I'll apologize up front for the length of this post. It's LOOONG.  But I also added plenty of pictures to try to keep you from getting bored.  And if you're a gardener in any way or want to be, there's a lot of good information here.

We've been married 15 years and grown a garden for probably 14 years.  Before we had our own home, we would use the garden plot of an older person who wanted a garden but couldn't care for it themselves.  For the most part, our gardens have always produced well and because they've always done well, we've pretty much done the same thing every year.  We've always started out by tilling the garden, setting up irrigation, then buying most of our plants at the nursery and planting them near the end of May.
Below is a picture of what our typical garden would look like after first planting.  The plants you see were purchased at the local nursery and we planted seeds for things like corn and beans.

The picture below was taken at around the end of the growing season. The tomato plant at the very end of the row was at least 10 feet tall.

This is a picture of our son holding a bell pepper from the garden. Our plants were always huge, producing large amounts of produce.  

So why change the way we do things?  Why fix what ain't broke?  After learning some of the things we've learned this past year I'm convinced there are better, cheaper and healthier ways to grow our garden.  Plus we really wanted to know how to garden from scratch.
When I say cheaper, I have to be honest, this year we did NOT save any money.  It was a bit of an investment to get everything started the way we wanted to, but the majority of it can be reused for years to come.

Seed starting.  This will be your first step if you're starting your garden from scratch. This is something I learned from Ivie. Actually, almost everything new I've learned about gardening, I've learned from Ivie. She's already been doing a lot of this for years.
In the picture below, is a little device we call a soiltuber.  My husband, Jason, built it.  He's very handy like that.  It's job is to compact the soil into little tubes which can then be used to start your seed.  There are a lot of advantages to starting seed this way.  First, you don't have to purchase any containers to plant seed in.  Second, the roots stop growing outward once they come in contact with the air, so unlike in a container, your roots do not become root-bound. This results in much less, if any, transplant shock when you put your plant in the ground, so you'll have a  faster growing, healthier plant.   


You may be wondering where you can buy your own soiltuber. There really are not many available. Here is a link that will take you to Johnny's website (which, by the way, is our favorite place to buy seeds), and a video tutorial on how it works. Hopefully we'll have our own video tutorial ready to post soon. Follow the link and in the search box type in "soil block maker" (soiltuber is our own invented name, you'll come up with nothing if you search for it).  They cost over $30 plus shipping.  Or you get one of ours.  If you ask really nice.  And pay us $25.  Plus shipping. If you're interested, contact us HERE.
You can see in the pictures how the soiltuber leaves a little spot in the top for your seed to go in, then you'll cover it with soil.

Because you'll be starting these up to a few months before you can actually plant them outside, you'll need to keep them indoors under a grow light.  You can buy a grow light but they're not cheap.  Or you can make your own.  Jason made one for us from some old fluorescent lights that were no longer being used.  You can also use a 48 inch shop light. You can find plans for one online. The pictures below are homemade ones at a friends' house. Notice the chain on the side.  You'll want to be able to adjust either your shelf or your lights up and down.  If the light is too high above the plant, you'll get tall spindly plants instead of full ones.
One thing we learned is that heat helps.  A lot.  Our lights are in our basement where it stays really cool and it took our seeds much longer to germinate than it did our friends who kept theirs at warmer temperatures. Some of them (tomatoes and peppers) didn't germinate at all until I bought heating pads for them.

The two trays can hold a total of 64 plants.  Which is probably plenty for your average garden.

But what if you want to start a million and four plants like we did?  Or maybe it was closer to 704, but at the time it felt pretty close to a million. Either way, we definitely don't have enough room in our house for a million or 700 plants and we don't have a greenhouse.  But we have the next best thing.  Which brings me to what I wanted to talk about next-

LOW TUNNELS. Possibly the most exciting thing I've learned this year. They're very inexpensive compared to a greenhouse, they're much easier to put up than a greenhouse and when compared to an unheated greenhouse, the plants grow better.  Ivie put some of these up in her yard last fall and harvested greens out of them all winter long.  Even when temperatures reached NEGATIVE 13 degrees F, the plants did fine. She also has a greenhouse and it didn't stay nearly as warm as her low tunnels. Of course you're not going to be able to grow tomatoes and peppers all winter long, but your cool weather plants will do great.

