GO-3.0/tools/qortino-knowledge/docs/gardening/garden-planning-soil.md

Garden Planning, Soil, and Growing Through the Season

Site and layout

Vegetables want sun: 6-8+ hours for fruiting crops (tomatoes, squash, peppers), while leafy greens and many roots accept 4-6. Watch your space through a day before digging. Close to the house and a water source beats a distant "better" spot — the garden you walk past daily is the garden that gets tended. Beds about 1-1.2 m wide (reachable from both sides without stepping on soil) with permanent paths concentrate fertility and avoid compaction. Raised beds warm earlier in spring, drain in wet climates, and suit poor native soil; fill with a mix of topsoil and generous compost.

Soil: feed the soil, not the plant

Soil is the pantry. The universal prescription that fits nearly everyone: add 3-5 cm of compost to beds every year, keep soil covered (mulch or living plants), and disturb it as little as possible. Organic matter feeds soil life, holds water in sand, opens drainage in clay, and buffers pH. Signs of trouble: water pooling (drainage/compaction), white crust (salts/over-fertilizing), plants yellowing from the bottom up (nitrogen hunger — compost, manure tea, or organic nitrogen fixes it). A simple jar test (shake soil in water, let it settle in layers) reveals your sand/silt/clay balance; a cheap pH kit tells you if you're far from the happy 6.0-7.0 range (add lime to acidic soil, sulfur or lots of organic matter to alkaline — slowly, over seasons).

Compost: the engine

Everything the garden and kitchen discards becomes next year's fertility. Recipe: roughly 2-3 parts "browns" (dry leaves, straw, cardboard, wood shavings) to 1 part "greens" (kitchen scraps, fresh grass, manure from herbivores), kept as moist as a wrung sponge, turned occasionally. Hot, active piles finish in months; lazy cold piles in a year. Avoid meat, dairy, oils, diseased plants, and dog/cat waste. No space? Trench composting (bury scraps directly in beds) and worm bins work at apartment scale.

Watering wisdom

Deep and infrequent beats shallow and daily: soak the root zone (the top 15-20 cm), then let the surface dry — roots follow water downward and the plant gains drought resilience. Water soil, not leaves; morning is best. Mulch (straw, leaves, grass clippings, wood chips on paths) cuts water needs dramatically and suppresses weeds. Rain barrels under downspouts bank free water — see the water chapter for catchment math — and drip lines or a sunken clay pot (olla) deliver it with near-zero waste.

Spacing, succession, interplanting

Follow packet spacing — crowded plants yield less than fewer, properly spaced ones. Succession sowing keeps harvests coming: a short row of lettuce, radish, or beans every 2-3 weeks instead of one glut. Fast crops tuck between slow ones (radishes among carrots, lettuce under young tomatoes). Rotate plant families between beds year to year (nightshades, brassicas, legumes, alliums, cucurbits) to starve soil diseases and pests of their hosts; legumes (beans, peas) leave nitrogen behind them.

The survival garden: calories and keepers

Salad won't feed you through winter. Calorie and storage backbone for a self-reliance garden, especially in cold climates: potatoes (the top calories-per-square-metre crop for most gardeners), winter squash, dry beans, cabbage, root vegetables (carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips — parsnips sweeten after frost), onions and garlic, kale (survives hard frost and keeps producing). Add fast greens and herbs for vitamins and morale. Garlic is planted in autumn; potatoes from certified or saved seed potatoes in spring, hilled as they grow. A modest 50 m² managed well can supply a meaningful share of a household's winter vegetables.

Season extension and cold climates

Each layer of protection buys roughly one climate zone: row cover fabric over hoops (also a superb insect barrier), cold frames, low tunnels, unheated greenhouses/polytunnels. Cold-hardy champions for autumn and overwintering: spinach, mâche, kale, leeks, chard. In short northern summers choose early varieties (days-to-maturity on the packet), start transplants indoors, use dark mulch or fabric to warm soil, and favor the protected, sun-trapping microclimates against south-facing walls.

Pests and diseases, organically

Healthy soil and airflow prevent most problems. The escalation ladder: identify first (many insects are allies — ladybugs, ground beetles, bees); hand-pick and hose off; barriers (row cover, collars against cutworms, netting against birds and moths); traps (beer for slugs, yellow sticky cards); then targeted organic controls (insecticidal soap and oils for soft-bodied pests, Bt for caterpillars) applied in the evening to spare pollinators. Diseases: water the soil not the foliage, space for airflow, remove infected material (bin, don't compost), rotate families. Slugs in wet climates: evening patrols, boards as day-shelters to check, copper edges, and iron-phosphate pellets rated for organic use.