Plan, Plan, Plant!

Posted by Kelsey in Gardening.

Planning is a key word for me when it comes to vegetable gardening. I spent a good part of December, January, and some of February thinking about and planning the garden to come this spring. I ordered lots of seed catalogues, browsed several websites, and had long talks with my dad about what should be done, and when to do it.

Since I was starting from scratch the first thing I had to think about was location. Location, Location, Location. It’s imperative that you chose the correct spot, your plants depend on it. Plants need sun to grow, and not just a little sun here and there for an hour a day; they need full sun. Which means anywhere from 6-8 hours of sun shining down on those little seed pods, heating them and drawing them up out of the dirt. They also need water, most vegetables and fruits contain a large percentage of water-a tomato is 95% water! If your plant lacks the proper amount of water, you probably won’t see anything worth eating once summer rolls around. Keeping the water source close to the garden ensures that you will have an easier time watering, which means you should be able to do it on a regular basis. If it’s a pain in the butt, you probably won’t do it.

So I looked around my yard, which is mainly tree covered. Overhanging trees are a garden’s arch enemy. I learned this last year when my tomato plants gave me absolutely nothing to eat. Take your time if you have to, scope out your yard or patio, see what areas remain sunny and warm throughout the day. I chose a spot on the empty lot that I own on the other side of my house. Not too many trees, open and flat, plenty of sunshine, not so water convenient, but I had no other option. I would just have to figure something out-water moves a little easier than the 200 year old maple trees in my yard. I understand that I have more room then some, but the same principles apply, find the sunniest spot you can, and hopefully the water is close.

Once you’ve got a spot, it’s time to prepare the soil. The spot that I had chosen was just a nice grassy area, so it had to turn into soil first. I decided to create a rather large garden, about 20 feet by 40 feet, but only do what you think you can manage. I have a full time job, a dog to love, a husband to socialize with, laundry to do, Sims to play, flowers to grow, and dinners to cook. Needless to say, I am never sitting around staring at the wall just LOOKING for something do. So I’m going to give you details on how I got my garden started, which you could do yourself, but I’m a busy woman.

At the advice of my father, I started looking through the classified ads in the newspaper at around March 1^st . I was looking for someone who was offering a rototilling service. A rototiller is a little machine that you can walk behind; it churns up the dirt and mixes it all together. I eventually found a man who was offering said service, and I gave him a call. I suggest that you get several quotes from different people, I was quoted $900 by someone, and eventually ended up paying about $150 when I finally found someone else. Let me also mention now that I am not rich, at all. You can also rent rototillers from equipment rental companies, and some mega home stores, just take a browse through the yellow pages or online. When the rototilling is done, you want to have soft soil that has a little height to it, something that looks like you could dig into it. Now you can also test your soil for PH levels and all the jazz, but I’ll just be real and say that I didn’t do that and I really don’t care to. If stuff didn’t grow then I might think about it, but I like to fly by the seat of my pants.

Here’s my dad, helping with the tilling!

Once the tilling was done.

Your next step is to decide what you want to grow, I figured this out over the winter, it gave me something to look forward to when it was snowing outside. I had recently read a book called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver (I strongly recommend this book) and after reading her chapter on hybrid seeds and big seed companies I decided to only grow Heirloom plants.

Heirloom plants are plant varieties that were grown back in a time when people weren’t so concerned with how round and symmetrical a tomato was, and they weren’t worried about how they would travel thousands of miles, or how long they would sit on a shelf. These are the vegetables and plants of yesteryear, back before 10 year old girls had boobs. There is no genetic modification with these types of plants, and that’s how I like it. They may no be the prettiest, but they are the tastiest and most nutritionally valuable, and quite honestly I don’t want a squash that some scientist has modified in any way, I want it how it was meant to be, tasty!

After deciding that I wanted to just grow heirloom varieties, I started thinking about what I would actually eat, there is no sense in growing something unless its going to be eaten, either by you, people that you live with, or your neighbors.

So here is what I’m growing:

• Brandywine tomatoes
• Church tomatoes
• Black krim tomatoes
• Red potatoes
• White potatoes
• Strawberries
• Zucchini
• Yellow Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Jalapeno peppers
• Yellow bell peppers
• Green bell peppers
• Connecticut field pumpkins
• Corn
• Beans
• Sunflowers
• Sweet Potatoes
• Lots of Herbs!

When you buy seeds they come with instructions for planting, and speaking as someone who never reads directions, read the directions! I didn’t read the directions on my strawberries and now they aren’t doing so well. So please, if only to avoid wasting money, read the planting instructions. Water the seeds after you plant them, and then pay attention to the weather-there is no sense in watering if it’s going to rain the next morning or overnight. Over watering can kill your plants so pay attention to how moist the soil looks and how green everything looks. Things will look sad for a few weeks, but once those seeds get going, you’re going to wonder what you were thinking with all that planting, or is that just me?

Garden Photos from early in the spring.

Planting Potatoes! You have to cut them in half when you plant them.

Once they start to sprout you have to hill dirt up around the stems, otherwise they fall over, and potatoes don’t like it when their stems fall over. We planted these in late march, by June I was digging them up periodically for dinner, oh they were good! I still have about 30 feet of them in the ground, I just dig them up as I need them, they will just continue to grow as I leave them in the ground.

40 Feet of Potatoes!

This was my first planting of tomatoes, these are Brandywine and Church varieties. You put the cage around them for when they get larger, otherwise they fall over, and your tomatoes get all nasty on the ground.

Just an FYI, tomatoes and potatoes can be grown in buckets or barrels on a deck or patio that gets plenty of light!

My Basil, Oregano, and Parsley. I tend to grow herbs in containers on my deck, that way when I’m cooking I can easily pop outside to gather some for dinner.

Gardening |