Choosing Where to Build Your Vegetable Garden in the Southern Plains

Understanding things like the angle of the sun and contour of the earth can make your job a whole lot easier

Every climate type presents certain challenge to vegetable gardeners . Here are a few area - specific tips to keep in idea when sit a new veggie garden in your Southern Plains garden .

Building beds on contour makes use of your garden’s natural curves

If you are create a new vegetable garden , or even tally to an old one , you will be face with the pick of how to orient your garden beds in the infinite . Because of our long , red-hot summertime and the resulting irrigation that is necessary , bed orientation can be an important pattern consideration . Beds put out on contour will gazump up rainwater flux down gradient and therefore reduce your irrigation need . To envision this , cerebrate of a seam on contour as keep an eye on the curve of a topographic function . The bed will essentially be at a 90 ° angle to rainfall flow downhill .

Permaculture , a innovation framework for sustainable gardening and animation , places a major accent on such contour plantings . If your garden website is on a hill , the configuration may be obvious , but even site that seem dead flat never are ! Before you build up your garden beds , celebrate the site during a sullen rainfall so you could observe how the water moves across the surface of the ground and how your garden bottom could best stop and trap that water . Contour positioning allows garden soil to soak up rain and store it for up to several days or more . That means less tearing for you !

Easy access to water is paramount on hot summer days

Speaking of lachrymation , I ca n’t emphasise this point enough : when contrive a Modern vegetable garden in our region , verify you have easy access to water . It ’s well-to-do to say to yourself , “ I ’ll just irrigate this bed by hired hand when it postulate it . ” Our summers are screamer . Do not be after to hand - water your garden . You will not desire to be hauling heavy watering bum out to your vegetable garden when it is 100 ° F in July and it has n’t rain in hebdomad . ensure you have access to a hosepipe and , ideally , to a more hands - off watering organization like drip irrigation or dewy-eyed soaker hoses with a timer . The time to think about water supply access is when you ’re first build your garden .

Afternoon shade still yields full sun exposure

Most vegetable garden plants require full sun , which really just think six or more hours of Lord’s Day per day . “ Full sun ” does not needfully mean the full 14 time of day of sunlight that we get per day during the summer in the Southern Plains ! The summer sun can be specially vicious in the later afternoons in our part , both for people and for plants . Many garden vegetable ( and gardener ! ) appreciate some nuance after about 3:00 pm . So if your garden site has trees on the western bound that allow some nuance in the late afternoon , that ’s just hunky-dory — and even preferable . Look at your garden and determine which beds take in the most sun and when . Dominicus - thirsty plants like peppers , love apple , and okra will do best with the most minute of pic ; cat valium such as Swiss Beta vulgaris cicla , lettuce , and herbaceous plant can do with much less .

Plan for different angles of sunlight at different times of the year

In our region we are lucky that we can garden yr - pear-shaped , or nearly all yr - pear-shaped . Because of that , you ’ll want to evaluate your potential garden site for both outflow and summer sun versus fall and wintertime Dominicus . Since we are in the northern cerebral hemisphere , the sun moves from east to Occident across the southern half of our sky every day . At summer solstice , the sun will postdate an arc high in the southern sky , with the Sunday passing almost directly overhead at noontide . In the wintertime , the sunlight ’s arc stays low in the southern sky . It ’s of import to evaluate your vegetable garden site with these seasonal Dominicus exposures in mind . For instance , I have two veg gardens at my sign of the zodiac , and both of them work for leap and summer horticulture . One of them , however , is too shady for twilight and wintertime horticulture due to there being too many trees along the southern and westerly edges that block the low winter sun .

I trust these site tips facilitate you develop a successful fresh veggie garden , regardless of which crops you prefer to spring up .

— Karen Beaty is a forestry specialist at the city of Austin ’s Wildland Conservation Division .

hunky-dory Gardening Recommended Products

Chapin International 10509 Upside - Down Trigger Sprayer

o.k. Gardening receives a commission for items purchased through links on this site , include Amazon Associates and other affiliate advert programs .

Johnny ’s Selected Seeds Connecta ® Cultivation Kit

XLUX Soil Moisture Meter

Get our late bakshis , how - to article , and instructional videos sent to your inbox .

Southern Plains November Garden To-Do List

Bold and Beautiful Yuccas for the Southern Plains

Southern Plains October Garden To-Do List

Thorny Favorites for the Southern Plains

Join Fine Gardening for a loose engaging live webinar featuring Dr. Janna Beckerman , a far-famed industrial plant diagnostician as well as professor emerita at Purdue University and the ornamental technical handler …

When I spotted a particular moxie dollar cactus ( Astrophytum asterias ) at the Philadelphia Flower Show a few months ago , I knew I was in fuss . With a delightful color design …

When we only prioritise plants we desire over plants our landscape motive , each season is filled with a never - ending list of chores : pruning , pinching , watering , treating , amend , and fertilizing , with …

Video

Touring an Eco-friendly, Shady Backyard Retreat

You must be careful when you enter the backyard of garden interior decorator Jeff Epping — not because you ’re likely to spark on something , but because you might be dive - bombed by a distich …