An edible garden can be as small as a pot of basil in your sunniest window, or as large as a series of raised beds in your back yard. If you have a small space, growing herbs can be a great way to start growing your own food.

PREPARE

Sun! Make sure you have a garden site with at least 4 hours of sun per day, preferably 6-8 hours.

Soil! Start with topsoil for large beds, and potting soil for containers smaller than 18 inches. Amend your soil with compost, and an organic fertilizer for vegetables.

Water! Make sure you have easy access to a water source. Seedlings need to be watered almost every day, and maturing plants need to be watered at least a few times per week.

PLANT

Now that your soil is ready, what should you plant? You can plant year round in the Bay Area, but edibles grow much more slowly in the winter, so we generally don’t plant in December and January.

Seeds give you the most choice in vegetable variety, but they will take an additional 4-6 weeks over nursery starts. Read the seed packet, and label your seedlings with the date and variety. A general rule of thumb is to plant seeds 3 times as deep as they are big.

Nursery starts give you plants that have been growing for at least a month, already. Be sure to separate out starts that are growing together in one cell of a 6-pack.

edibles that grow well in San Francisco’s climate:

Cool season crops (edibles we grow for their root or leaf): These need 4-6 hours sunlight, and can be grown year round. Radish, peas, carrot, lettuce, arugula, beets, kale, chard, cilantro, parsley, potatoes, garlic…

Warm season crops (edibles we grow for their fruit): These need 6-8 hours sunlight, and will only grow during our warmer months with longer days (April-October) Tomatoes, squash, beans, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, pumpkins, basil….

Refer to Golden Gate Gardening if you are in the SF Bay area, or this handy planting graphic from the Garden for the Environment.

PROSPER

Now it’s time to care for your little baby edibles. Annual vegetables are much more needy than perennial garden plants. For them to taste the way we like to eat them, they need to grow quickly, in ideal conditions. If they don’t get enough nutrients, water, or light, they may become stunted, or go to seed (bolt) which makes them tough and bitter.

Water seedlings daily, and nursery starts at least 3 times per week. Check the soil a couple of inches down, to make sure it is absorbing the water.

Keep an eye out for pests and diseases. Edibles that grow and are harvested quickly will not succumb to pest problems, but plants that remain in the ground for longer may develop issues. Foraging birds, rodents and snails often do the most damage to new vegetables, and physical barriers such as bird netting, floating row cover, or overturned plastic trays can protect baby seedling.

Harvest

A big part of keeping an edible garden going is knowing when to harvest. Greens can be continually harvested for several months, or longer if they are hardy greens like chard and kale. Greens grow in a rosette, meaning all new leaves come from the center of the base of the plant, and older leaves can be harvested one by one from the outside of the plant.

Root vegetables are ready when you can see that the “shoulders” have widened. Carefully move the soil at the top of the root to see if they have developed. You can always pull one out and eat a micro carrot or beet, if they are not ready.

Fruiting crops (vegetables that develop a fruit with seeds, like tomatoes) are the easiest to tell when they are ready. Unfortunately, sometimes our cool summer weather delays the ripening of fruiting vegetables until the fall, when we get more sun.

Resources

Flowercraft Garden Center, 550 Bayshore Blvd. San Francisco, CA   http://www.flowercraftgc.com/

Sloat Garden Center, several locations San Francisco, CA  http://www.sloatgardens.com/

Golden Gate Gardening, by Pam Peirce is the best resource for all edible gardening, if you are in the SF Bay area

The Garden for the Environment has all of this information, and so much more, on their website. Plus, I teach all of this information my class called Grow Your Own Food, every other month, alternating with Growing a Garden: Where to Start.