Choosing a growing method...

[huntsman]

My growing season is upon me and I planted my first ever tomato seeds four days ago.

Already most have sprouted and I realise I am totally unprepared! Inadequate lighting, heating etc, and more importantly: WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?!

I have not really researched the various methods of growing, only finding out a little about the 'Raised Bed' method, and touching on the 'EarthTainer' way, and now my sprouts have caught me unaware!

Perhaps you more experienced folk can save me a great deal of time and pain, and suggest which direction I should move in for my first crop? Raised Bed, Direct in the garden, Self Watering, Container growing or whatever....?
I'd really appreciate the input so I can start planning.

I intend to grow for the family, but with the economy the way it is, I might well try to sell at a local Farmer's Market.

I would like ten or 20 varieties, (but am open to advice) and have about 12 x 5' of space that I was hoping to allocate to toms.

Sorry to dump this on you, but it's pretty daunting to be honest! ))

[dice]

What is the soil like in that 12' x 5' space? If it is heavy clay
or sand, it would be fastest to build a raised bed on it or set
containers on it. What has been growing in it until now?

If building a raised bed, then you need something for the sides
and something to fill it with. When I built one, I had a bunch
of thin (1/4" or so), wide (18"), long (20') sheets of fir sitting
in a pile from the milling of an old fir tree blown down in a
storm. So those became the sides. (They will rot eventually,
and when they do I will replace them with something else.)

To fill it, I had a large pile of (free) composted horse manure
from someone that has horses and is only too happy to have
people haul away the ever-accumulating horse manure. That
filled it about halfway. I shredded a large pile of leaves and
branches pruned from around the yard, and I added those in.
I got many bags of oak leaves from someone that had raked
them up the previous fall, and I added those, along with a
bag of alfalfa pellets and flax seed meal to help the leaves
break down. I added kitchen wastes over a winter (coffee
grounds, trimmed off hunks of vegetable, eggshells, etc).
I added grass clippings from mowing the lawn (no weedkillers).
Etc.

I topped the whole thing off with a few inches of dirt from
where the stump of the downed tree had been removed.

Plants have done fine it. It helped to have half a winter to
find organic matter to fill it up. I did not have to buy topsoil
or anything like that. Each fall I plant a winter cover crop
in it (cereal rye and vetch, mostly, because those are what
survive winter best in my local climate to put on some growth
in both fall and spring), and I mow it in the spring before
planting, using the mowed cover crop for mulch the next summer.

When I sow the cover crop in fall, I just broadcast the seed on
top and cover it with an inch or so of container mix from
containers that I used that summer (keeps the squirrels and
birds from eating the seed, although the squirrels proved to
be quite fond of newly sprouted bell beans last fall). If I run
out of used container mix before I run out of area to cover,
I used shredded leaves, grass clippings, dirt, whatever I
can find.

If you decide to use containers, then you need to find them
somewhere. If you decide on self-watering containers, then
you need some pipe (fill tubes), etc, and you need to build
them. You also need enough container mix (potting soil) of
some kind to fill them.

If your soil is pretty good, you could just mow anything growing
there now, scatter some vegetable food and gypsum around,
turn it over with a shovel, and plant in it, see what happens.

[Barbee]

Ideally, you want to work a new garden plot in the fall and plant it the next spring. By working it, I mean tilling it (or if you do no till, then adding your cover crop) and do your amendments and let the whole thing lay fallow over winter.
Why don't you tell us what you were planning on originally and then we'll be better able to advise?

[huntsman]

Thanks dice & Barbee -

I have several spots in mind, but only grass - and very thinly - has been growing there thus far. The ground is in poor condition, having not been fertilised in any way since 2003, so a truckload of poop is required if I'm to do anything this Summer. (Starts in a week or two)

Good input on the raised bed, dice - thanks, man!

Do you guys grow the winter crop purely to use as fertiliser, or do you harvest? (Just curious)

I would like to try the most cost effective way, particularly at first, whilst I learn the basics, and times are tight here too, to be honest.

[dice]

Do you guys grow the winter crop purely to use as fertiliser, or do you harvest? (Just curious)

It does a few different things. Usually you want a legume in
the mix, like some kind of vetch, clover, bell beans, winter
peas, etc. Those fix nitrogen from the air in nodules on their
roots. When the cover crop plants die in summer, bacteria,
fungi, and earthworms break down the roots, and that nitrogen
becomes available to summer crops. The roots of legumes
produce enzymes that break down insoluble phosphorus
compounds in the soil, too. The top growth from the legumes
contains quite a bit of nitrogen, too, available as it decays
in summer.

The grain part of it, cereal rye (also known as winter rye) in
my case, provides support for legumes like vetch and peas
to climb on as they grow. People also use winter wheat,
sudangrass, barley, etc for this part of the cover crop,
depending on their climate.

The cover crop also scavenges nitrogen still remaining in the
soil at the end of summer, using it to grow the cover crop plant,
instead of letting it leach down below the root zone in the rain.

It also provides a lot of competition for weeds in the fall and
spring, and the mulch after it is mowed helps suppress weeds
in the summer.

People that till their soil will till the cover crop back into
the soil in spring. People that grow without tilling just mow
it and leave it on top of the soil. Usually one does that as soon
as it flowers, so that the cover crop does not set seed and
become a weed. (Orchards, vineyards, and so on are different
than vegetable gardens; letting the cover crop go to seed
and sprout on its own is just fine in those.)

