If our biggest focus is on the five elements that create the healthiest, most-productive garden plants—immense amounts of direct sunlight, amazing soil, just the right amount of water, the proper temperature, and ideal spacing— we end up with plants that practically take care of themselves! The final two big secrets—companion planting and garden design and layout—provide the final complement that bring out the absolute best of our plants.
What if You Find You Don’t Have Enough Sun? So what if, after trying all of your best spots, you find that there just isn’t a spot on your property that gets enough sun? Do what you can, but don’t be too hard on yourself. Lack of sunlight is by Read more
Using a Compass to Find Your Cardinal and Ordinal Directions This is the most basic way to use a compass. If you’re orienteering, there is a whole other set of ways to use one, but, if you just want to know your basic directions, this will work. Set your compass Read more
Orienting Yourself Family Touchstones Like many “older-timers,” as a child, I saw the sun rise so many times over the same tree-covered hills on the east side of our family farm that I took knowing my cardinal directions there for granted. Knowing east, I could point to any of the Read more
The First Steps for All Methods Outline Your Spot Pick a spot you think is most promising for getting the most direct sunlight, and mark out its boundaries. To outline your prospective spot, start by marking the corners with stakes, sticks, rocks, or the like—or just rough up each corner Read more
How Much Sunlight Do Garden Plants Really Need? As much as you possibly can possibly give them! There is no real upper limit. Have you ever seen the pictures of the record crops grown in Alaska? There’s a reason that happens in a place where plants get ridiculous amounts of Read more
What Green-Thumbed Gardeners Know About Sunlight The Common Read Plants need light. We all know that, but some of us get confused on the needs of our garden plants because some of our non-garden plants do well with smaller amounts of direct light or even indirect light. Not so with Read more
Why Garden Plants Need So Much There are three reasons your garden plants need so much direct sunlight: 1) garden plants’ natures as annuals, 2) our expectations for their production, and 3) how they’ve been treated and have adapted since being domesticated. The Reasons First, except asparagus and rhubarb, common Read more
Crop Rotations Put simply, garden crops need to be rotated, or planted in a different spot, each year. The reasons usually fall into two categories: First, some plants pull so much of a certain nutrient out of the soil—corn feeding heavily on nitrogen, for example—that the soil needs a year Read more
Companion Planting—An Overview What It Is and What We Know of Why It Works Companion planting is yet another powerful tool in the garden. This powerful secret to full green-thumbed gardening is based on the simple observation that certain plants show improved health, growth, and production when planted next to Read more
Past Paradigms Walk into a garden in the 1950s and you can guess the layout: rows. We can all imagine them. They’re the most salient feature of gardens from that era—and many through today. Seeing it in person or in our mind’s eye, we can even imagine the process: a Read more