Dear Dot,
Help me build a small garden bed. I would also love some tips to help the vegetables grow more prolifically and heartier.
– Royce Ann
Dear Royce Ann,
Confession: While Dot applauds your desire to start a vegetable garden, my own attempts have been dismal and I have defaulted to a small raised bed where I can manage to keep alive some tomatoes, peppers, and basil. Consequently, I have enlisted Dot’s delightful, talented, and green-thumbed copyeditor and contributor, Laura, to answer your question. Here’s what she had to say:
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Beyond the fact that every home-grown vegetable you eat means less fuel is used in getting dinner on your table, local veggies (including those from your farmers market) taste better and are more nutritious than their trucked-in counterparts. The minute a vegetable is picked (and thus cut off from its own source of nourishment), it begins to break down, losing nutrients and flavor as it does so. My father loved fresh corn on the cob. He’d get a pot of water boiling in the kitchen, and only then would he walk out to our cornfield to pick the ears we needed for dinner. He’d shuck them while walking back to the house so he could plunge them into the boiling water the minute he reached the stove. The result? The sweetest corn imaginable ― yum!
You have similar rewards awaiting you, Royce Ann, once you get your own garden up and bursting with produce. Since you’re planning a small garden, backyard corn is not in your future, but plenty of other good things are!
What advice does Dot stand-in (and gardener) Laura Roosevelt have for our wannabe gardener? Keep reading.
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