Top 10 Garden Practices for a Badass Garden

I am really pleased to be able to bring you our first ever gardening related Top 10. This has been compiled by Chris McLaughlin aka The Suburban Farmer. You can visit Chris at her excellent ‘A Suburban Farmer’ blog where you will see her lifetime love of gardening exhibited on every page and learn more about ‘micro farming in Suburbia’. You can follow Chris on Twitter @Suburban_Farmer.

1. Compost – Composting is the number one, perfect amendment that you can practice for a badass garden. It adds soil structure, retains water, suppresses disease, and provides nutrition. Compost can increase the growing season, save time, money and reduced water run-off and offers excellent drainage. If you practice adding compost to your garden bed routinely, you can eliminate the need for synthetic fertilizers.

2. Mulch – Mulching is one of the few gardening practices that is indispensable to gardeners in any zone. Use mulch in vegetable and flower beds as well as landscape borders. It’s unrivaled as a weed-suppressor and some mulches have pest and disease discouraging properties, as well.  Mulching save time and water due to it’s tremendous water retaining abilities. Whether you choose organic or inorganic mulch depends on what your growing and personal preference.

3. Water at ground level – This might mean using a soaker hose or installing a drip system. Even hand watering at the base of plants is perfect. But if you can avoid watering plants overhead, you could also avoid diseases such as powdery mildew and black spot that thrive on the damp foliage. Another way that overhead watering can spread disease is by hitting the soils and splashing spores onto the leaves of otherwise perfectly healthy plants.

4. Grow plants that attract beneficial insects – There are two classes of what are considered to be beneficial insects. The first class is the pollinators which make it possible for the garden to produce vegetables and flowers. These include butterflies, bees, black soldier flies, and Blue Mason bees.

The second class is comprised of predators which are those insects that consume destructive plant pests. This is the cavalry and they carry the heavy artillery. Predatory insects include ladybugs, soldier flies, and lacewings. Ideally, the gardener wants to invite both insect types into the garden.

5. Know you USDA growing zone – Although this number is a general guide and not written in stone by any means. I’ll serve you well to know basically what type of zone you’re trying to plant in. An area with a long growing season will allow you to plant any kind of watermelon your little heart desires and leaves a little wiggle room on which date you plant them.

On the other hand, if you have a limited number of warm days, you’ll pull off melons just as beautifully if you go for a variety that ripens in less days.  This is the way all successful gardeners do it – they’re not magic and they don’t have a greener thumb than you. It’s just about paying attention.

6. Use your microclimates – Microclimates are those small areas that are different than the larger general region. They’re created by a number of things such as physical structures, extra windy areas, topography, or large bodies of water.  Topography plays a major role for microclimates. Living on top of a hill or deep in a valley plays can make some big differences.

A northern slope is slower to warm up, but a south-facing slope is a mixed bag. The southern side warms up faster, but if plants begin to bloom, they could be set back if a sudden frost hits. Other factors that can affect microclimates are rainfall, soil types, mulching practices, paved surfaces, fences, walls, raised beds, cold frames, balconies, and rooftops. Savvy gardeners use their microclimates to their advantage.

7. Utilize organic practices as much as humanly possible – This isn’t just about the PC thing for PC’s sake. Most of you know me better than that. Organic gardening practices promotes healthy soil, which promotes healthy plants. Also, pesticides don’t distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys – they kill everything and let God sort ‘em out.

When a garden is inundated with pesticides, eventually, the bad guys somehow get stronger and end up taking over the garden. It never really works the other way when pesticides are involved. So, let the critters fight it out as much as you can. You know the good guys always win.

8. Learn how to utilize cold frames, hoop houses, row covers or whatever you want to call them – Cold frames are basically very short  unheated greenhouses. They’re used for extending the seasons in one direction or the other; fall and winter. Cold frames are one of the handiest tools for helping gardeners work around the uncontrollable weather. For fall or winter  cold frames can be used to grow lettuces and other cool crops. When you’re coming out of winter and facing spring, seedlings can be popped into it so they can “harden off” (or adjust) before transplanting them into their permanent bed.

Cold frames are usually built as rectangular or square box structures that have a glass or plastic top. If there are plastic pipes attached to a raised bed or garden area, it’s sometimes called a hoop house or row cover. But for all intents and purposes, it’s a cold frame.

9. Go for the raised beds if you can – Hey if you can’t pull it off, that’s perfectly fine. I definitely don’t want it discourage you from growing  food and flowers just because you don’t have raised beds. But they’re fabulously handy. Especially if you’re new to gardening. Raised beds offer less weeds, retains water and yet has better drainage, more plant room, and the soil warms up faster.

10. Check perfection at the garden gate – It surprises me every time. I’m being toured through someone’s garden (always a pleasant experience on any level) and as we pass the tomatoes they apologize because “they have some yellow leaves” and they’ll “do better next year”. Or they have these gorgeous skyscrapers for hollyhocks and invariably they mumble, “Oh, those have rust this year – must have done something wrong…”.

People, please. Your garden is perfectly stupendous! You have blossoms, and fruit, and green leaves! Real gardens are not perfect; they aren’t staged like the fantasy garden on the movie “It’s Complicated”. Did you know they wired on the tomatoes for that film?

No one’s garden is without some yellow foliage or nibbles leaves, or white cabbage butterflies. Let the perfectionism go and see your beautiful garden.

Many thanks go to Chris for her informative and stimulating post.