Jane’s Delicious Garden
Setting up a vegetable garden can be a daunting prospect, especially if you’ve never gardened before. Converting a lawn into an edible garden is an easy project that can be completed in one weekend and requires nothing more than willing hands and enthusiasm to get them dirty — and green. In no time you will be producing healthy organic food for you and your family.
When choosing a location for a vegetable garden, look for an area that receives at least six to eight hours of sunlight a day, ideally flat or on a slight slope. For many urbanites this will mean their lawn. This is a good spot for a vegetable garden as grass is not a terrifically hungry feeder, meaning the soil below it will be relatively fertile. Also, when a lawn is mowed and the blades of grass are cut, the below-ground counterpart of the plant balances out by sloughing off some roots. As a lawn is mowed regularly, the roots die back regularly too and are added to the soil, creating a humus-rich environment.
If you are a beginner gardener, start with just one or two beds. Once you have learned to manage these, expand and add more. I recommend covering the pathways, but you can leave grassed pathways as long as they are maintained regularly.
You will need
Plenty of cardboard.
About half a cubic metre of fertile growing medium (a mixture of topsoil, well-rotted manure and compost) per bed.
Bed edging (use stones, planks, bricks, logs or recycled bottles).
Material to cover the pathway (straw, bark chips, bricks or gravel).
A selection of seasonal seeds and seedlings.
What to do
1 Demarcate the area for your vegetable garden and, on the outside edge, slice down with a spade, severing all the grass runners. Insert lawn edging to prevent grass growing into your beds and paths.
2 Cut the lawn within the area as short as possible and cover the whole area with layers of cardboard, wetting it thoroughly as you go, until it is about 2cm thick. The aim is to smother the grass, so you want to block the sunlight completely.
3 Mark out the pathways (about 50cm wide) and beds, making each bed about the size of a door (1m x 2m) so you can reach the middle easily without stepping on the soil.
4 Use logs, planks, bricks or stones to edge the beds. Aim to make them about 25cm deep.
5 Lay gravel, straw or bricks over the pathways. (Placing weed cloth first will prevent weeding later.)
6 Fill the bed with growing medium, watering it in well.
7 It’s time to plant seedlings and sow seeds.
By creating a vegetable garden on top of the grass, you don’t lose any valuable topsoil, nor do you disturb the beneficial micro-organisms in the soil. Earthworms and others will convert the cardboard and grass into friable humus within a few weeks. To maintain fertility, add organic matter such as well-rotted manure and compost to the surface of the beds and use slow-release organic fertilisers when required.
Many people think a vegetable garden involves hours of daily labour. It doesn’t have to. By working with nature we can reduce unnecessary work. Here are some low-maintenance shortcuts to growing and maintaining a quick and easy vegetable garden:
Regularly mulch the surface of beds with leaves, straw or compost. This provides food and homes for beneficial insects, smothers weeds, retains moisture, keeps the soil an even temperature and prevents water runoff and disease transfer;
With smaller beds we can fill them with plants so when they are fully grown their leaves just touch one another. The resulting canopy retains moisture and creates shade, preventing weeds from germinating;
Plant a variety of vegetables and herbs in each bed. Diversity encourages beneficial insects and helps prevent disease;
Do successive sowings for continual harvests;
Leave some plants to go to seed for a self-sufficient vegetable garden;
Don’t harvest whole plants — just pick leaves from a few; and
Keep records of what you have sown where.
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