Victory Gardening

Hello dear friends!  I've been reading that people are starting their own gardens.  One of the silver linings of all this business that is going on, is that people are becoming aware that they need to be more self-sufficient.  Hurray!  About time!  We've always had a vegetable garden and small orchard ever since we bought our first home in 1981.  I can't even fathom how much money it has saved us, plus I truly believe that it has contributed to our good health as we go into our senior years.  One of the helpful little booklets I found  for backyard (now called urban) gardeners is a little booklet put out by Stark Bros. Nursery during World War II. Here's a diagram of a small garden that anyone with even a small amount of gumption can tackle:

Sorry if the picture is a little small, you'll have to click on it if you want to see it in a larger image.  From the text:

The dimensions of this garden are 30 X 50, but it will be easy for you to adapt it to your own  small back yard dimensions. Keep in mind of the importance of growing the more expensive items such as fruits.  Here it also important that you combine food production with ornamental beauty.  In these times, when you plant a tree for ornamental uses or shade, it should be a fruit tree or fruit bearing vine.  

Now here's something that I've heard umpteenth times, "I'd love to have a garden like you, but I can't grow anything".  All the while I'm looking at their yard filled with flowers and shrubs.  If you can grow flowers, you can grow a vegetable.  If you can grow a flowering crab for ornamentation, you can grow a fruit tree.  As I've said many times, "Do you mean can't or won't?"

Here's a diagram of a little larger garden, that I particularly like:

And here's one for a half-acre plot that is common sized plot in many suburbs:

Some of the common mistakes that new gardeners make is to be too ambitious. The get someone to plow up a huge plot and find that by mid-July it's filled with weeds.  Proper plot preparation is key to success.  You need to till and work the soil until it's in pulverized condition.  You need to pull out all the grass clumps.  If you don't prepare your plots, you are just giving yourself more work and discouragement with weeding as the garden grows. That is why it is important to start small.

Another mistake I see is that new gardeners buy too many seeds.  A packet of seeds goes a long way.  They also start everything inside.  You need to read the back of the seeds packets.  Some vegetables, such as radishes, lettuces, peas , etc. are sowed directly outside before the last frost.  Some are sowed outside after frost, such as carrots, beans, corn, etc. About the only seeds we start inside are tomatoes, peppers, cauliflower and broccolis.  Here and here are two posts that Ran wrote on how to start seeds. We live in zone 4 (know your zone) and now is the time to start your indoor seeds.  Which leads me to the next point for my fellow Michigan gardeners.  Spoiler: I'm going to talk politics now, so you "sensitive"  types can stop reading:

Dear fellow Michiganders, as you well know, our lovely governor has prohibited the buying of seeds or plants and has ordered  mail order companies not to ship to our state. There is no other word for this but tyranny.  We must resist by civil disobedience.  Now. more than ever we must grow a garden in defiance.  Three ways to get around this absolutely ridiculous and illogical  edict is to trade seeds with neighbors, and ask friends and families from other states to send them to you.  A third way I've found,  is that seeds can be found in the produce section of smaller grocery stores.  (We should be supporting these smaller stores anyway.  Do not support WalMart and  Amazon, that Whitmer wants you to support. She probably has stock in them). I am so proud of my fellow Michiganders for protesting the governor.  We are showing the rest of the country how to stand up to tyranny.  Now get out there and start a garden and show Whitmer we refuse to lie down!