A friend who has lived in apartment buildings almost all her life has finally secured herself a community garden plot. She asked for advice. I wrote out a long list, and figured others might find it useful, too.
The specific dates are aimed at Toronto, Ontario. ("Now" is late April.) But the general advice and plant recommendations apply for anyone in temperate climates. I've gardened in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Edmonton. That's Canadian zones 5a, 8a, and 3b.
My overriding recommendation: plant things you'll eat. Seems obvious, but it's easy to get distracted with all the options.
Before you start planting, dig some compost into that sucker! (Unless the soil is really great already.) Test for if soil is good: get it damp and give it a squeeze. Ideally, it will mostly stick together, but expand/separate a bit. If it just falls apart completely, definitely needs rich compost. If it stays perfectly in the shape you squeezed, it's too much clay, needs compost and leaves, peat, or coconut fibre to break it up.
Also: remember to baby your babies, but don't spoil your children. Keep the soil wet for the first few weeks after planting (if you can visit every day or two). But after that give them deep drinks once a week (twice if its really hot and dry). Deep water means wait five minutes and do it again, until the top of the soil stays wet.
If you can, when your baby plants are a couple inches tall, cover the soil around them with old leaves, straw, or newspaper held down with rocks or a thin layer of soil. It'll help keep them from drying out too fast.
When selecting seeds, pay attention to the following info on the packets:
- How early you can plant Usually one of the following:
- "as soon as the ground can be worked" aka first spring thaw, when it's not likely to get < -5C and most days are > +5C
- "when the soil has warmed up" aka, most days are > 10C, very few nights < 0C
- "after all danger of frost has past", very low chance of temperatures < 0C. You can look up the usual last-frost days for your location.
- Time to harvest Different varieties of the same species can take up to a month longer to get ready to pick. Consider this number a best-case scenario. And pay attention to whether it's the time from planting seeds, or the time from transplanting (moving) small plants that you've already started indoors. You may want to look up the first-frost (in autumn) dates in your region to know how long you have. Some plants (e.g., tomatoes, basil, zucchinni, beans) will be killed by frost. Other plants (kale, green onions, parsley, carrots, beets) are fine until it gets really cold, but they won't grow much in fall, so you still want them to be big enough to harvest by first frost.
- Spacing The packet will give three numbers: seed spacing, thin-to spacing, and row spacing, often as a diagram.
- Row spacing is the minimum space you need to leave between plants in order to be able to walk between them. You don't need to leave this much space between each row. If you can reach all plants from the edge of a raised bed, you don't need any walking rows at all. For larger gardens, leave a walking row every 2 feet or so, and make it slightly larger than the average row spacing of the plants on either side.
- The thin-to spacing is the actual space you need to leave between mature plants. Use this as the distance between rows that aren't walking rows.
- For within a row, the seed-spacing distance is a recommendation based on how well these seeds usually germinate. You plant extra (e.g., seeds every 1 inch) then thin them out (remove extra plants) until you get the desired final spacing (the thin-to spacing, e.g., plants every 4 inches).
My list of easy beginner's plants:
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Peas You'll need net & posts or chain-link fence. Make it the north or east edge of the garden. Plant them now. Harvest will start end of June. How long it lasts depends on how hot and dry it gets. Remember to harvest regularly: peas will be sweeter when young, and you'll get more replacing them.
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Potatoes but only if you've got enough room. They don't like to share with others. Plant early May. Start digging around for new baby potatoes in July, and dig up everything when the plants die down.
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Beets Plant them soon to mid-May, soak the seeds 12-24 hours in advance. My favourite variety is called Early Wonder. You can plant them fairly close, and then thin them out when they're about 4inches tall and use the leaves in salads.
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lettuce and other salad greens For an easy loose-leaf lettuce, I recommend Prizehead. However, if you're a ways away from the garden and will only be able to harvest once or twice a week, you might want a head lettuce. In that case, same advice as for beets: plant densely then thin out. For looseleaf, just plant at around 1-2 seeds/square inch then harvest evenly as they grow. For all lettuces, don't bury the seeds, just pat into damp earth. Maybe cover with clear plastic to keep them damp. Check the packets to decide when to plant (depends on the variety): as soon as the ground can be worked means now, when the soil has warmed up means most days above 10C, few nights below freezing. Arugula is also a fun and easy salad green. In contrast: I've never had much luck with spinach.
