2 - Garden Design

Garden Design Basics

Adding edibles to your landscape

If you are starting an edible garden or expanding an existing
garden, there are multiple factors to consider:

• Growing edibles in a front yard, side yard or backyard

• Finding full sun, partial sun and shade

• Adding edible annual & perennial plants to landscaping

• Integrating native plants to landscaping

• Including flowers & shrubs

• Planning raised garden beds

• Companion planting of edibles

• Using small containers and pots

• Trellising vining plants

• Cutting garden maintenance time

• Attracting beneficial insects

• Preventing and stopping pests and disease

• Rotating crops and succession planting

• Watering and irrigation

• Sharing skills and resources with other gardeners

Beauty and aesthetics

Creating beautiful edible and native gardens that blend with your existing landscaping is easier than you realize. Variety and balance are key to a beautiful landscape. Some points to consider are plant heights, leaf/fruit /flower colors, densities, plant sizes, leaf texture and plant shapes.

Where to put what?

Cluster plants with similar needs like amount of water, nutrients, sunlight to make caring for them easier. To keep your garden flourishing practice companion planting where you place plants together that support each other. One plant can replenish the soil with nutrients that another plant takes
from the soil. Grow low plants needing less sunlight under tall plants.

No Space? No Worries. Put your green thumb to good use. Try a container garden on your porch, deck or patio using the herbs above, which grow well in containers. Grow microgreens indoors all year round under a grow light. These baby veggies are packed with nutrients.

Edible perennials vs. annuals

For many time-pressed gardeners, perennials, which come up year after year on their own, can be a great solution versus annuals that are planted each year. Some edible perennials need special care to thrive. Consider growing perennial herbs that not only smell great, spice up your cooking and require minimal care, but also have huge health benefits.

Crop diversity

Growing the greatest variety of plants helps create and sustain a healthy garden ecosystem. We encourage planting flowers, herbs and native plants next to edible beds. See pages 40 and 41 for plants that attract beneficial insects and plants that repel insect pests. Farmers find they need less pesticides and their crops are more productive when a diversity of plants grow next to their fields. Learn more

Climate Zones 5A and 5B for Chicagoland

Know your Zone 5b growing season

Climate, frost dates and soil vary between regions. There are 11 climate zones in the U.S. based on average minimum winter temperatures. Since it’s important to follow gardening tips for your region we wrote this book for Chicagoland’s Zones 5a and 5b. Most of Cook County is Zone 5b. Collar counties (Lake, McHenry DuPage, Kane, Will, Lake IN) are Zone 5a where weinter temperatures average 5o colder. Currently, Zone 5b minimum temperatures range from -10 to
-15° F. Learn more

Medium length growing season

Most vegetable varieties will mature before the first frost date in fall. On average the last frost date is May 15th – the last day temperatures could drop to 32o. The first frost date is October 15th. Dates may vary a week or two, so it’s important to watch the weather before planting. Gardens close to Lake Michigan can be planted a week or so earlier and harvest a week later. A handful of crops can survive and thrive into fall and winter especially if they have some human intervention. See “Season extension” on page 23.

When is it safe to plant?

Plant warm-season flowering annuals, vines, herbs, and vegetables after the Chicago area’s average last frost date of May 15. Cautious gardeners often wait until Memorial Day before setting out cold-sensitive plants such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and squash. See “Seed starting and seedlings” on page 29.

Tracking the sunshine

If you’re mystified by plant and seed labels, here’s how to figure out what they mean when they talk about light requirements.

• Sun – direct sunlight at least eight hours a day

• Partial sun – four to six hours of sunlight a day

• Part shade – two to four hours of sunlight a day

• Shade – less than one hour of direct sunlight

If a plant tag lists more than one light requirement the plant can thrive in all listed conditions.

Make a sun diagram of your yard

How to make a sunlight chart. Making a sun chart is a very important step to take before planting your first garden. It allows you to measure how much sunlight certain areas of your yard get each day. This is important because plants and vegetables have specific requirements for the amount of sunlight and shade they need each day. Using a sun chart helps you diagram the sun and plant the right vegetables in your garden so they can thrive. Download free sun chart tool.

