Shade tolerant plants in a shady yard

When planting season rolls around we can't help but see or hear something about what to plant and where, how to tend it, and how to receive the most bounty from our efforts. While some of us can dream of soon flitting through the garden, merrily casting pumpkin seed down this isle, and rare heirloom tomato seed down that isle, others feel left in the dark... literally.

A shady yard or even a shady spot in the yard may seem incapable of growing anything. If you do any reading, you know that "full sun" means at least 6 hours of daylight. Because of this, sun loving plants like tomatoes and pumpkins are out.

Or are they?  It's a good idea to look high as well as low for your plant growing needs.  Check out the sides of buildings and fences, under the eves of the house, garage or a shed.  If there is a spot that gets a couple hours of light on the ground, would it get more if the plants were elevated? A great way to plot where the sun hits is to pick a sunny day when you're going to be home all day.  Find a long stick and place it in the test area. Get up early (oh, come on... to be outside early in the morning with a cuppa? you'll be happy, trust me) and mark with a line and a time where the shade line is on it, if it's anywhere near the stick.. maybe you can go back to bed for an hour or two until it even reaches the stick. Each hour, go out and make another mark and note the time. When you are done, you have a good gauge for how high to put the containers with plants according to the plants' light requirements.

There are pretty metal hanging brackets sold at any gardening center for the purpose of hanging a pot with long hooks.  There are also disposable (I'd find a way to reuse a bag by looking at the garden centre ones and mimicking where they put the holes. Liquor store bags come to mind) to hang plants from fences.  I have experimented with cutting off the bottom of 2 liter pop bottles, and feeding a little tomato seedling up, through the spout, into the soil I've placed in the bottle.  With 3 or 4 holes poked around the cut-end of the bottle to thread twine through and hang it, it makes a spiffy up-side-down tomato pot, watered from the top.  I'd place mulch on the top to keep the moisture in, since there isn't a lot of soil to hold it. An ice cream pail would work too.

Your sweet sun spot not next to a building or fence? No worries. Use a ladder or build a tiered shelf on which you can set the potted plants.  Place the plants with least amount of sun requirement on the bottom, the most on top.  An old shelf works well too.  I have seen some pretty respectful arrangements of saw horses and planks, made to look very functional and neat, especially once the plants fill in! If you are feeling, after experimentation with raised platforms, that you'd like to have something more  permanent, look into a spiral herb garden, made with recycled concrete chunks or field stone.

It's not all cut and dried, either sun or no sun, there is such a thing as "part shade" category, which fall into 4-6 hours of sun, and then there are shade tolerant plants, which like 2-3 hours of sun only.  Here are a few of the latter: Mints (careful! these spread like wildfire!) , chives, garlic, and parsley, beets, brocolli, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, radishes, rhubarb, spinach and turnips. Peas are a cool weather crop that like part sun, and so can go in early, and will climb, allowing them to receive more light, later, when they are taller.  


For more tips on starting a garden, watch here, on this blog.  Click on "permaculture" in tags, on the left side bar.