Guest Contributor: Cassey Anderson, Horticulture Agent, Colorado State University Extension
Some of you may have started your cool-season crops or are still in garden preparation mode. Regardless of the actual status of your garden, we’re here this month to discuss some common garden mistakes that can lead to reduced garden yield. All of them should be fairly easy to improve to help bring your garden harvest to new levels!
Let's Start at the Most Basic Part of the Garden: the Soil
A lack of soil preparation or knowledge can stall garden growth before it even gets a chance to start. On the most basic level you need to know what your soil is like so you can know what it needs to perform best. The most successful approach to accomplish this is to get a soil test from a professional soil testing lab. The at-home kits you can purchase at garden centers are a fun weekend activity to do with a kid, but they won’t give you the solid details you need on your soil.
Be sure to test nutrients, soil organic matter, and soil texture. Your local Extension office will be able to help interpret a soil test result for you. If you’ve been using your garden for many years you may learn that you don’t need to add much of anything! It is best to get a soil test done anytime you make a substantial change to your garden space such as amending or building new beds or doing it at least every 5-7 years.
Planting Too Close Together Can Hurt Your Harvest
Almost none of us have as much garden space as we would truly like and so when gardeners want to increase their yield it’s easy to try to plant a little closer together. Unfortunately for many crops this can have negative unintended consequences. Overcrowded plants may succumb more easily to disease (see example of Early Blight in Tomato) as airflow will be more restricted. Beyond the threat of disease, a plant that is overcrowded may have a reduced yield as well – you can see this in bush beans.
When planted with 4” between plants and 12” between rows you can get a 20% higher yield than with 2” spacing). Be sure to read the label, seed packet (which by the way, you can receive through our Giving GNOME program) or do some searches online when planning how to layout your garden to ensure you plant densely enough to get a lot, but not so densely that you reduce your yield or increase disease pressure.
Timing and Location Matter More Than You Think
It also bodes well for the conscientious gardener to ponder when and where to plant for the best success. Vegetables can often be grouped into warm season and cool season crops. If you plant warm season crops in spring before temperatures warm, you run the risk of stunting or killing your plants completely. This is true for long-season plants like tomatoes. If you plant a tomato in soils that are cooler than 60F you may run the risk of stunting that tomato for much of the season.
Alternately, a cool-season crop such as spinach or cilantro planted in the peak heat of summer will grow, but will likely bolt, or go to seed, before a reasonable harvest can occur. Be sure to double check the season and conditions that your plant needs before putting it into your garden space!
That said, you can sometimes tweak your environment by warming the soil or using shade cloth to improve conditions for plants that are out of season/place.
Hardening Off Your Transplants Before Moving Them Outside
If you’re a newer gardener and/or if you bought seedlings from a nursery, you likely will need to do what is called hardening off for your plants. This is the process of adjusting the plant from idyllic greenhouse growing conditions to the potentially more intense outdoor conditions. To start the process, you can put your plants outside during the day for 1-2 hours, gradually increasing how long they are out over the course of a week or so.
Once they’ve been outside for 6-8 hours in a day, you’re ready to begin transplanting! Plants that have not been adequately hardened off are more likely to struggle with transplant, may die or develop off flavors (I’m looking at you, broccoli!), so be sure to spend the extra time adjusting your plants to their new situation.
Poor Watering Practices Can Make or Break Your Garden
Poor watering practices (drought or flood?)
It can be hard to know how much water your vegetable garden needs, and watering practices can be second only to soil quality in making for a successful garden. If you live in an area that gets 1-2” of natural precipitation a week you may not need to stress about irrigation as much, but if you get less than that it’s likely you’ll need to plan how to irrigate. Vegetable gardens benefit greatly from drip irrigation as it reduces the water you must use and keeps water off the foliage thereby reducing disease pressures.
There are many excellent drip irrigation kits available, and they are simple to piece together to fit your garden space. It is better to water a little more, less often, rather than a little, frequently. You want the water to penetrate deeply into the soil, which can only be accomplished by putting more water down in a single session. Light and frequent watering will keep only the surface wet.
That said, every garden and every soil have different needs. Containers will need very frequent irrigation, and raised beds will need more water than in-ground beds. A good way to assess if your plants need moisture is to use your fingers and feel the soil 3-6” deep. If it is very moist, hold off on watering for a day or two, if it feels only damp you can plan to water soon. If it is dry, get some water on those poor thirsty plants!
Keeping Poor Records Can Cost You in the Long Run
It can be easy, in the moment, to feel certain that you will remember every detail of your garden from the season, and for a few years it is certainly possible. However, once you’re on year 10, 15, or more in one garden space you may begin to forget which bed housed what plants last year. While crop rotation doesn’t help much in a home garden for insect pest control it can be a great way to break disease cycles.
If your garden is big enough to have space to rotate crops for a minimum of three, but preferably five years you can reduce pressure from some diseases. Be sure to rotate between crop families: cucurbits (melon, cucumber, squash, pumpkin), solanaceous (pepper, tomato, potato, tomatillo), brassica (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage), Asteraceae (lettuce), Apiaceae (carrots, dill, parsnips), Legumes (beans) etc. It can be beneficial to rotate crops even without disease pressure as each crop family tends to use and release different nutrient types.
Light Is One of the Harder Things to Change, But It's Not Impossible
The final point for this month is that of light, probably one of the harder things to change in many home gardens, but it is not impossible. Too much, or too little sunlight can have an impact on garden growth and production. Some plants, such as lettuce, can grow with 2-4 hours of direct sunlight whereas others such as pumpkins love as much as they can get. If you live somewhere with a lot of shade, you may need to temper your expectations on how many warm season crops you can grow successfully.
However, if you have a full-sun high-elevation garden you may need to reduce the available sun for some crops. A great example of this is tomatoes. While tomatoes are sun-lovers, they are princesses and prefer the right amount of sun. Too much sun or heat and they may abort blooms, slow fruit production etc. To reduce the amount or intensity of the sun you can use shade cloth suspended over your garden bed. Shade cloth comes in varying levels of shade reduction and the amount you may need will depend on your location and needs.
As always, reach out to your local Extension office for further information if you have any questions.
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