On a sunny summer day take photos or videos of your possible gardening spaces every hour from sunrise to sunset. Or mark the hours of sun on paper. Best to wait until your trees, native plants, grasses and shrubs have leafed out and reached their full summer height. If you are tracking sun in the spring try to anticipate where the shadows from trees and tall shrubs will fall later in the summer. Learn more about sun maps. See photographic sum map.

Make the most of a southern exposure

Southern exposure is important in the city, and in any house that wants to take advantage of solar energy. Learn more.

Full sun is not always required to grow food

With 6+ hours of sun you can grow corn, tomatoes, peppers, beans/peas, summer/winter squash, melons, potatoes, cucumbers and a wide variety of culinary herbs. For most edible plants more sun produces bigger the plants and higher yields. But, this is not true fo all veggies. For example, more than 6 hours of sun in the heat of summer will kill or severely damage pea plants.

With 4 to 6 hours of sun you can grow broccoli, cabbage (in the cool seasons), cauliflower, kale, and Brussels sprouts.

With 2 to 4 hours of sun you can grow greens like spinach, swiss chard, lettuce, endive, mesclun, arugula, bok choi, mustard greens and parsley. But greens will grow much larger if they have full sun. Some edible perennials like the black currant bush will produce more fruit in full sun but will still produce fruit in less sunlight. Mesclun mix salad greens will grow in 3 hours of sunlight.

With less than 2 hours of direct sun per day, you’re in for a challenge, but it’s still worth a shot! Try loose leaf lettuce or radishes.

What is “organic” gardening?

Organic gardening supports the longterm health of soil, plants, ecosystems, and people. It means working with nature, conserving garden resources, and promoting biodiversity – variety of plants, animals and microorganisms.

The organic challenge

A basic definition of organic gardening is gardening without synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. But organic gardening is much more than simply replacing manmade chemicals with those derived from natural sources. It is a philosophy of gardening that supports the health of the whole system. In an organically managed yard or vegetable garden, the emphasis is on cultivating an ecosystem that sustains and nourishes plants, soil microbes, and beneficial insects rather than simply making plants grow.

Creating this ecosystem begins with improving the soil. Adding organic matter by mixing compost into the soil increases its capacity to retain water and nutrients and supports beneficial microbes, which are essential to healthy plant growth. Compost can be made at home from grass clippings, leaves, yard debris, and kitchen scraps, or purchased from garden centers and mulch suppliers. Another way to add organic matter to the soil is to grow cover crops and turn them into the soil just as they begin to lower.

Organic fertilizers

While compost and organic matter will increase your soil’s ability to hold nutrients, they do not supply large amounts of nutrients themselves. In addition to compost, organic gardeners also have to provide fertilizers derived from natural sources such as animal manures and byproducts, natural deposits such as rock phosphate, and plant products like seaweed and wood ash. Most retailers that carry garden supplies also stock organic fertilizers.

Natural pest control

Organic gardeners have realistic expectations when it comes to insects and diseases. They don’t try to eliminate them from their yard or garden. Instead they seek to keep them below damaging levels.

Encourage thriving populations of beneficial insects and pest predators, including spiders, bats, birds, lizards, and toads by planting a wide variety of plants and flowers and not using synthetic pesticides, which are especially damaging to beneficial insects. Removing disease infected leaves or plants, rotating crops, and handpicking insect pests/eggs all help to suppress pest populations. Plus, pests are not attracted to healthy plants that resist pests.

Organic gardeners also use sprays

Natural pesticides that control some insects and diseases are readily available from garden centers and include products containing neem oil, the bacterium Bacillus, and minerals like copper and sulfur. Because they break down quickly, natural pesticides have to be applied much more frequently than their synthetic counterparts.

One natural pesticide you can make yourself is insecticidal soap. You need 3 ingredients: Dawn dish soap, vegetable oil and soft water. Mix 2.5 tablespoons of dish soap and 2.5 tablespoons of oil with 1 gallon of warm soft water.

Also, there are some diseases and insects that just cannot be controlled organically, making some plants much more challenging to grow organically in some regions. While most herbs and landscape plants can easily be cared for organically, some fruits and vegetables cannot.