Vegetable Gardening (101 page)

If there's a long dry spell or if you live in a dry-summer area, water the entire pile to keep it lightly moist.

Make a depression in the top of the pile to collect rainfall.

You also must turn the pile periodically to aerate it, prevent it from overheating, and ensure that all the material decomposes uniformly. You can turn your compost pile by forking the material from the outside of the pile to the center or by moving the pile from one area to another. If you made a pile out of wire fencing, simply unhook the ends, pull the fencing apart, and move the cylinder a few feet away from the pile. Then fork the materials from the pile into the empty wire cylinder.

How often you turn the pile and how quickly the compost is done depend on how quickly decay takes place. For example, green, succulent organic material — like fresh grass clippings — decays faster than dried plant material; cool fall temperatures or a spell of rainy days that turn the pile soggy slow things down. Follow these guidelines for deciding when to turn your pile:

If you added only shredded material, the pile may be ready for turning in a week.

If the pile contains a lot of big pieces of organic material, wait several weeks before turning.

If the pile heats up and then cools, turn it.

Turning the pile two to three times throughout the process is plenty.

You can tell that decay has set in if your pile starts to smell bad. If smells occur, hold your nose and fix things by spreading out the pile and reconstructing it.

Your compost is ready for use when the interior of the pile is no longer hot and all the material in the pile has broken down into a uniform, dark crumbly substance; this process takes about 1 to 2 months. To determine whether the pile is no longer hot, feel the interior of the pile with your hand. If you're squeamish, use a compost thermometer (which is available at garden centers).

Chapter 15: Maintaining Your Vegetable Garden

In This Chapter

Watering your plants

Mulching your vegetable garden

Understanding necessary soil nutrients

Feeding your vegetables

Staking and trellising plants

Controlling weeds

After planting your garden, you need to keep your vegetables growing vigorously until harvest. Maintaining your vegetable garden is similar to running a long-distance road race. After you're off and running, the key is to pace yourself for the whole race and not burn out in the beginning. Gardeners face a similar situation. You not only have to have lots of enthusiasm to prepare the soil and plant, but you also have to be consistent about checking plants, watering, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting (among other tasks) to get the best results. If you lose interest in your garden halfway through the growing season, your harvest may be small or poor. Don't worry though; your garden won't require all your time — just some of it each week.

In this chapter, I tell you everything you need to know to keep your vegetables happy — including keeping your soil moist and fertile, adding mulch, supporting your plants, and keeping weeds at bay.

Introducing Your Inner Gardener to the Watering Basics

Even though Mother Nature is often very generous with rain, she still sometimes leaves gardens with a dry spell. Flooding isn't good for your garden, but neither is drought. If your plants don't have adequate water at the right times, they can easily die.

Different crops have different water needs. Some vegetables, like celery, are real water lovers and prefer to have moist soil around their roots at all times. Shallow-rooted crops (like onions and cabbage) need more careful watering during dry spells than deeper-rooted crops (like tomatoes) that can pull water from greater depths. Part II provides specific watering information for all the different vegetables.

You also need to keep in mind a plant's growth stage when watering. Here are some general watering guidelines for different growth stages:

Seedlings and germinating seeds:
Seedlings with small root systems near the soil surface and germinating seeds benefit from frequent, gentle watering, which enables them to sprout and emerge quickly. Water once a day to a few inches deep if it doesn't rain. (Chapter 13 has more details on seedlings and transplants.)

Transplants:
Water transplants when they're first planted in the garden and then every few days after that to 6 inches deep or so. Watering frequently helps the roots recover from transplant shock.

Established plants:
Plants that have been in your garden for a few weeks and that are beyond transplant shock need to be watered deeply. Try to wet the soil at least 6 inches deep. Watering to this depth encourages roots to penetrate deeply, where they're less susceptible to drought. Give the soil a chance to dry out slightly (3 to 6 days if it doesn't rain) before watering thoroughly again.

When I tell you to water to a certain number of inches, don't feel like you have to guess when you've hit the mark; you can dig into the soil with a trowel to see how far the water has penetrated.