Successful Backyard Crops: Digging Deeper

Successful gardening, like genius, comes down to that old "inspiration versus perspiration" quotation -- the one where sweat wins by a landslide.

And it's true -- whatever the color of your thumb -- gardening is a sweaty, dirty business, most particularly if you hope to actually get something edible for your efforts. So whenever possible, stack the deck in your favor.

Here are two tips from Altadena gardener and blogger Christina Wenger. Wenger is notorious around these parts because her trees and vines are so prolific they practically sit up and beg to be picked.

Bury compost pots

Though a compost pile has many virtues, from recycling to providing rich food for the plants, if loaded with sweet-smelling castoffs such as banana peels  and the like, it can be a rat-magnet. So for composting your tasty bits, try this:

• Cut off the bottoms of  5- or 10-gallon nursery pots
• Dig holes for the pots close to trees and other plants that can use a regular boost of fertilizer
• Bury the pots so the lip is flush with the ground
• Cover each pot with a heavy lid -- a small cement slab works fine 

You now have mini-compost machines, safe from varmints, and the perfect place to dispose of your fruit and vegetable remains. The organic material will break down over time and feed the soil. No need to dump, turn, or distribute.

Try sunken beds

Raised-beds are pretty popular around here, particularly if your garden is more dirt and hardpan than soil. Just build a frame on top of the ground, one to three feet tall, and fill with all kinds of good soil and decomposed, organic mulch. One disadvantage to this method, however, is the water lost through drainage and evaporation.

A sunken bed, on the other hand, rests slightly below the level of the rest of the yard. And this offers several advantages to gardeners in a dry climate. First of all, the temperature of the soil is cooler than above ground, so there’s less evaporation. More importantly, a sunken bed captures and holds water, and keeps the moisture close to the roots longer than in the raised beds. An added bonus, with a lower profile, the plants are less vulnerable to the drying winds of the Santa Ana’s.

The technique to build a sunken bed is simple, though the digging takes serious elbow grease.

• Stake out the gardening bed
• Dig out all the soil, going a foot to a foot and a half deep  
• Line the entire area with hardware cloth to gopher/varmint-proof  
• Fill the beds with decomposed organic compost and new rich soil

If you dig the beds yourself, the biggest investment will be the soil and compost.  A couple of ways to save some money:

• Altadena Stables on Ridgeview Drive offers free horse manure for your compost pile; just bring your own receptacles and shovel.
• Check with some of the larger hardware and garden supply centers. Often they sell torn bags of potting and gardening soil by the pallet, at a discount.

I also asked Wenger if there was anything worth planting in August. And of course the answer was yes:

"While the heat loving beans (limas and long beans) are going strong, I've just pulled out some of my other bean towers and am about to fill that space early maturing heirloom corn, Luther Hill. It matures quickly and gives really nice, sweet, white ears. I've had success planting multiple small patches of corn through the summer as other crops come out.

"Also, planting early maturing melons or summer squash would work well now. Another thing August is really good for is starting the fall crops from seed. In the first couple weeks of August, I'll be planting kale, broccoli, rutabagas, cabbages, and gai lan in six packs and keeping them in a part of the yard that has filtered shade most of the day. I water them every day; they're ready to go in the ground, replacing my fading summer crops, late September/early October."