Procuring your plants and seeds and when (Planning your veggie garden Part 3)



Hyperbole and a Half memes are the best memes

Okay. You’ve decided what you’re going to plant. And you’ve decided where you’re going to plant it. So… where are all these plants coming from? And when do you have to get them?

Never fear. In this third and final installment of Planning Your Veggie Garden we will cover both of these topics. (I probably could’ve split this into two blog posts, but I didn’t.)

When do I need to do things?

I’m a planner. I like to know when I have to do things before I have to go out and do them. So let’s start with our growing calendar.

In much the same way that our current understanding of human history can be divided into BCE and CE eras with the turning point being 2016 years ago, your garden calendar can be divided into Weeks-Before-Last-Frost  and Weeks-After-Last-Frost.  In Pittsburgh our average last frost date is sometime around May 1st. I like to assume it’s May 1st because I’m an impatient gardener. Other, more reserved gardeners say around May 10th or Mother’s day, to be on the safe side.

For the sake of argument we’re going to say that May 1st is our last frost date, because it’s my blog and I say so.

Laying out your calendar is super easy. You can print out some pages from Google, or write them down on a piece of paper like I did in my journal. You’ll want to count back from the date of the last frost 2 weeks, 4 weeks,  6 weeks, and 8 weeks. Then you’ll also want to mark the week/day of last frost, and 2 weeks after.

I also like to include a “Before Planting” to-do list with my garden calendar.

This is a quick and dirty list of generally what you need to do around those times. Your seed packet will tell you this information, or should. And if not it’s easily available online. Next week’s post is going to be about reading seed packets.

For a more comprehensive list I highly recommend the Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardeners Handbook, it’s a great resource where you can plug and play your own last-frost date to customize it to your needs. It’s filled with amazing info and very user friendly. (Find on Amazon here: LINK)

Before Planting: (You can do a lot of this stuff when it’s still absurdly cold out)

Wash and sanitize pots

This is what the inside of my garden journal looks like

Procure Seeds and Germination mix

Clean and Prep tools

Plan Veggie garden

Fix anything that needs fixed around the garden

Order seeds

8 Weeks before Last Frost (3-15-16 in Pittsburgh)

Start tomato and eggplant seeds

Start very large gourd seeds*

6 weeks before Last Frost (3-29-16)

Start some pumpkin seeds *

Start marigold seeds

4 weeks before last Frost (4-13-16)

Sow Spinach

Sow Beets

Start Sunflowers *

Sow Cold-hardy crops

2 weeks before last Frost (4-27-16)

Sow Lettuce

Begin hardening off seedlings

Week of Last Frost (5-1-16)

Run around outside in your underwear

2 weeks after Last Frost (5-24-16)

Sow Green beans

Sow Zucchini/ Summer Squash

Sow Winter Squash

Sow Gourds

Plant transplants (Sometimes I do this earlier, if I’m feeling anxious, which I usually do, but not before the last frost)

(* Things marked with this are things that people disagree about whether you should start them inside or direct sow them. As a general rule if I can direct sow things into my garden I do, but I’m still experimenting to see what works better. If you're not sure try starting half your seeds indoors and direct sowing half of them and see what does better)

How and Where do I get these plants?

At this point people often wonder things like: Why do you sow some plants directly into your garden and start others indoors? Why do I start some plants myself? Can’t I just buy seedlings?

Why sow some directly and transplant others?

Starting seeds indoors is a way to extend your active growing season. In places where we don’t have a very long growing season (In Pittsburgh it’s about 171 days), we need as many growing days as we can get. You can do this through a number of different means, using cold frames, cold tunnels for your beds, and most simply, starting your seedlings indoors. Also it gives us gardeners something to do when it’s cold and grey outside.

Lots of seeds don’t need to be started inside Lettuces are an easy example. Don’t waste your money transplants, and don’t bother with all the work of starting seedlings indoors. Lettuces grow super well straight in the soil and actually hate being transplanted.

The best little greenhouse in Pittsburgh! (At least I think it is)

Starting your seeds indoors does have it’s own issues. You need the space, you need a set up so that your seedlings get warmth and light. You need to remember to keep them watered and keep the humidity up (I’ll be writing another post all about the particulars of seed starting inside in the very near future).

Once your seedlings have sprouted and are wee baby plants, you’ll also need to harden them off, which is basically toughening them up. In your little green house your seedlings have a super comfortable life, they’re kind of sissies. So it’s important to slowly get them used to life on the outside. Take them out for a few hours a day, starting in part sun, then slowly into full sun (if you do it too fast you can give them sunburn, which I’ve done to my tomatoes, it won’t kill them, but it will stunt their growth for a little while). Slowly leaving them out for longer and longer periods of time until eventually they’re strong, tough little plants ready to take on the hazards of the garden.

If this all sounds like a bit more work than you really want to  don’t panic. You can always go to a nursery, plant sale, or even a home-improvement store (spoiler alert: their plants tend to suck), and buy as many seedlings as you want for your garden. There are some plants (cucumbers and peppers specifically) that I seem to just be really bad at growing myself. I haven’t figured out why, I think it might be the light. Anyway, when I buy nice strong hearty seedlings from other growers they do much better.  Sometimes I think that if I could afford it I would do this instead of starting my own.

