DEREK FELL'S ADVICE TO THE BEGINNING VEGETABLE GARDENER

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

If the name Derek Fell is unfamiliar to you . . . it won't be for long. Because Derek-whose credits include Countryside Books' How to Plant a Vegetable Garden, Exposition Press's How IPlanned to Plant the White House Vegetable Garden, and a long stint as director of the National Garden Bureau—has consented to do a series of colorful, fact-packed horticultural articles for MOTHER . . . articles designed to both introduce the neophyte to the joys of the vegetable patch and teach the experienced green thumber a new trick or two. We now proudly present the first of these features.

The cultivation of a vegetable garden can be downright confusing for a beginner. And no wonder: Just look at the myriad books on the subject that have recently flooded the market. Some of these texts are so technical and long-winded that you have to be a Ph.D. botanist to understand them . . . while others are so general and superficial that they fail to teach anything of importance to anyone! And there seems to be little between the two extremes!

So this article will be a little different. It will contain no theory and no generalities. Instead, I'm just going to tell you how I garden. Mind you, I didn't go to school to learn gardening . . . rather, I asked a lot of good gardeners a lot of questions, so that—over the years?I've been able, gradually, to develop a "system" that gives me a good deal of satisfaction. It's that system I want to outline in this piece.

A HORROR STORY

My first garden was a disaster. I spent three days hand digging a 50' X 50' plot of ground . . . planted it with an assortment of vegetables (including melons, sweet corn, and the largest-fruited tomatoes I could find) that were too tempting to pass up . . . and waited.

The results were underwhelming. Most of my tomatoes contracted blossomend rot and matured too late to be of any value. (Besides which, their outsides were hideously distorted, their insides almost hollow, the yield dismal, and the flavor terrible!)

Likewise, not an ear of corn was worth eating. Even the raccoons didn't venture into the patch to steal a bite, since the cobs were either too small to bother with, or else heavily infested with smut disease.

Not a single one of my cantaloupes grew bigger than a grapefruit . . . and they all tasted like cucumbers at that! Even such easy-to-grow fare as radishes, beets, carrots, and lettuce were hopeless failures.

I was so discouraged by this performance that I nearly gave up on vegetable gardening then and there. Nearly, but not quite. Because, for some reason, I persisted. I asked farmers and friends to tell me the secrets of their successes (and failures). And, over the following seasons, I began?bit by bit?to achieve encouraging results.

LESS IS MORE

My first mistake in gardening?if you haven't already guessed?was starting too big. For a beginner, a 50-foot by 50-foot plot is a lot of ground to take care of. I'd have been much better off, as a raw novice, tending a patch just 10' wide by 15' long . . . and I'd certainly have done better to stick with such "tried and true" vegetables as snap beans, zucchini squash, tomatoes, beets, carrots, radishes, and lettuce. (I had been extremely foolish to take on melons and corn that first year! It's always smarter to master walking before you try to run.)

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print