Here's a look at how we did our tunnel.  We put ours up in January, during a week that the temperatures and warmed up enough to thaw the ground a bit.  You can make your tunnel any size, but our tunnels are all 20 feet so I'll give instructions according to that. You can purchase most of the supplies in bulk for cheaper, depending on how many tunnels you want to build. Plus, you'll need a pole bender.

Here's what you'll need-
5 or 6- 1/2in x 10ft conduit pipes (yes, you can use PVC but you'll be sorry when it snows or gets windy)
9 gauge wire- it usually comes in 50 ft roll
Nylon cord (don't use cotton)- something with a work load of 200-300 lbs
28ft x 10ft- 4 or 5 greenhouse film- 
25 ft x 10 ft Agribon
Wood stakes- 8 inches or longer
Sand bags filled with sand or rocks

We hope to soon have a video tutorial on how to set these up, but THIS is a link for an instruction manual from Johnny's.  You'll notice that we do some things different. First, in the picture below, you can see we run our cord the entire length of the tunnel, wrapping it around each hoop in the process.  This keeps it from sagging as much. Second, you can see that our Agribon layer is lower than the plastic layer.  Most of the low tunnels you see online, have the Agribon and the plastic layered right next each other.  The reason we've done it this way, is because the air space between the two seems to keep things much warmer.  The 9 gauge wire we have listed is what you will use for the lower layer.  You'll cut it into hoops about 78 inches, give or take.

If it all seems a little overwhelming you can buy a kit for any size tunnel you want with everything included.  It may even come out cheaper if you only want one or two tunnels.  If you're interested in buying one, Kim and Ivie build the kits.  You can contact them HERE.

 

In the photo below you can clearly see the air space between the two layers. Also in the photo below, note the blue water jugs next to the tree.  We use some of these in place of sand bags.  Filled with water, they're very heavy and we actually place them inside the tunnel and tuck the edges under them.  The water in them heats up during the day and provides additional heat for the tunnel through the cold nights.





















A few months after we planted in January, here's what we've got.
Peas-

 Carrots-

Lettuce mix and spinach-

With the exception of the peas, which we planted in 3 rows, we just randomly threw seeds on the ground then covered the seeds with mulch.  We gave it a good watering to begin with and really didn't do much with it after that.  The spaces where the lettuce didn't fill in thickly, we just add more seeds or plants to later.
It's important to put mulch down under the tunnels so you don't end up with a slug problem, as the tunnels stay very moist and warm through the winter.

In the picture below, you can see our warmer weather starts.  We started these seeds around the end of March, but would possible be possible to start them a little earlier.  We've had temperatures down to about 17 degrees F.  If the temperature drops below 20, I put a light fleece blanket over them just as a precaution.  They may be okay without it, but I'm afraid to take the chance.  We started cucumbers, basil, cabbage, celery and flowers. They all came up.  However, I did have to take our tomatoes and peppers back in the house under the light and on the heating pad to get them to germinate. The soil temperature must not have consistently stayed between 80-90 degrees outside.  

So at this point we're about ready to move plastic off of our tunnel that has the peas, carrots and lettuce.  We'll keep the hoops up and when it gets warmer we'll cover them with shade cloth so that they'll last longer into the summer.  We'll also plant our tomatoes, peppers, basil and cucumbers in the ground under 3 more tunnels to give them a head start.  In our area (zone 5), those plants are usually not safe to be out in the open until almost the end of May.

The very last thing I wanted to cover is soil preparation.  We recently watched a film called Back To Eden.  You'll want to watch it to fully understand what we're doing.  It's as long as a regular movie, so grab some popcorn and make it a movie night. We thought it was fascinating and when we travel up to Washington this summer, we're going to go meet this guy.
To give you a quick idea-, you'll never till your garden again, you'll just keep adding layers. It's organic. You'll always have a layer of mulch on top which helps keep the water in and the weeds back. No need to rotate crops. And many other benefits.
In the picture below you can see the layers we're putting in our garden, with wood chips on the top.  We've been getting all our wood chips for free through a local tree cutting company.  I know our city also offers it by the truck load for about $25.  Check around your local area, chances are you'll be able to get it for pretty inexpensive or even free. We're excited to try it and will have follow-up posts about how well it works.

Well that's about it.  For this post anyway.  We have many other things for many other posts.  But we'll save that for another day...