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Carrots Plant following the "soil has warmed up" guide above, or you can start them a little earlier with clear plastic sheet over top. For best results, soak seeds indoors between layers of damp paper towels (12hrs to max 48hrs) before planting. Nantes Touchon is my current favourite: they grow big but still taste good when harvested small. Don't plant too densely (since you can't eat carrot greens), and remember to thin two at least 2inches between plants once they are 4 inches tall (otherwise you'll get lots of tiny, twisted carrots). Best layout is to alternate with rows of lettuce/greens (leave 4 inches between the outside seeds of the lettuce rows and the carrot seeds) and/or plant tomatoes amongst the carrots.
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Curly parsley Follow all the guides for carrots (they are close relatives), except give each plant more room (at least 6inches between plants). In Toronto, you could leave the plants in the ground in the fall and have fresh leaves in the spring. (But dig them up for the compost once they start to grow flower stalks.)
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Zucchini, but not too many. Assume >1 zucchini per plant per week from mid July to frost. Plant mid-May from seeds. Give each plant a 2foot radius. In a raised bed, put them in the corners (around 6 inches from the walls). When harvest time comes, harvest regularly, when 1-2 inches diameter. If it's thick but short, it isn't going to get long. Don't be afraid to pick a too-wide zuke and dump it on the compost pile.
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Tomatoes For a beginner, buy plants (the ones in the 4-inch square pots are big enough, or you could buy one large plant for eating throughout the summer), and try a variety of different types (you'll have more options in Toronto than I do in Edmonton). Plant mid-to-late May, depending on how warm the weather has been and whether you're going to be able to get out to cover them with clear plastic if it gets frosty. Plant them deep, up to the first set of large healthy leaves: they'll grow extra roots from the stem. Plant them between rows of carrots, and/or surrounded by lettuce or basil or parsley. Find out if your varieties are bush (need cages) or vine (need to be tied to sturdy stakes, and long branches snipped). They won't really need support until June-July, but make sure to support them before they really start setting fruit.
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Beans Plant same time as zucchinni (mid May) or when you plant tomatoes (late May), or up until early July if you have space from clearing out lettuce and such. The best tasting are the bush style. My current favourites are called Royal Burgundy: they are eggplant purple and great for eating fresh, but they look a little sad when cooked (the purple fades, so they turn purplish-green, but still taste good). Plenty of other green bush bean varieties if you prefer your beans steamed. They will get about a foot tall and wide if you keep them well watered. Remember to harvest regularly: once the individual beans start to be really obvious inside the pods, they're probably too tough. But pick those ones anyway (for the compost), so that new ones will replace them.
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Kale Plant late May/early June. Start indoors or soak the seeds 12-24hrs in paper towel. Keep an eye out for caterpillars in summer. Start harvesting in September, until everything is buried in snow. (PS, parsley is also good well into November.)
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Basil (from seed). For best results, start them indoors so you can keep the soil damp, but a couple weeks/couple inches tall is enough: start now til early May, then plant them outside with the tomatoes. Or plant them outside directly, but soak 12-24hrs in paper towel.
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Green/bunching onions, especially if you will have the same plot multiple years. The ones I've got are called Evergreen Bunching, and they've been coming back every year since I planted them in 2012. Start indoors if you can, until they are ~4inches tall, then put them out next to (~4inches from) looseleaf lettuce or parsley or beets to shade the soil but not overwhelm them. If you want them to be perennial, plan for that by planting in a row along an edge of the plot. (In future years, you won't need to fuss over them: that's only for the babies.)
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Chives and garlic chives follow the same directions as green onions, except plan for them to create a clump in future years, instead of a neat row. Or buy a pot of year-old plants in the herb section.
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Other perennial herbs to buy as pots: oregano, thyme, sage. Rosemary might survive a winter in Toronto. Again, think of what you would actually use.
If you have room for flowers (good for bees, as suggested by others), my recommendations are from seed, pick large seeds:
- nasturtiums
- sunflowers (not the giant types, plant along one edge of the plot)
- scarlet runner beans (plant same time as eating beans, along the fence/netting with the peas) (and you can eat them, steamed, but they're not as good as other types of green beans).
For buying annuals from the greenhouse, marigolds and lobelias (lovely little blue/purple flowers) are my recommendations for filling up space and staying colourful all summer.