My Chicago Garden

…Picking a location to grow your vegetables…

This is part two in our four part series on ‘Getting Started with a Vegetable Garden’. This espisode will cover recognizing the right site for your garden.


But first a personal note.  I’ve finally moved up to Chicago and will be living in a corporate apartment in the Ashland area of the Edgewood neighborhood of north Chicago. Hopefully I’ll be moving out to the suburbs in the next few months once our house sells down in Northern Kentucky. Interestingly enough, one of the better well known garden centers in the area is only one block from the apartment. I’ve already stopped in to talk to some of the staff at Gethsemane Gardens and hopefully I’ll have an interview or tour of their shop for a future episode. But let’s get back to the topic of this episode.

So you’ve already figured out how much you think you want to grow, but you don’t know if you have enough space or where to put the garden. We will assume that you actually have a yard for your garden. If you don’t have a yard you can look for space on your porch, deck or even the roof. Nearly anything can be grown in a container so don’t sell yourself short on having a garden if you don’t have any actual land to your name.  But for  this episode we’ll deal with an in the ground garden.

If there is a most important consideration in figuring out where to put your garden it’s sunshine.  Without sun your plants wont grow. Most vegetable plants need full, unobstructed sunlight for at least 6 hours a day.  Many can deal with less, but you will not reap their full potential. If you have morning sun, that’s even better as it helps to dry the dew from the leaves and reduces the chances of certain diseases.

To figure out where your best sun locations are in your yard try the following…

Get some stakes or flags from a local home store and mark the shadows in your yard every hour for a day. The best time to do this is in the spring growing season but unless you have a lot of tree cover you should be fine anytime of the year.  You could also use an old landscapers trick and use a sprinkle of floor to outline the shadow lines in your yard.  Wherever there are no lines or stakes you have sun! For those that do have trees or buildings in the area just remember that the sun dips towards the horizin in the winter so shadows will cast further into your yard. If you find that you don’t have one particular area that seems to be sunny all day, find the best location you can.  Also, remember that your garden does not need to be one large area. You can use several small areas, in fact that may even look more pleasing in your particular garden.

Now that we have the sun thing figured out…what about wind?  Extremely windy areas can dry out your plants or cause other problems. But then again no wind is just as bad. If you have lived in your location for several years you probably know the direction that wind usually comes from.  If you think you have a high wind area for your garden, consider planting wind breaks in your garden such as evergreens or raspberry bushes. If you have high bushes or solid fences surrounding your garden consider thining things out or changing your fencing material if you have the resources and ability to do so. It’s not critical to have the perfect wind environment but it will help. Just do your best.

Now that you’ve tramped around your garden measuring sun and looking at various wind characteristics look down.  That’s right..look down. Are your shoes covered in mud? If they are you need to consider where that mud came from. Most plants do not like a wet feet. Meaning they don’t like living in a swamp.  Conversily, they don’t like living in a desert either.  If you find that you have either a swamp or a desert in your backyard you’ll probably want to consider raised bed gardening to mitagate the issues of water retention you have. Standing water after a rain or snow is okay, but it should drain away fairly quickly.  If it puddles for days on end, that’s bad.

Now that we have considered sun, wind and rain let’s consider the visuals. Let’s face it…gardens should be pretty to look at.  Practice a little self imposed embarrsement and put your garden where everyone can see it.  If people can see your garden, you’ll be more likely to spend time in it making it look nice and tending the plants. So go inside your home and look out your various windows into your yard.  If you can, try and place the garden in site of your windows.  Not only will you get to enjoy the growing of your plants from indoors, you’ll be more likely to remember to work in your garden if you see it every time you walk past the window.  People seem to always put their garden behind a garage, or back along the fence or down the sideyard. That’s fine if that’s all you have, but a garden works better if people can see it.  If you must put your garden out of site so to speak, consider putting a small garden, often referred to as a "kitchen garden" near the house. You can plant herbs and other favorite plants there, while putting the large plants such as corn and beans out in the back 40.

That’s all for this edition of my Chicago Garden. my Chicago Garden is a production of AllisonHouse LLC, copyright 2006 and comes to you from  my apartment in the Edgewater neighhood on the northside of Chicago. I’m Tyler Allison and I hope you have a little bit of nature in YOUR own backyard. Thanks for listening.

 

 Episode 2 - Picking a Location to Grow Your Vegetables [5:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download