I've recently joined this site because I NEED HELP! I've Google-ed gardening and so on and there are SOOOO many books, so many websites that I don't know where to begin. I've never planted or even attempted to grow anything in my life and neither has my family. I want to sustain myself with my garden without the use of chemicals or as close to it as I can. I am a vegetarian. So I would like to not only learn how to grow veggies and fruits but also legumes, lentils, etc.

Any advice on what book to read first if any, if I should take workshops or not and if so which ones, should i start a mini garden first or any other starting advice would be extremely appreciated.

check our presentations of our organic sustainable food gardens:

len

Stuff wants to grow and will despite mistakes made by the gardener. Don't get too wrapped up in the endless details at first, that's my advice. Second-most important, give yourself lots of time. An in-ground plot should start being prepared a year ahead, at least.

If a crop is not severely impacted by a problem, namely, too little sun, too little water, too high or too low a temperature, or some extreme soil problem like very low or high acidity, very low fertility, or lack of moisture, it will grow and produce something.

So if you merely plant an appropriate crop at the more or less correct time of year in a spot with 6 hours of sun in soil with some organic matter in it to hold nutrients and moisture it will do ok. This is in itself not always easy to achieve on short notice, which is why people often buy garden soil of some kind and make planting beds.

Our original poster is a self proclaimed novice. She needs to gather some information from outside sources before she understands what the heck you're talking about, pn.

We all learn from our mistakes, but blundering ahead without the slightest notion of what's what isn't any fun, at all. Natural needs to be exposed to the language, the tools, and the processes of gardening. Workshops and basic books are a great way get started. Then she will be more prepared to experiment.

My education began at the side of my father. I was a little girl when I learned how to plant and take care of our large vegetable garden.

Or maybe not, some people have large capacities for digesting written material. One of the first books I read when I got the gardening bug was the "One Straw Revolution". It contains lots of interesting philosophy, though not much practical and concrete directions for food production in north america from the beginning perspective. The books by the Nearings have lots of useful info, and not just about food gardens. The Eliot Coleman books are good. The Victory Garden books are good.

Square Foot Gardening is a good choice to start, in that it has you start small. My experience is that after one season of a 4ft by 4ft garden bed, you either want to quit or you want a much bigger garden.

60 Minutes Gardening, by Jeff Ball is also good, and gets into 4-season gardening, which you can seriously consider in Zone 7.

Right now you should be preparing your in-ground beds for next spring, which comes sooner than you think in Zone 7! But you can also grow cool-weather plants right now. I would suggest a couple of big pots/planters, something on the lines of 20-qt volume or more. I have 2 28-qt pots on either side of my (south-facing) front door that are planted with cherry tomato plants in the summer (the toms generally get eaten on the front porch by my 10-yo twins). As the summer ends, I put in lettuce transplants and pansies, which generally supply salads (pansy leaves and flowers are good salad additions) until Thanksgiving. And that's in Zone 5! So, if you have a knowledgeable nursery near you, they may be selling transplants for lettuce, spinach, early cabbage (early=short time to harvest, say 60 days), kale, maybe broccoli and cauliflower. All of those are cool-weather lovers, and will cruise right past early frosts without withering into the ground like heat-loving tomatoes and squash. Use Square-Foot suggestions for spacing plants in the large planters. You can also plant a few radish seeds between the greens for a harvest in less than 30 days. If you like turnips, try direct sowing them between the greens, too, but they take a bit longer. If a hard freeze threatens, or snow or ice, put a little garden fleece cover over the pot(s) and uncover when the weather warms up again. I have had pansies last all winter (and carrots, but they should have been planted last month) treated this way.

In Zone 7, plan on planting your peas (we like sugar snaps and snow peas, it seems like you just throw away too much good stuff with shelling peas) and potatoes in early February, or when experienced gardeners do in your area (the hard part is linking up with those experienced gardeners, I know). At the same time, plant your first seeding of spring cool-weather plants--radishes, carrots, beets, lettuce, spinach, etc. As you gain experience, you will find that some plants that we don't usually let go to seed (oh, yeah, that would include almost all of the cool-weather greens), if we DO let them go to seed ;-) those seeds sprout and start growing WAY EARLIER than you think garden plants will start in the spring. Go with it and you'll get nice early harvests, too.

Square Foot Gardening stresses that you aren't going to eat 40 heads of lettuce in one week when a full garden row of lettuce matures at one time. So in the late winter and early spring when you start planting the cool weather plants, plant a week's worth of salad in several square feet of your new garden bed -- maybe 4 heads of lettuce (I would plant one red head, one loose leaf, one romain, etc), one square of radishes and carrots, one square of spinach, and so on. The next week plant another week's worth of salad. Oh, and one cabbage each week. Or a broccoli. After you plant, cover your garden with garden fleece to keep bugs out, even before the plants are up. It also keeps moisture in (for those of us in dry climates) and keeps birds from eating your seeds or new sprouts.

I live in Zone 5, and our last hard freeze is in early April, last frost is early May. We traditionally plant warm-weather plants (tomatoes, squash, corn, etc) on Memorial Day, although I now start direct seeding before May 1 and transplanting seedlings before Memorial Day weekend (with garden fleece, or sometimes Wall-o-Waters for protection). To find out YOUR last freeze/frost, try the link (oops, it was blocked! Google last frost and look for one that will let you enter your zip code). It will get you close.

But back to cool-weather gardening. Try it, it is great! The weeds don't grow as fast in the winter, I have to water less (but in my climate I DO have to water), and my kids and I can eat something from the garden all year around, EVEN IN ZONE 5! We have one bed on the south side of the house (that happens to be in the front yard, a former herb garden) that we call our winter garden. It is now planted with lettuce, spinach, beets (we eat the greens as well as the roots), carrots (I forgot radishes!), and kale, and is growing in the open. In early October I will put a low tunnel over it (poly pipe and a plastic drop cloth), leaving it open on the ends except when there will be a night below say 25 F. In mid November we'll probably harvest the last of the lettuce before it freezes, and I'll put some garden fleece right on top of the remaining plants in the tunnel. For the rest of the winter I'll open the tunnel on sunny days (desert southwest, most days are sunny and a sunny day in the 30s will cook plants in a garden tunnel) and occasionally harvest some spinach, radishes, kale, etc. February is our month for carrots, for some reason, and I scatter some more seeds for lettuce and spinach at that time. Mid-march I uncover the bed, partly because our spring winds would uncover it anyway, and partly because the plants can mostly take care of themselves again by then.

Good luck, have fun, and think outside of the seasons!

Catherine

no raised bed we have ever built has failed to grow the food plants we want. no manures, no fertilisers, no magic.

like catherine says learn about aspect, learn where the sun is in winter, down here looking up our best aspect is north and east, yours is south and east. i would add use heaps of mulch.

len

And although I agree with rhino that " A little bit of good information goes a very long way towards having a successful experience." ---- I also very much agree with pnbrown's take on gardening.

"Stuff wants to grow and will despite mistakes made by the gardener. Don't get too wrapped up in the endless details --- and give yourself lots of time."

You'll do just fine.

I've been an organic gardener for 35 years. My husband and I depend on what I grow for the majority of our food. (I've grown vegetables for market in years past.)

I have to make a living in addition to gardening --- so my approach to gardening is little by little over time.

I hope you'll check out my website TendingMyGarden.com and find much to help you.

Sincerely,
Theresa