biggest thing is wanting to plant more than I have room for. I also don’t have as much sun in the spot where the garden is. I need to prepare more area that is currently turf. Ugh.
My biggest problem is planting in small quantities frequently so I am not overwhelmed with a specific crop.
Creeping grass is the bane of my gardening existence. We’re moving next year (not sure if I’ll get to garden at all!) so I’m not too worried about it, but our rental house now basically has a small dirt plot at the back of the yard. I fought all season against that damn grass, I can’t wait to move and do things properly!
Space. I have none, which means I have to be VERY selective about what gets planted where.
My biggest challenge when planning is managing my expectations, I don’t have room for much so I have to be selective!
I find it really challenging to keep fall seeds and seedlings evenly watered in the heat of mid summer!
Biggest challenge is my complete lack of spacial intelligence. It’s easy to come up with the list and timing of planting – but getting that list into my seven raised beds is always harder than I think it should be.
My biggest challenges are lack of backyard (I live in an apartment) and the upstairs neighbor’s cats attacking any plants I set out on the balcony.
Oh yeah… new challenge this year – new neighbors next door started putting out their cigarettes in my herb pots!
Many challenges. Terrible soil. Not enough room for what I want to grow. Things don’t germinate. Mostly poor crop yield, but one crop always does well. Having parents, brother and sister that are excellent gardeners.
My biggest challenge is just not knowing exactly what to plan when, or when to harvest it and what to do after the harvest! I need some basic guidance, to expand my garden from spring lettuce & spinach, summer container tomatoes, and fall kale.
Getting my tomato transplants to stay stubby instead of lanky while under my grow lights.
My biggest challenge is trying to agree with my co-gardener (aka husband) on what to grow. Do we really need another tomato plant, or can we put in some eggplants instead? Should we have one fruit tree or two in the front yard? So begins many morning conversations over coffee.
My biggest challenge when I plan my garden is… wait, what plan? I thought you just buy every seed under the sun and then cram way too many into too small of a space? :-p
My biggest challenge is myself. Physical limitations keep me from doing all that I KNOW is possible, yet, I still WANT to do those things. And I want to do it all.
My biggest challenge is trying to figure out when to get which seeds in the ground. This year I was late with some (and too early with others), so my harvest was really wimpy 🙁
My biggest gardening challenge was waiting 2 YEARS to clear the wait list at our community garden (which we finally cleared in March, YAY)!
My biggest challenge is a combination of ignorance and lack of dedication. I did get an apartment community garden going in the last place I lived and it was great because I could build on the enthusiasm of others. I’m about to move into my own house for the first time and don’t even know where to begin or how to see it through! Help me!
Garden is in the planning stage, looking forward to next year.
My biggest challenge is space. We have only a narrow deck and rock wall for a back yard but I still manage to grow small amounts of many of the plants/veggies I like by using a LOT of containers. This spring, I’m going to take over the very small front yard we have so I can, hopefully, grow a few squash since the sunlight is much better there.
We are completely a purchase of 8 acres in the PNW. So, my biggest challenge is to get my gardens planned and begun correctly.
My biggest challenge is that I live in coastal central Florida, and our seasons are totally unlike the rest of the country. We can rarely grow anything in the summer, and must plant things for fall and spring. I am just beginning to garden again after about 20 years, so the learning curve is definitely there!
My biggest challenge is knowing what to plant and when. I grew up in rural Minnesota, but now live in Georgia, so my internal clock never seems to be in sync with the growing season here. Month to month guides of what to do and when would be a tremendous help to me.
Of course we also have crummy clay soil here, but we have raised beds and are continually working to improve the garden soil through compost amendments and other hugelkultur techniques.
My biggest challenge is the grass and creeping buttercup that grows in my asparagus bed. It gets so thick that it becomes too difficult to remove by hand, and I think it takes over and kills the asparagus.
I am fairly new to gardening and would like to learn the best veggies to plant for success!
my biggest challenge is teaching an old farmer new tricks. My partner’s Dad is a farmer from Kansas. She learned the old ways of gardening and I admit with much success. We have had many bountiful harvests. But getting her to try new crops, new planting patterns and winter gardening (I even bought us a greenhouse) has been my biggest challenge. I’m looking for something to inspire this 60-something gardner to venture into new territory. I think this book just might be the key. Pretty please…pick me! 🙂
My challenges are space – I don’t think any gardener ever feels like they have enough garden space. I’m also always battling between what should I grow that is economical – it’s easy to buy organic onions and they’re affordable – so I don’t grow them. But I always grow herbs, leeks and kale. This is my first year trying a winter crop and its a hallenge to figure out the timing if you’re using a bed that had summer crops in it. Thanks for the opportunity to win!
Our biggest challenge is keeping our dogs out of the garden! We built fences around our raised beds, but they still manage to get in there to do some digging. We find veggies in places they weren’t planted.
My biggest gardening challenge is space. We have a huge shade tree in the backyard whose canopy claims the north 2/3 of the yard. That leaves me room for three 4′ x 6′ raised beds.
I have heard that “the gardeners shadow is the best fertilizer” My husband believes I may very well be shading out my veggies. I get out there and just won’t leave. I literally sit in my garden and watch it grow…not the most efficient use of time.
My biggest challenge is whatever I’m facing at the moment! 🙂
Well, the biggest one is probably understanding how to get the correct yield and when to harvest it.
And the deer.
And tomatoes.
My biggest challenge is convincing whatever varmint that comes during the middle of the night to dig in the patch of dirt we left for him and not pull up our seedlings.
I love SUFC! They setup our veggie garden a few years back and now they come twice a year to get our garden ready for the growing season and again in the fall to clean everything up. Brad is a great guy who has a ton of patience with kids who want to “help”. 🙂
What is SUFC?
The Seattle Urban Farm Co. The company owned by the folks who wrote this book. 🙂
My biggest challenge is always the environment – I live in the midwest, and it’s always difficult to find enough sunlight, cultivate rich enough soil, and time those first and last frosts correctly.
my biggest challenge is wanting to do more than time and funding currently allow.
and a great dane that sees freshly turned dirt as an invitation.
My biggest challenge is time management. Working full time means that during the week I can’t actually see my garden in the daylight between November and February… If it can’t be done on the weekends my poor garden suffers.
My biggest garden challenge is me. All the things that should be done, I don’t do very consistently. And we end up with way more of some things and not enough other things for some reason.
Biggest challenges are choosing the right combo of seeds to start vs sow direct, keeping electricity bill down when starting said seeds, deer, cabbage worms, earwigs eating the corn, ant hills, cilantro bolting, prepping soil with ole lady body. oi