Category: Seed Starting

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Plan your garden for the spring

Every winter, I enjoy planning my garden for the coming year.  Flipping through seed catalogs, perusing websites, and filling in labels on maps of the garden are lovely occupations for a cold winter day.

I keep records to make sure I don’t plant the tomatoes in the same spot year after year, preventing disease buildup and nutrient depletion.  I also create plans at the beginning of the year to ensure I have a space for every vegetable.

Nothing is worse (and I have done this) than planting the garden and realizing you forgot a critical crop.

This year, because I am attempting to grow vegetables for sale, my planning has become even more complex.  I created some basic documents that I print from my computer and fill in with a pencil and highlighter.  The photo below is of one of my first charts.img_3806

Across the top are dates (I chose Monday) in intervals of a week, and along the side I wrote the name of the crop.  From my seed packets and seed catalogs, I determine the days to maturity.

Some days to maturity are based on the date from transplant.  Others, like turnips, are based on the date from direct seeding.  I plan to write a post about understanding dates to maturity soon, so check back with me.

My farmers’ market opens on May 8, and I want to have plenty of vegetables ready for the market.  May 6 is the Monday of that week, so I marked that date in orange highlighter, then counted back in yellow highlighter to the date I needed to sow the seed to have the plant mature on May 6.

I have made this chart available to you for free as a document you may download, edit, and print by clicking here.  It’s very low-tech, and I know other farmers and the Excel-savvy folks do a more sophisticated plan, but if a pencil and a highlighter makes you happy, please use mine.  It is on two sheets of paper, so you will need to tape it together to make a sheet including all the dates.  Get some white-out, because you will need it when you incorrectly count the dates.

‘Polbig’ tomato will be an experiment in the hoophouse.  I am writing this on January 29, and I sowed seed for the ‘Polbig’ tomato and the ‘Lunchbox’ pepper today.  I will plant my main season tomato crops on March 11 to get them out into the garden at a time when the risk of frost has passed.  I am not a risk taker by nature, and I learned through experience and damaged tomato plants to not push the season.  I’ll provide these tomatoes with protection, and if they survive, they will be a bonus crop, not the main one.

I realized that using one chart for the entire garden was going to be too difficult to follow, so I copied the charts and made individual ones for each bed.  I have ten beds, and so I put the corresponding number on each chart.  Below is a much easier-to-use chart for bed 2.

I seed the broccoli in flats indoors on January 21, February 4, February 18, March 4, and March 18.  I will transplant them a corresponding five weeks later, and I will expect a harvest six weeks later.  This will give me a staggered harvest of broccoli into June.

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By the time the earliest plantings of broccoli are finished, it will be time to sow the seeds for beans directly into the soil.  They do not have to be transplanted, and they grow more quickly than broccoli, so I should be able to have a harvest of beans at one end of the bed while I am still picking broccoli from the other end.

Of course, this plan does not account for bad weather, insect damage, disease, or any other disaster that might befall my plants.  But, I have a plan.  Instead of wondering when I need to plant, or knowing when I need to plant and putting it off, I can consult my crop plan and sow the seeds on time.

Crop planning is sort of like lesson planning: your students may move more quickly or more slowly than you expect, or they might be sick a week, but at least you know what you are supposed to be doing in an ideal world.

By having this plan, I also know if a plant is not growing as quickly as the seed packet and the catalog promise.  I can search for the cause of the problem and try to remedy the problem.

In the photo below from 2002, when I had a 300 square foot garden in my first house in a subdivision (the neighbors thought I was insane to have such an “enormous” garden) I kept notes on a piece of notebook paper.  I love perusing my old garden journals.  I will have to share more of them in other posts.

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From year to year, I can also see if planting tomatoes early worked, or if it was a disaster.  The first and last frost dates have shifted by several weeks since I began gardening, and I need to adjust my planting dates based on these changes.  In 2002, I lived on an island off the coast of Charleston.  Frosts arrived late and left early, and the soil was rich and black.

I live near Columbia, 100 miles from the ocean now, and I don’t feel comfortable setting out my tomatoes until mid-to-late April.  Late frosts occur and kill the plants of the unwary gardener.  So, although I might set out some tender plants early, I won’t put in the entire garden until it is definitely safe.

