Homestead Gardening Types
Obviously, you know that there are many homestead gardening types, but what are they exactly? The different kinds of gardening are:
1. Square foot gardening
2. Rooftop gardening
3. Container gardening
4. Vertical Gardening
5. Backyard gardening
6. Raise bed gardening
7. Trellis gardening
8. Companion gardening
You may also use a combination of these types of gardening as may be needed, based on the kind of plant you choose to grow and the position of your garden space in consideration of other factors such as sunlight, water and wind. Let us take a closer look on each type of gardening and their unique features:
Rooftop Gardening
Land is becoming scarcer, especially for gardening purposes. Urban homesteaders are finding it difficult to grow a garden because of the lack of suitable land for gardening purposes.
Rooftop gardening is one of the best alternatives for urban gardeners who want to enjoy the innumerable benefits of a garden even when there is no sufficient land available for them. Rooftop gardening is especially helpful in urban environments and cities where ground space for garden is hard to come by.
This piece of green land can be used to produce fruits and vegetables or simply as a play area — or even for decorative purposes. Although not every roof top can be converted into a full-fledged garden, you can make use of the empty space to grow a number of fruits and vegetables.
You can make use of the entire rooftop to make a garden or plant a number of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers in containers and pots to be placed on the roofs or balconies. Some rooftop gardens do not require excessive maintenance or upkeep.
These rooftops work as a simple roofing material, and are not intended for heavy foot falls. However, there are rooftop gardens that need heavy upkeep, landscaping, and reinforcement to withstand the weight of the garden.
- Before you start planting the roof, first inspect the roof and make sure government and environmental regulations allow constructing a rooftop garden.
- Find out if the roof can withstand the weight of the garden; if it can’t, then provide proper reinforcements to strengthen it.
- If you are unsure of it, consult a structural engineer to help you out.
- Choose a design that takes into consideration sunlight, watering needs, the plants and maintenance. · Remember you can’t grow every plant on your root; so choose the plants wisely after clearly understanding its nature and growth capabilities.
- You can also use a number of pots, containers and planters to help you build a good garden on the roof. · Consider windbreakers to make your garden less susceptible to getting blown away because of the wind. · Also consider watering methods you are going to use.
- The plants you can grow on your rooftop are ‘Blue Star’ juniper, lavender, daylilies, maiden grass, carrots, greens, lemon-pickling cucumbers, pole beans, lettuce, beats, chives, radishes, and snap peas.
Backyard Gardening
Everyone dreams of a backyard garden — the perfect place to grow fruits, vegetables, flowers and whatnot! Moreover, growing your own fruits and vegetables has such a charm that it is converting not-the-gardening types into — green-thumbs very quickly.
There is no age limit to take up gardening; and you are sure to get enough sun and exercise with gardening. One of the basic steps of backyard gardening is choosing the right spot to plant your garden.
Some of the key points to note while planting your urban homesteading garden are:
- Decide the garden size before deciding on what you want to plant. Urban homesteading is all about doing you’re planting and harvesting by yourself, and organically. You should make sure that you have the necessary tools and time to take care of your garden. So, if you are a starter, start small and slowly increase the size of the garden.
- Choose what plants you want to grow depending on what you want to consume.
- Make sure you don’t have too many large trees growing near your garden spot, and also envision future trees
- Remember the amount of sunlight this spot will receive, the wind and watering needs of the soil
- Plant seasonal vegetables and fruits so that you can sustain the whole year through. Do not plant too much of one single plant type; always make interval plantings of any one vegetable at least every 10 days or so. Plants that have short peak periods tend to grow faster, and these can be replaced immediately.
- It is also good to group plants that have similar planting conditions and harvest dates.
- Interplant plants that have a fast growing time with plants that grow slowly.
Square Foot Gardening
The practice mixes concepts from other natural gardening strategies including a sound focus on fertilizers, densely rooted raised plots and bio-intensive focus to a small, plainly defined space.
This technique is particularly best for areas with weak soil, new gardeners or as acquired recreation for people with disabilities. It was made famous by Mel Bartholomew in a 1981 Rodale Press book and succeeding PBS television shows.
You do not really need a parcel of land to produce fresh veggies. Offers an easy way to harvest a lot of produce in a small and confined garden space. Square foot gardening is most beneficial for those who have space constraints and restrictions.
You will be able to grow a number of fruits and vegetables in confined spaces. You can easily plant as many fruits and vegetables your square foot garden can hold at once. To be able to successfully grow a square foot garden in your house, all you need is few feet of land, some good soil mixture, seeds and a lot of patience.
Equally divide the square yard into small pieces in such a manner that they can accommodate your favorite plants. The success of square foot gardening also depends on the sunlight, wind, watering, soil mixture, fertilizers and the square foot gardening boxes used. Before you start making these boxes, you should first determine the size and location of your garden.
