A Comprehensive Guide to Edible Gardening

Growing your own food is extremely fun and satisfying! Not only is edible gardening a sustainable way to take control of what you eat, it’s a way to experience the full range of flavor available from delicious fruits and vegetables. Growing edible plants is also a fantastic way to better understand what our food is made of and how it grows.

There are many methods for growing edible plants—whether you have a large garden, raised beds, or a tiny balcony, you can grow your own food in almost any condition! Every year, your gardening skills will improve as you take on new challenges and try your hand at growing new varieties. Even seasoned gardeners are always learning, and each year holds new challenges and exciting opportunities. Don’t be discouraged if you experience a few setbacks—they happen to all gardeners! Learn from your mistakes and your garden will be more successful each year.

Growing Veggies in Raised Beds, Containers, or In-Ground

If you plan to use a raised bed, it is best fill it with fresh, high-quality raised bed planting mix that you purchase from a garden center or nursery. One or two 4-foot by 10-foot beds is plenty for a beginner and can produce quite a large harvest. Avoid raised structures wider than 4 feet—it is difficult to reach into the center of a deep bed. Because our climate can be cool even into Summer, raised beds warm up and become workable long before soil in the ground!

Container gardening is another great way to grow your own food, and it works perfectly for smaller spaces! You can set them on your balcony, place them on a stand, or let them hang from your porch. Edible container gardens require the same setup as raised beds but on a smaller scale, and are best filled with organic potting soil. Choose the plants that you want to grow first and find out the amount of space they need to grow before selecting the actual containers.

Of course, you can also grow vegetables right in the soil. Be sure to amend existing ground with compost or manure, as veggies are hungry plants and will benefit from the extra nutrition and organic matter.

Vegetable Selection Tips

Learn to grow easy crops first, then move on to more difficult types. Level of difficulty is as much about your garden site as it is your skill level—a good site and good soil makes everything easier!

• Easy: radishes, peas, garlic, shallots, potatoes, all kinds of greens
• Harder: root crops, onions, squash, beans, tomatoes, cabbage, cucumbers
• Harder yet: broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, corn
• Can be difficult: peppers, eggplant, Brussels sprouts, melons, celery, fennel

You can grow vegetables successfully from seeds or starts, even as a beginner gardener. Some vegetables prefer to be grown from seed, and others are much easier as purchased starts.

Seeds work well in raised beds or containers with high-quality planting mix. Some vegetables such as radishes, corn, peas, beans, and carrots do best when planted directly into your garden from seed, but most everything else does well grown from starts.

Transplants or starts are a great way to grow a diversity of plants as you can try out many varieties. Starts are a must for all hot weather plants in our climate, like tomatoes and peppers! Be sure to select starts that are green, healthy-looking, and small for the size of their container. Avoid plants with yellow leaves or plants that look “old” and overgrown. If you are planting into heavy clay soil, consider amending the soil and using transplants instead of seeds.

Vegetable Placement & Planting Time

Select a site with full sun, at least six hours of sun per day, to grow your vegetable garden. A location that faces South or West is ideal, as it will get the brightest, hottest sun in your garden.

Avoid the temptation to overcrowd your plants! A plant with enough space and room will be happier and healthier than many small plants in the same footprint. Provide adequate spacing for seeds and starts; thin as necessary.

Timely planting is critical for a successful harvest. Plants will not grow or will be stunted if planted when it’s too cold, plus they are sitting ducks for pests and disease. Check the label on your seeds or starts for planting times, or see the planting calendar for common garden vegetables below; use a soil thermometer to test the soil temperature. It’s better to plant a week or two later than too early in the Spring!

The following are recommended planting dates* for vegetables that grow well in the Willamette Valley. Dates are for planting from seed or bulb, unless noted that starts should be planted. *Information from Oregon State University Extension Service

Healthy Soil & Fertilizer for Growing Veggies

The key to a successful backyard vegetable garden is healthy soil and adequate fertilizer. In many parts of the Portland Metro Area, the soil is often composed of clay that will take years of work to develop into practical garden soil, but a high-quality, purchased planting mix will have healthy soil fertility and should be pest, weed, and disease free.

In addition to good soil, we recommend using high-quality, organic fertilizers. The three numbers on the label represent the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. These are the primary nutrients that plants need to grow and are often lacking in garden soil.

At planting time, blend the proper amount of granular, organic fertilizer into the soil and follow up with applications of liquid fertilizer every few weeks. Reapply granular fertilizer as a top dressing every two months for in-ground plantings or about every six weeks for containerized plants.

As with any garden product, be sure to follow the label instructions. Fertilizer should be added each time you plant a new crop, but a soil test is the best way to determine overall needs and pH. Fall and winter plantings may require more frequent fertilization because available nutrients break down more slowly in cooler soils.

Watering Vegetable Gardens

Keep it simple—use a watering can for seedlings and transplants and a hose with a water wand for mature plants. Hand watering ensures that each plant gets the right amount of water instead of a blanket application from an irrigation system. Plus, hand watering will get you outdoors and observing the garden!

The best time to water is early morning so plants are hydrated going into the heat of the day; if watering is done in the afternoon, keep leaves of plants dry and only water the soil. Deep, thorough watering is better than frequent, shallow sprinkling. Allow soil to dry slightly between watering but not to the point of wilting. Keep in mind—different crops have various moisture requirements, and raised beds and containers will need to be watered more frequently than in-ground plantings. 

A 2 to 3-inch thick layer of mulch, like compost, leaves, or wood chips, is a great way to help reduce water loss from garden soils and maintain consistent soil moisture while discouraging weeds. New plantings should be given temporary shade during hot weather to help them get established and to avoid wilting from water stress.

Weed & Pest Control for Vegetables

When you plant in a purchased planting mix, weeds should not be a problem for the first season because there won’t be any dormant weed seeds in the mix.

When weeds are an issue, hand pulling and hoeing are the best way to keep weeds under control in the vegetable garden; this may need to be done frequently throughout the growing season! Using transplants can also give you an advantage over weeds as plants will be larger than surrounding weeds.

Slugs can be a real problem for vegetable gardens in the Spring. Do everything you can to encourage birds to your garden—they love to eat slugs, aphids, and budworm! As a control, use organic slug bait before you sow seeds or set out transplants; control is not very effective when there are tender seedlings to eat instead of bait.

Almost all other Spring garden pests can be controlled by using floating row covers in early Spring like Harvest Guard. Sun, water, and air can penetrate this material, but pests cannot. Manual removal of slugs, caterpillars, and aphids is also strongly encouraged as it is a sure-fire, organic control method—however it may not be for the faint of heart!

Harvesting Vegetables