For so many gardeners, the process is the reward. Spending time out in the garden, enjoying fresh air and sunshine, and taking care of all of the many different chores that will move the needle slowly but surely towards a harvest of delicious fruits, veggies, and herbs.
But for other gardeners, gardeners like me, the waiting is intolerable. I like to do the work and get paid. I want the reward, and I want it now! I can’t stand the waiting because I’m not that patient. But even if you are patient, there are good reasons for wanting your crops to grow as fast as possible.
Keeping your crops growing quickly can help you get in multiple harvests in the season, or beat an early frost.
Efficiency is always a good thing, no matter how you square it! If you want to speed up your garden crops, keep reading and I’ll tell you about 11 proven techniques for doing so.
Protect Them From Cold
This first tip is a big one, and one that most seasoned gardeners already know about. You’ve got to protect all of your crops from getting too cold, and that includes ones that you plant for a fall harvest.
The trick is understanding that maintaining an optimal temperature, including for the roots, is going to keep their growth from stalling. Proper temperatures are especially critical for germination, fruiting, and proper nutrient uptake.
You can winterize your plants and garden by using plastic sheets, row covers, blankets, and even electric heating pads and other devices if you’re caring for seedlings or young plants. If temperatures are always cold where you are, consider a greenhouse.
Give Them the Right Nutrients
No kidding, right? All plants need the right kinds of nutrients, in the right proportions, at the right times, in order to thrive.
The Big Three, N, P, and K are universal, though each plant will prefer more or less of each. Beyond these three, nutrients like calcium, iron, magnesium, and more all play a part…
If your plants don’t have enough, or if there’s way too much in the soil, health will suffer, and growth will slow down or even stop entirely.
This isn’t something you can guess at if you want your plants to grow as quickly as possible. Perform soil testing on your garden and add nutrients as necessary before you plant or seed.
Also, don’t be afraid to give plants a little shot of nutrition midway through the growing season because they’ll be using up the more readily available nutrients while they’re young and developing.
You can use fertilizer, compost, compost tea, animal manure, green manure, bone meal, worm castings and more as appropriate for your soil and plants.
Condition the Soil
The quality of the soil itself is another crucial factor affecting growth rate. As a rule of thumb, most plants like loose, well-draining soil, but might tolerate other kinds.
You’ll start running into problems when you have substandard soil: heavy clay will compact roots and stop them from spreading out while also making nutrient uptake more difficult. Stony, rocky soil is difficult to plant in generally.
You don’t have to shrug your shoulders and put up with it. It’s possible to condition your soil by adding mulch, leaf litter, potting mix, and other materials.
Continual conditioning and being careful to avoid compaction goes a long way towards a speedy harvest. But if the soil is just too tough to deal with or you don’t want to waste the time and resources, consider raised beds or containers where you can control the soil composition.
Manage Soil pH Levels
This is another elementary factor that, nonetheless, many gardeners underestimate or just forget about: the acidity or alkalinity of the soil. If this isn’t right, your plants are doomed to be puny, stunted, and slow-growing.
Even among plants that are fairly adaptable, the pH range in which they grow best will be fairly narrow. Like nutrient levels, pH is something that you must test and adjust before you start planting, and you need to keep an eye on it throughout the growing season.
Some common garden favorites that prefer distinctly acidic soil include blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, peppers, carrots, and ornamentals like gardenias and hydrangeas. Neutral soil plants include tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, most beans, broccoli, and radishes.
Plants that need alkaline soil include beets, spinach, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and lavender.
Maintain Species-specific Soil Moisture Levels
Just as plant species prefer the right levels of specific nutrients and the right pH balance, they also prefer certain moisture levels…
Some plants really like to dry out between waterings, like the aforementioned lavender. Others like to stay quite moist at all times, like watercress, celery, and spinach.
If you water on a fixed schedule, regardless of the needs of your plants, you won’t get optimal growth. This requires a little bit of extra strategy and care in planting upfront, but it’s well worth it.
