Start simple when growing your own food

Jeanne Crisp and Julie Kelly | Mukilteo Community Garden

Editor’s note: The Beacon is pleased to debut a new garden column by the Mukilteo Community Garden. Boardmembers will be offering tips on gardening each month.

Imagine picking the lettuce and cherry tomatoes you need for your evening salad moments before making dinner.

If you have space for a container 12-18 inches in diameter, at least 6 inches deep, which would be in the sun at least 6-8 hours per day, you could grow your salad at home. You can make a container out of most anything that has drainage holes and will hold a gallon or more of good soil. It’s an easy way to get started with vegetable gardening, especially if you’re a beginner and wondering if this hobby is for you.

If you have room to build a raised bed, or to turn over a plot of dirt in your yard, you can be more ambitions than lettuce and radishes. If Mother Nature cooperates with enough hot summer days, you can even aspire to sweet corn, beefsteak tomatoes, and hot peppers. (Disclaimer – that’s a big IF.)

But let’s start small and simple with one or two crops you like to eat. Lettuce, radishes, spinach, and green onions are examples of cool weather vegetables that are easy to grow from seed and can thrive in containers, or in larger beds. If you prefer, you can buy starter packs of vegetables. But it’s very satisfying to sow seeds indoors, watch them germinate and grow a few inches, pop the plants out of the pots and into their container or bed, and let them get big enough to eat.

Your job is to provide good quality soil, compost or fertilizer, protection from hungry neighbors like deer or rabbits, water, and maybe sing to them on occasion.

Mid-January to mid-February is a good time to buy seeds for cooler weather vegetables, some starter soil and pots, and decide where you’ll grow your crops.

One temptation that gets beginners in trouble is to put too many plants in the space available. Unless you’re planting a huge garden, this means you’ll only use a portion of the seeds in the packet. You might want to find a gardening buddy, someone who can share the seed packets and water if you’re away, and who will understand your successes and frustrations.

Mukilteo Community Garden boardmembers will write a monthly column in the Beacon to share tips for successful vegetable gardening in Mukilteo. Each column will be timely, explaining what you do NOW in order to grow vegetables. And once the COVID crisis is over, our community garden will once again be a place everyone can visit to learn more about growing dozens of kinds of vegetables, from Asian greens to zucchini.

Our next column will be more specific about starting seeds indoors versus direct seeding outdoors, and will give tips about protecting against hungry critters. The

Mukilteo Community Garden website, mukilteogarden.org, includes links to online resources and publications. Meanwhile, if you have questions about particular crops and how or when to plant them, email gardenadvice@mukilteogarden.org. Happy planting!

The Mukilteo Community Garden consists of 50 rental garden beds and approximately 1,800 square feet of growing space earmarked to grow fresh produce for area food banks Learn more, and find helpful gardening tips, at https://mukilteogarden.org.