Now that I am gardening more seriously, (and have access to the wonders of a home computer and a printer) I made charts to document my planting plan that I will also share with you. It is a basic document that you may edit.

By keeping these brief records, (and keeping toddler fingers from removing the plant labels so I no longer know which plant is which) I have already discovered that the ‘Sun King’ broccoli seed does not germinate with any reliability, and I have discarded the seed.  The broccoli seed I got at my neighborhood feed store, Sal’s Local Seed, is germinating correctly.  img_3795-1

When I started the process of trying to figure out succession planning, I searched the internet and found a few resources, but many of them were geared towards those unfortunate folks who live where it’s too cold to garden most of the winter.  I guess they can’t actually get outside and do any gardening for several months out of the year, so they have time to write gardening and create websites.

Grab your free downloads of the crop planning sheet and the crop note sheet and make planning your garden simple.

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Hoop House Completion

The weather has been sunny for the past few days, thank God, and I have been able to finish the hoop house.  In this post I describe the first day of construction.

My hoop house is small and isn’t a permanent structure, but it should protect my vegetables from rain, wind, cold, and even heat.  It is also something you can make in your own garden with easily available materials from a home center or online.

Here is a photo of the finished hoop house, with Phoenix kitten looking on.  He hopes I make a lovely winter habitat to attract lizards and other fun things he can catch.  I draped the plastic over the entire structure, with the help of my children.  I could have done it alone, if I had sandbags ready to weight down the plastic.  The day I completed this project was breezy, which made things interesting but manageable.

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Finished hoop house with kitten.

At the ends of the structure are sandbags.  The professionals with large tunnels pull the plastic tight and tie it to a stake, but the sandbags are sufficient for my needs.  img_3698

You can see the conduit inserted on top of the rebar.  I tied rope to the rebar and zig-zagged it over the top of the hoop house to hold down the plastic.  I will pull up the plastic, and then pull the rope tight to hold it up for ventilation or to get inside to work.

I cannot stand up in the structure; it is only about 4 feet tall at the apex.  I also got some clips that fit on the conduit to help hold it up and to hold it in place across the top.

To put the rope on top, I had to just play with it to figure out how it worked.  Here’s what I discovered:  I tied the rope to the rebar, not to the conduit, because then the rope will slip up with the conduit when it moves.  I tossed it diagonally across the hoop house and fished it out of the mud on the other side, and I wrapped it around the rebar on that side.

I continued this process down the hoop house with one rope (I needed one about 60 feet long, maybe a bit less, to go the length of my 35 foot long hoophouse).  Then, with another rope, also about 60 feet long, I started on the other side of the first hoop and zig-zagged my way down the hoop house.  My hoop house is 35 feet long.  If you double the length of the hoop house, which would be 70 feet, and then double that for the two ropes, you will probably have enough rope.

At the opposite end from where I began, I ended up with two ropes.  I can pull them tight to hold up the plastic when I raise it to ventilate the hoophouse, and I can relax it to let down the plastic.  The plastic-moving process isn’t as simple as it sounds: I will have to go hoop by hoop to raise and to secure the plastic.  img_3691

I am keeping the memory of this beautiful spinach, harvested from my cold frame, in my mind as I try to figure out how to construct and to manage all of this.  I hope to have an entire hoop house of this in a few months.

To see my first day of hoop house construction, in which I put up the conduit hoops, go here.

 

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It’s Time to Start Onion Seeds

As we prepare to move, we are doing many “lasts.”  I feel this most strongly in the garden, where I complete the last harvests and the last plantings.  The last summer garden planting happened last summer.  I knew I would not plant tomatoes and beans this year.  The date for the last cool-weather planting has been a bit nebulous because we weren’t sure exactly when we would move.

The last onion and garlic planting happened in the fall, and I completed the last onion harvest on a hot, dry day: something that has been elusive this spring.

Onions are easy to grow but they take many months to reach maturity if you start them from seed.  Sometime last July, nearly a year before I took them out of the ground, I started the tiny black seeds in a flat of soil.

I sprinkle them thinly on moist potting soil and cover them with about 1/8″ of soil.  I water them gently, and set them in the shade to germinate.  In July, when I normally start my onion seeds, the temperature is too hot outdoors for speedy germination, so I might set them indoors until they sprout.  Then I move them outdoors, ideally into a spot that receives morning sun and afternoon shade, and I keep them watered.

