Just because your back 40 is 40 inches by 40 inches, doesn’t mean you can’t grow your own food, says Sherri Sanders, White County extension agent for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
With winter on the way, wannabe kitchen gardeners have a few months to dream ahead and maybe add specific equipment to their holiday wish lists.
“Where garden space is very limited, consider wide-row planting of vegetables,” she said. “Wide-row planting is simply a matter of broadcasting seeds in bands anywhere from 10 inches to 3 feet wide instead of a single band on each row.
“With the wide row system, more square feet of garden space is actually producing vegetables, and less space is left for cultivation between the rows,” she said. “With this method, production will usually more than double.”
Many plants that do well with this technique include beets, lettuce, radish, carrots, green onions, spinach, collards, hot peppers, turnips, kale and mustard greens. Beans, peas and potatoes also fare well. Herbs such as rosemary, thyme, oregano, dill and basil are easy growers and highly suitable for backyard farming.
“Containers such as plastic or clay pots, wooden boxes or baskets, tin or plastic buckets or pails and metal cans could be used for mini-gardens,” Sanders said. “Leaf lettuce, radishes and onions could be grown in these types of containers.
“Larger containers with one or more gallon capacity could be used for single plants of tomatoes, peppers or eggplant,” she said.
Of course, your mini-farm will need water.
“Trickle irrigation systems have provided an innovative way to water a garden with a minimum amount of water,” Sanders said. “Several manufacturers make trickle irrigation tubing suitable for the home garden for a modest cost.”
Be sure not to overwater, since water displaces oxygen from the soil and can kill plants.
If you’re organized, you can get more than one crop out of your mini-farm.
Some vegetables have a short harvest season.
“If only one planting is done, these vegetables will be available for a limited time,” she said. “Two or three plantings of these crops may be made a week or 10 days apart, providing a much longer harvesting period.”
Crops that have a short harvest period include radishes, leaf lettuce, spinach, bush snap beans, green onions and sweet corn.
For more information about container growing or small-space gardening, follow this link or contact your county extension office.
The Cooperative Extension Service is part of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