The roots of cover crops also condition the soil, providing air
spaces as they decay, breaking up compressed dirt, improving
drainage, and providing sources of food for beneficial bacteria
and fungi. Some have very deep roots that can break up
compacted subsoil (alfalfa is the champion for this, but it is not
a winter annual; it is either perennial or a summer annual, and
either way it grows in the summer and goes dormant in winter,
sort of the opposite of what you want from a winter cover
crop). Those deep roots pull up mineral nutrients from deep
in the soil into the top growth of the cover crop, where they
become available to summer crops as the top growth decays.

Finally, the top growth just adds bulk organic matter to the
soil, whether tilling it in or leaving the mulch in place to
decay and become humus on top of the soil.

I do not harvest the grain, because it matures too late in the
year. If I let the grain grow that long, I would be planting
my vegetables too late in those beds.

I would guess that with your climate, cover crops that do well
in California would probably work for you, too. One issue: you
do have to buy seed every year. For home gardens, that is not
an especially big expense compared to other things that they
buy for their gardens. Growing on a large scale, cost of cover
crop seed is definitely an issue. Vetches and clovers cost quite
a bit more than grains for this.

Here is a good article from a farmer that does it on a large
scale in the Northeast US:
http://www.cedarmeadowfarm.com/Publi...es/News10.html

Kind of a general guide to different cover crops:
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/f...ll/chart.shtml

A list of cover crops with detailed discussions on each:
http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cgi-bin/ccrop.exe

[dice]

Note: since you are on a tight schedule, and this is year one,
you could grow in just horse manure. Just pile it up a foot deep
where you want to grow tomatoes, and plant your seedlings in
it. Some of it will collapse out into the paths between beds
when it rains, but you can just shovel it back into the beds if it
is in your way. Cover it with grass clippings or leaves or
something to make it a little lessy messy to work in when
wet.

When you find something cheap, handy, and convenient to
make sides for the beds, you can organize it a little more.

One grower got a new property where the dirt was just "fill dirt"
(subsoil, no topsoil). To make raised beds, he got a bunch of
large burlap sacks (coffee sacks, probably), filled them with
horse manure, stacked them end to end in rows, cut a cross
in the top, and planted his seedings in them. The burlap lets
water through, and it will let roots through into the soil below
it, too.

Over the summer, he acquired materials for the sides and built
sides around them at his leisure. In the fall he dumped leaves
and grass clippings in on top, and the next spring he had a
real raised bed, ready to go.

[Barbee]

IMO, most cost effective way would be in the ground for this growing season. I'd dig the hole about twice as wide as needed, mix in some composted manure with your soil, plant your tomato and cover the whole area with newspapers and some straw or other mulch, depending on what you can get there. If you could get a raised bed built during or right after your growing season, you could add ammendments to it all winter long, including your first year's garden trash.

[huntsman]

Superb replies - thank you!

Well, that gives me a lot to chew on, but I'll need to start preparing the land very soon whichever method I follow...lol!

Just to confirm, dice - the winter crop is not eaten, but used solely to refuel the depleted beds?

[dice]

the winter cover crop is not eaten, but used solely to
refuel the depleted beds

Here that is true, because the climate does not really
accomodate anything else. None of the edible winter
cover crops (winter grains, fava beans, peas, for example)
are mature enough to harvest for human consumption by
the time they need to be mowed or mashed or incorporated
into the soil to prepare the bed for the summer vegetable crop.

They are used simply to condition the soil, improve soil
fertility, and for weed control.

[Barbee]

In my garden, the winter crop is tilled in. As Dice says, there's not enough time for the crop to mature and still be able to get your garden in.
In our fields, we do harvest the crop. Winter wheat, barley, or rye is planted, harvested, and the stubble is baled for straw. Then the field is drilled with a short season soybean straight into the leftover stubble.

[dice]

[cover crop maturity vs first frost]

The key is the number of weeks until first frost in the fall
vs how many weeks your summer crop needs to mature
ripe fruit (or how many weeks until the weather gets too
hot for fruit to set). You want to plant tomatoes (and other
vegetables with similar days to maturity) as close as possible
to last frost in the spring, so that they have time to mature
before first frost in the fall. If they mature early, you just get
a bigger harvest.

If you waited until after the winter cover crop matured, you
would be way late in most climates, and your summer crop
would not mature before first frost. Or they would not have
fruit set before it gets too hot for good pollenation in places
with extremely hot summers.

With some short season summer crops (like Barbee's soybeans),
you can wait until the winter cover crop is mature, harvest it,
then plant the summer crop and still have a harvest from that
before first frost in the fall.

I think you need some African information for this angle, too.
There are a number of native cover crops used over there not
widely available in North America, that are well adapted to
the soil and climate, that repel native pests, above or below
the soil level, that attract beneficial insects that eat other
pests, and so on. Plus it would be good to have information
on how winter cover crop choices available world wide perform
for local farmers in Gauteng.

Time for a drive in the country.

[huntsman]

Heh heh!

Admirably put, and thanks again you two!

Certainly, a little research into local crops is a must, as I have never heard of at least 60% mentioned in your replies. Sadly, that might just be due to my own ignorance and not an availability issue, but I will certainly follow up!

Have a great day!