You can purchase built boxes but since we are into urban homesteading, building square foot gardening boxes is very important. It is easy to build the boxes using basic tools. Make sure you build a large square shaped open bottomed box; with partitions dividing the whole box into a number of smaller squares. Now, fill in this box with soil mixture and start planting.
Container Gardening
Container Gardening is another example of good urban homestead garden. The very term ‘garden’ manages to invoke images of lush green ground garden in most of us. However, for those dealing with urban space constraints, having a piece of land for gardening is very difficult.
However, this should not put you out of the running for growing a garden. Container gardening is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to have a garden. You can grow a container garden indoors, on your rooftops, on your front porch, on balconies, windowsills and on your steps.
Even if you prefer your favorite large variety, you may achieve the same if you provide it an adequately sized pot with lots of soil and enough water, it will grow just the same and reward you with a bountiful harvest. Vegetables that use little areas such as lettuce, carrots, radishes or plants that produce fruits over an extended period of time such as peppers and tomatoes are just right for container veggie gardens.
What you can develop in a container vegetable plot is limited merely by the size of the area and your imagination. Since your veggie plants will be creating their containers abode, you want to begin them off right. Ensure there is enough area for them to develop into and pick your soil and location with care. Here are some tips for setting up your container gardening for specific vegetables.
Choosing Containers:
Containers for your veggie gardens can be:
1. Buckets
2. Bushel baskets
3. Flower pots
4. Large food cans
5. Nursery flats
6. Old rubber tires cut into halves
7. Pails
8. Plastic bags
9. Strawberry pots
10. Washtubs
11. Window planters
12. Wire baskets Drainage: Whatever kind of box you choose for your veggie garden, it should have punctures at the base to allow drainage of surplus water.
Color Matters:
Be careful when handling dark tinted containers as they tend to absorb warmth which could damage the roots of the plants. If you use dark hued pots, take a crack at painting them a lighter shade.
Dimension:
The dimension of the container is significant. Larger veggies like eggplants and tomatoes, requires the use of a five gallon container for each plant. You can develop these plants in two gallon containers, but you will need to sustain the plants extensively with more water.
Soil and Fertilizer:
You may use top soil in your container veggie garden, but potting mixes would be better. You can choose among vermiculite, peat-based mixes or containing peat for your potting mixes. They are relatively germ-free and pH regulated. They also permit the plants to get sufficient water and air.
Combining one portion of compost to two portions of planting mix will enhance fertility. Applying a complete natural fertilizer at potting will keep your veggies fed for the whole growing season.
Watering:
Potted plants always need more regular watering as compared to that of plants imbedded into the ground. As the season advances and plants develop, their roots will expand and need even more water. Inadequate water will cause the plants to wilt. Hence, it is best to check your pots every day for possible need for water.
Wind:
The wind can be a formidable hazard for any potted grown plant and tall veggies, like tomatoes, as their top becomes heavy when they bear fruits. Try to put your containers in a location where you can manage the effects of wind.
A breeze will give a nice air flow and help protect against fungal ailments. On the other hand, a powerful wind can knock down plants and containers. It can likewise tear leaves and make fruits fall. If your garden is on a roof top or raised deck, it is necessary to build some kind of wind block.
Container gardening gives you the freedom of picking up any container that you can find in your backyard and convert it into a feasible and viable part of your container garden. Moreover, container garden gives you the freedom to move the containers to different locations in your house depending on the needs of the plants.
If you think your plants are going to drown in the pouring rain, all you have to do is move that particular container indoors or to a better location. The container materials you choose will determine plant growth, water needs, and sunlight. If you are using terracotta or earthen containers, you have to make sure that you keep the plants moist as these container materials tend to absorb moisture very quickly.
Vertical Gardening
Not every one of us has been blessed with space to grow a garden; some of us have to make with just a wall to call our own. With vertical gardening, even a wall is more than enough. Whether you have a large wall or just a small hinge to hang a pot on your balcony, you can start growing upright crops easily. With a little bit of creativity and lots of patience, you can make a beautiful vertical garden in very little space.
There are various plant varieties such as pole beans and cucumbers that produce more than double their usual yield when you grow them on the right sized trellis.
You have crops like tomatoes that grow well and bring a good yield only when you give them enough support to stand upright and off the damp ground. All you have to do is give your plants all the needed support, and you can enjoy a wonderful garden.
Raised-bed Gardening
Raised bed gardening is a type of gardening in which the earth is formed in 4 foot or 1.2 meters broad beds, which can be of any shape or length. The soil is elevated above the nearby soil, within a range of six inches to waist-high of the farmer, is sometimes surrounded by a frame mostly made of cement blocks, wood or rock and may be enriched with fertilizer.