After I took this photograph, I gave the seedlings a haircut.  The black seed shells stay on the tips of the plants and cause them to lean over.  Cutting them allows the plants to put energy into growing the root system and to develop sturdier stems.

 

I have also started onion plants indoors under grow lights  and I have started them outdoors under shade cloth, depending on the weather and on how much time I have to tend to them.

I start my onions from seed because I want to grow storage onions, not the sweet “Vidalia” type (I’m not calling them Vidalia onions, because that’s against the law unless you live in a certain geographical area in Georgia.  “Vidalia” or “sweet” onions are large slicing onions.  Walla Walla or Texas Sweet are another name for them.

Stores sell them individually, usually, as toppings for hamburgers or for people to eat raw.  Sometimes you also see bags of them.  The bags of onions you buy to dice and saute to make your spaghetti sauce are most likely storage onions.  The sweet onions will keep only a few months, but the storage onions will last for many months if properly cured and stored.

I don’t like raw onions, but I do need the flavor of the onions in many of the foods I cook.  I use several onions a week in cooking.  This article from Bonnie Plants gives more details about selecting onion plants.

I began writing this article back in May, and then we moved.  My onions are now cured and the supply is greatly diminished.  Now that I have more time to write since my life has settled some, I am reminded that it is time to start seeds for onions if you live in the South, or in any place around the country where you don’t get extremely cold winters.  I can only really offer advice on specific planting times for the South.  I will have to go through my seeds, jumbled in a box in the freezer during the move, and figure out if I need to order more seeds.

This chart from Johnny Seeds gives details about which onion seed is correct for your climate and purposes.  After you choose a variety from the chart, go to this page from Johnny’s for details on planting your chosen variety.  As I visit Johnny’s to research links for this article, I see that they list a variety for the South that is new this year.

Check back with me for more details about High Point Farm.

 

 

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Plan Your Garden Before You Buy Seeds

While you are waiting for the seed catalogs to arrive in the mail, or if you are already enjoying the print or electronic version of the catalogs, make a garden plan before you purchase any seeds.  It is fun, of course, to choose new varieties of any intriguing seed.
Without a plan,you may waste many seeds, and you risk planting the same crop in the same place year after year and causing diseases or soil nutrient deficiencies.
If you prefer to plan your garden on the computer, try Mother Earth News’  garden planning software.  I prefer a paper, pencil, and ruler to do the actual planning, although the information available at the Mother Earth News website helps with planning on paper and on the computer.
I draw an outline of the garden, somewhat to scale, including fences, permanent beds, and paths, and I make copies of the original for future use.  It is easier to motivate
myself to fill in the blanks in subsequent years than to start anew.
One of the main reasons I plan my garden is to make sure I rotate the crops that are most susceptible to disease and attack by pests.  There are basic groups of plants, and I try to avoid planting them in the same spot more frequently than once every three or four years.
According to the Today’s Homeowner website,  an easy way to divide the garden is to consider the plant’s products: leaves or flowers (like lettuce and broccoli), fruits (like tomatoes, potatoes, and corn), roots (carrots, beets, and onions), and legumes that feed the soil (like beans and peas).
Tomatoes and potatoes, for example, remove many nutrients from the soil in order to grown, and they are susceptible to the same diseases.  If you plant them in the same place year after year, yield will eventually deteriorate.
To replace nutrients the potatoes used, plant beans or another legume, which release nitrogen into the soil, after the potatoes.  Diseases and pests that affect potatoes do not usually affect beans, and the pests and diseases should decrease in the absence of host plants.
On my garden plan, I write the crops I planted in different spots.  I usually have separate plans for each season because I plant a garden all year. When it is time to plant a new crop, I make sure to put it in a bed that has not had a member of its group in a few years.
Depending on the level of detail of the records you want, you can write “beans” on one area and “tomatoes” on another or you can write down the variety’s name.  I grow several bean varieties, for example, so I write down each variety.
I use labels on the rows too, but the writing on the stake often fades or the stakes disappear by the end of the growing season. Keeping detailed records of yields of the different varieties helps me eliminate varieties that do not perform well and buy more of those that do well in the garden.