Plant a Patch | Growing to Give

Plant a Patch promotes donations of home-grown food to Fairfield’s food pantries – The Lord’s Cupboard, Golden Magnolia Stone Soup Kitchen, and the Little Free Fridges. Now that warm-season crops are going in, consider planting extra for the pantries. Summer and winter squashes, cherry tomatoes, beans, and cucumbers all produce more than most families can eat. Learn more at franiowa.org/foodways.

Practical Tip

A soil thermometer is still your most reliable planting guide. Take readings in the morning before the sun warms the surface, 2 to 4 inches deep. If it reads colder than the crop wants, wait three days and read again.

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2. Tomato cages, staking, and small-space planning

The Fairfield Community Garden uses trellises on the north and south ends of the beds. This is a great place for vining crops like peas, cucumbers, and pole beans. Tomatoes also do well on these vertical trellises, but you will need to tie each branch of the tomato to the trellis with the provided jute twine. Tomato cages can be purchased locally or made from sturdy welded wire fencing. Indeterminate tomatoes can get very big/tall, and large slicing tomatoes are heavy and will break branches or sprawl on the ground if there is no support. A tomato that’s left to sprawl takes over the neighboring rows and breaks when you try to lift it back up. Here are some tips on pruning indeterminate tomatoes and trellising:

The single highest-leverage thing you can do in a  FCG bed or a small garden is get your tall crops supported before they sprawl.

Cages and stakes

• Store-bought heavy-duty wire cages. Set them at planting, push the legs deep, and tuck stems back inside as the plant grows. Concrete reinforcement wire cages last longer and hold more weight than the cone-shaped store cages.
• Single stakes. A six-foot stake driven deep at planting, plant tied as it grows. Works well for indeterminate tomatoes if you keep up with pruning suckers. Cheaper than cages and uses less horizontal space.
• Wooden stakes. For peppers and shorter crops that flop when they’re loaded with fruit. One stake per plant, soft twine ties.

Small-space planning

A four-by-sixteen raised bed can hold a remarkable amount of food if you plan well. The principles that matter most in a small plot:

• Tall stuff on the north side. Tomatoes, peppers, and pole beans should go on the north or back edge of the bed so they don’t shade shorter crops to the south.
• Pick varieties for your space. Determinate (bush) tomatoes stay around three to four feet. Indeterminate (vining) types grow six feet or more. Bush cucumbers and bush beans are bred for small spaces. Choose the form that fits the bed.
• Use the ground under tall plants. The space under a caged tomato is shaded for part of the day. That is exactly what lettuce, spinach, cilantro, and arugula want as the heat climbs.
• Keep vines inside your plot. Indeterminate tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash will run across the path and interfere with access to the neighbor’s plot if you let them. Tuck the runners back, or grow bush varieties.

Per the FCG member agreement, no plants over six feet, all tall plants should be staked or trellised, and not shade neighboring plots.

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3. Succession planting and inter-cropping

Succession planting is the difference between a wall of lettuce in one week and steady salads through October. The idea is simple: instead of planting all of one crop on one day, plant a smaller amount every ten to fourteen days. The harvest spreads out. The gluts disappear. The garden keeps producing.

What to keep succession planting in May and June

• Bush beans every two weeks until mid-July.
• Lettuce and arugula every ten days in shaded spots. Switch to heat-tolerant varieties as June arrives.
• Radishes every two weeks. Stop when the heat hits, pick back up in late August.
• Cilantro and dill every three to four weeks. Both bolt fast.
• Beets every three weeks until late July.
• One more carrot sowing in May, then again in late July for fall harvest.

Inter-cropping is putting two or more crops in the same space when their growth habits don’t compete. The classic is the Three Sisters: corn provides the trellis, beans fix nitrogen and climb the corn, squash sprawls underneath and shades out weeds. The same principle works on a smaller scale. Lettuce grows under indeterminate tomatoes through early summer. Radishes seeded into a carrot row germinate fast, mark the row, and come out before the carrots need the space. Basil between peppers. Beans climbing sunflowers, planted two weeks after the sunflowers got their head start.

Every time you harvest something out of a bed, ask whether the space can grow something else this season or if that open space will be used by a maturing crop close by. By mid-July, beds will be opening up after spring carrots and beets. Don’t forget to keep planting.

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4. Weeding, mulching, and watering

May is when weeds explode. Warm soil, regular rain, and bare ground give them everything they need. Get them while they’re small. If your beds are planted for early summer, its time to apply or even top-up your mulch. Once nights are reliably above 55°F and your tomatoes and peppers look settled, lay down two to three inches of organic mulch. Keep it pulled back two inches from plant stems so they don’t rot. At the FCG, the provided organic straw is your best option. At home, untreated grass clippings, shredded leaves, and shredded paper all work. Wood chips on pathways, but not on the beds themselves. This will block light, which keeps the soil cool, prevents weed seed from germinating, and preserves moisture – all great things for the soil as we transition to the hot weather.

In gardens where the soil is exposed, walk through the garden every two or three days with a hoe and skim the surface. You are not digging. You are slicing weeds at the soil line. Skimming has two benefits: you catch the weeds before they put down deep roots, and you don’t bring buried weed seeds up to the light where they germinate. Be mindful not to mix mulches into the soil.

For watering, the rule is deep and infrequent rather than shallow and daily. Shallow daily watering produces shallow roots and weak plants. Deep, less frequent watering pushes roots down where they are more resilient to heat and drought. The exception is when you are nursing seeds to germinate or very young seedlings – shallow, frequent waterings are needed then.  The target for established plants in Fairfield’s clay-heavy soil is about one inch of water per week, including rain. Less in spring, more once July hits.

Water in the early morning. Foliage dries before evening, which cuts down on fungal disease. Water at the base of the plant, not overhead, on tomatoes, peppers, squash, and cucumbers.