The vegetable plants are spread out in geometric arrangements, much nearer together as compared to the traditional line gardening. The positioning is such that when the veggies are fully developed, their leaves only barely come in contact with each other, making a micro-climate in which unwanted plant growth is blocked and moisture is preserved.
Elevated beds produce many benefits:
- They lengthen the planting period.
- They can lessen weeds if arranged and planted correctly and reduce the use of poor natural soil.
- The soil is loose making the roots grow easily as the gardener cannot walk on the elevated beds.
- The near plant arrangement and the use of organic compost usually result in increased yields in comparison to traditional row gardening and
- Waist-high elevated beds makes it possible for the physically disabled and elders to grow veggies without the need to bend over to be in charge of them.
Trellis Gardening
Trellising veggies and fruits is a planting technique that maintains plants out of the ground, increases production and usable area. It also protects your harvest, especially tomatoes, from decaying. There are as many trellising choices as there are kinds to grow.
The secret is finding or making the most applicable one for your requirements. Here are some crops best for this kind of gardening style:
Tomatoes
Most tomato variations benefit from a robust support. Deciding the excellent way to maintain disorderly plants in some form of order is contingent on the tomato kind and its growth designs. Determinate tomatoes are medium-sized plants that develop to a permanent mature dimension and mature all their fruit in a small period of time.
They are the type which benefits from a little elevation off the floor area in the form of cages or stakes. On the other hand, indeterminate types continue to flourish all the time, with fruits maturing until the plant is damaged by frost or bad weather.
These types do better trained on a trellis system. Indeterminate tomato varieties often grow to enormous pinnacles in hot weather, thus making them extremely unmanageable. It is only through trellising that the gardener can control the branches, enable the sunlight to get deeper into the plant and maintain the fruit uncontaminated.
Trellising also allow the plants to be close thus resulting to a more effective use of area. Commonly raised tomato varieties include: Big Boy, Brandy-Wine, Early Girl, Honey Grape, Rutgers and Super Sioux.
Pole Beans
Popular varieties are Scarlet Runner, Black-Seeded Blue Lake, Kentucky Blue Pole and Kentucky Wonder.
Peas
Sugar Snap and Tall Telephone are the preferred varieties on peas.
Melons
Favored varieties include the Blenheim Orange Muskmelon, Delicious 51 Muskmelon, Moon and Stars, and Sugar Baby.
Cucumbers
Armenian and Market-more 76 are the favorites in Cucumber varieties.
Pumpkins and Squash
The highly chosen varieties consist of Jack-Be-Little, Patty Pan and Zucchini Jackpot Hybrid.
The advantages of trellising are not only for tomatoes. Training other produce to grow upward instead of spreading all over the garden not only maintains the produce off the ground, but allows you to grow more in a limited area. Peas and pole beans can oftentimes reach over six feet high and are generally trellised.
Their support can be as plain as a teepee created from willows, a metal control panel fastened to a metal hedge posts, or uprights made of wood with chicken cable stretched amid them. It is best to choose a system dependent on the growing behavior of your favored variety.
Companion Planting
Companion plating makes effective use of area and attract helpful insects. Many also agree that specific plant mix have extraordinary and mysterious powers for aiding each other flourish. Scientific research of companion planting has confirmed that some mix have true benefits exclusive to those combinations. And practical involvement has demonstrated to a lot of gardeners how to pair off specific plants for their mutual value.
Companion planting works best in:
1. Assisting each other develop as seen by high plants giving shade for sunsensitive smaller plants;
2. Efficiently using garden area as exemplified by having two plants in one patch where vine plants spread over the ground while vertical plants grow;
3. Deterring pest difficulties as typical of onions warding off some bugs while some other plants can drive pests away; and,
4. Attracting helpful insects which usually are predators of unwanted insects.
Prized plant combinations include:
1. Roses and Garlic
Gardeners have been growing chives with roses for eons, mainly because garlic repels rose bugs. Garlic chives act merely as repellents, yet their small white or purple flowers at the end of spring appears lovely with flowers and foliage of roses.
2. Cabbage and Tomatoes
Tomatoes are repulsive to diamondback moth larvae, caterpillars that eat through big holes in the leaves of the cabbage.
3. Nasturtiums and Cucumbers
The vine stems of the nasturtiums make it a great buddy to the rambling cucumbers and squash plants. Nasturtiums are known to prevent cucumber beetles but are also a habitat for greedy insects like ground beetles and spiders.
4. Peppers and Pig-weed or Rag-weed
Leaf-miners preferred the unwanted plants to spray plants in a study conducted at the Coastal Plains Experiment Station in Tifton, Georgia. Just make sure to remove the flowers of the weeds before they place seed or you will have trouble managing the weeds.
Originally posted 2020-08-30 09:12:00.