If you can plant your thirstier crops together and those that prefer to stay a bit drier together, you can simplify the process.
If that isn’t possible, just take care to give each of them the amount of moisture that they need, and when they need it.
Water Properly!
Sticking with watering habits for a minute, watering your plants correctly, and I mean the act of watering them, is similarly important for rapid growth.
How do you water your garden? A sprinkler, or maybe just spraying it down with the hose? Do you love giving your plants a dousing with the watering can and admiring how the water glistens on their beautiful foliage? If so, stop!
Getting the foliage and stems wet is only going to promote mildew and other kinds of harmful fungi that can devastate your crops.
Unless you are fertilizing them directly through the foliage, a pretty exacting process, you only want to apply the water directly at soil level so it can get to the roots and be absorbed there.
Use drip irrigation, soaker hoses, or an extension wand on your hose to put the water right at soil level over the root zone. Remember not to overdo it!
Prune When Needed
No matter how careful and doting you are with your garden, certain parts of your plants are going to die, wither, or generally misbehave. When that happens, it is time to prune!
For starters, any dead leaves, blooms, or stems should be pruned off. The same goes for infected parts of the plant if you suspect disease.
For plants that have a creeping or climbing growth habit, if the plant is directing too much energy into runners and stems, not beneficial foliage and fruit, prune them back to get it back on track.
Whenever you are pruning, use sharp, sterilized tools so you don’t wind up making your plants sick. Stay on top of pruning and you’ll really see a boost in growth!
Protect Delicate Plants from Wind
It’s fun to watch your plants sway in the breeze, but I can guarantee you they don’t like it! Wind can be surprisingly hard on plants, stressing them out and slowing growth.
Delicate and young plants can be damaged by even moderate breezes, and that will severely hamper performance.
Try to figure out where the prevailing winds come from in your area and how they interact with your property, and then set up windbreaks accordingly. This could be some sturdy shrubs, a short wall, or even some fine mesh netting.
Keep Pests at Bay
Another no-brainer: if you’ve got invasive, harmful pests in your garden chewing on your plants, they aren’t going to stand a chance. Even if they do survive, they’ll be so sickly and slow-growing that your harvest will be a long time coming if it arrives at all.
Treat the presence of harmful insects seriously, and take the appropriate countermeasures at once. Don’t hesitate to put netting or covers over your plants as soon as you clear off the immediate infestation.
Implementing beneficial predator populations, natural repellent plants, and other organic countermeasures will keep harmful chemicals off of your food and keep these sap-sucking critters at bay.
Use Compost and Compost Tea
Compost is a gardener’s best friend and has many benefits for your garden, not the least of which is that it helps plants grow a little quicker.
You can mix compost into the soil, layer it on top of the soil as mulch, or steep it in water to make a nutrient-rich liquid that is commonly called compost tea.
Giving your plants a spritz of this stuff a couple of times during the season or layering on a little compost will provide the nutrients they need while developing.
Choose Fast-Growing Crops
Last but not least, if you want that harvest yesterday, you should pick plants that produce and ripen quickly in the first place.
Some common garden veggies like radishes can go from seed to harvest in as little as 3 weeks. Certain varieties of lettuce and spinach will be fully mature in just a month. Baby carrots can be harvested in as little as a month.
If fruits are on your mind, strawberries can be plump and ready to harvest in as little as 60 days, far faster than raspberries and blackberries in most cases.
There are lots of quick-growing herbs out there also. Nearly all varieties of cilantro, basil, and mint will be full of flavor and bountiful in just 30 days.
But whatever it is you are growing, take the time to look up fast-growing cultivars, and specifically ones that are optimized for your growing zone and conditions. Do that and you can always count on a timely harvest!
Tim is a farm boy with vast experience on homesteads, and with survival and prepping. He lives a self-reliant lifestyle along with his aging mother in a quiet and very conservative little town in Ohio. He teaches folks about security, prepping and self-sufficiency not just through his witty writing, but also in person.
Find out more about Tim and the rest of the crew here.