But if you want the best success for your plants, go with the blends your plants will be much happier." Although slightly pricier, the blends incorporate amendments like composted manure or peat moss to offer more nutrients. "From a gardening standpoint, you can absolutely use topsoil. But when they remove the topsoil from a site they have to let it sit for a little while, and then they can remove it again the nutrient level goes down each time," he explains. "Topsoil is the top three to five inches of the ground that often has most of the nutrients in it. It'll give you a list of plants that do best in those conditions." For example, if you're growing blueberries you may want to add coffee grounds or pine needles to the soil to make it more acidic.Īrthur recommends investing in a blended-mix soil instead of regular topsoil, if you can, for your planters and raised beds. "You can look up plants based on acidic soil, alkaline soil, or just regular potting mix. "Different plants love different types of soil," says Arthur. "Because you're often competing with roots of trees, with whatever was in the ground before, things that contractors may have put down there." Raised beds, which work well for condos and rooftop gardens as well (just put in a bottom), allow you to control or change the type and quality of the soil your plants will grow in more easily. "In a downtown area, it's always tricky to plant in a backyard straight into the ground," says Arthur. If you're gardening in an urban area, raised garden beds could be a good idea. Pick the right beds, containers and soil for your space "If you have a space that actually just doesn't have six hours of direct sun, no matter how good a plant parent you are, you're not going to get those crops to yield very much and you'll end up being disappointed." For partial-shade areas, Boustead recommends looking at cold crops, leafy greens, and root vegetables instead. "Any hot crops that you want to grow - peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, squashes, corn - need at least five or six hours of direct sun a day," says Natalie Boustead, Community Gardens Coordinator at Foodshare Toronto. How sunny or shady your garden or balcony space is should really guide your planting decisions. "A good general rule of thumb is to go with leafier plants - things like kale, spinach, lettuce - in shadier spots because they sunlight to grow and produce." "Then you can look up lists of plants based on how many hours of sunlight you have," says Arthur. You can measure available sunlight by placing something with a little solar panel, such as a solar-powered toy, on a spot for a day and checking on it hourly to determine how much sun the space actually receives, suggests Carson Arthur, a landscape designer, television personality and owner of Carson's Garden + Market. Here are the planning steps to follow, and common mistakes to avoid, if you're hoping for a bumper crop this year.īefore you buy any seeds or place an order for garden supplies, start by calculating how much sunlight is available wherever you're hoping to place your plants. To guide novice gardeners through their first plantings - whether they're working with a single pot on a balcony, or generously-sized raised beds in a suburban yard - we reached out to two Canadian gardening experts for their best advice when it comes to growing vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. Having the right combination of location, conditions and plants in place can mean a huge difference in yield and overall success. But, as any experienced gardener can attest, successfully planting an edible garden can require more than enthusiasm and a handful of organic, heirloom, non-GMO seed packets. Seeds are in extremely high demand this spring, as Canadians turn to gardening en masse for both leisure and food security.
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