But who am I kidding? I love seed starting!

Although, I also love plant shopping. I tend to end up with a great number of unexpected plant adoptions in the spring and have to find space for them in the garden and around the house. The Phipps Mother’s day weekend plant sale is particularly difficult for me to resist and I highly recommend it to any gardeners who want a chance to shop around from a variety of amazing local growers all in one place.

Next week: How to read your seed packets.

Getting it all down on paper (Planning your veggie garden Part 2)

You understand me Ryan Gosling

Once you’ve day dreamed your way through seed catalogs, Pinterest, and as many nursery companies as you can find, it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

What do you actually want to grow? How much space do you have to grow things? What can you grow in that space? What is your budget for this garden?

The order in which you determine these things isn’t all that important. This is how I like to do things, you might find another method that works better for you and that’s awesome. If you do please share it!

First I make a list of all the things I want to grow this year in my veggie garden along with the amount of space each one takes to grow. There is a popular garden method called “Square Foot Gardening” that I really like to borrow from. (If you’re interested you can get the book here: Link to Amazon)  If you have a healthy, well fertilized, raised bed you can use pack a lot more into each square foot than in traditional row gardens. However, the Square Foot Gardening method does not really enough air circulation, water, or light for the other plants to survive, so I trim it down a little. They also do not allow for enough space to get through the beds in order to tend plants that may be behind other plants. If you only have 4x4 beds, with total access all the way around, in absolutely flat and full sun areas with perfect soil and you always remember to water every day it doesn’t rain then the Square Foot Gardening method is for you. For the rest of us it leaves a bit to be desired. I do however find it to be one of the most useful books and methods for urban and smaller space gardening.

There are a lot of great resources out there for how much space different plants need, and I find that thinking about your garden in terms of square feet can be really helpful for some plants.

Here’s my quick and dirty spacing vegetable garden guidelines:

1 per 2 sq ft:  Zucchini (summer squash), Winter squash, Gourds, Pumpkins, Tomatoes, Standard Cucumbers

1 per sq ft: Peppers, Eggplant, Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Cabbage

2 per sq ft: Small cucumbers, Corn, Bush Beans, Collard Greens

4 per sq ft: Strawberry, Marigold (to be totally honest with you, I mostly just tuck marigolds into my garden anywhere I have a bit of space, they’re lovely pest repellent and also look super cute), Swiss Chard

Space 6’’ apart along trellis or fence: Pole beans, Peas (I don’t think much about these in terms of their footprint because they grow up along their supports so much)

Plant in rows more or less according to seed packet: Lettuces, spinach, most greens, carrots, beets.

A quick note about herbs:

An herb garden is one of the most enjoyable and cost efficient types of home gardening. If you have only a little bit of space you get the most dollar savings by growing your own herbs. Herb gardens are also great candidates for container gardens. Personally I prefer to grow my herbs in containers around my patio. I’ll write posts specifically about container gardens and herb gardens later.

Next you need to know about your space. Where are you planting this garden? How much space do you have? What kind of sun do you get?

First you need to know how big your garden is. Go out and measure your space. Are you building raised beds? I’ll be writing a post about raised beds later on, but (spoiler alert) if you can build raised beds I HIGHLY recommend that you do. They cut down on weeding, retain water better, give you more control over your soil quality, and they look pretty. Over all they’re just an awesome choice for your veggie garden.  

Once you’ve measured your space or spaces, write it down.

Most garden vegetables require full sun (6+ hours per day) in order to thrive and produce blooms. Keep in mind that the sun will move across the sky, so that if you look at your garden in the morning you might have different exposure than if you check it out in the afternoon.  

Check on your space at a couple different times during the day to see what kind of sun you get. Write that down too.

The Process:

Super high tech.

First thing’s first, gather your materials. There are as many different ways of writing up a garden plan as there are gardeners, but I have found that few things work quite as well as some graph paper, some colored pens or pencils, and my notebook.

If you’re not a pens and paper sort of person Gardeners.com has a great free tool that you can use right on their website to get much the same effect. 

http://www.gardeners.com/how-to/kitchen-garden-planner/kgp_home.html

This is just an example, my blog doesn't have its own garden

Draw your garden dimensions on your paper. You can make each square one foot, or you can make each square 6”, or however you want to do it. For the sake of this experiment I’m going to design a 4’ X 12’ bed, with each square representing 6” square.

Be sure to label your chart with both your space, the date, and your dimensions.

Up next is just plug and play. I like to do my initial spacing with a pencil and then write it in with pen later, so that I don’t have to redo everything if I mess up.

There are two different ways of laying out your garden plan, either using symbols for the different types of veggies or by blocking the space out and labeling it. I do both and either way works just fine and is totally up to you how you want to do it.

My actual garden journal on Left, example on right.

Some quick tips:

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere the southern sun will be the brightest and hottest and what most of your plants will want the most.

Bare in mind that taller plants will shade shorter plants. Plant your taller stuff towards the North side of your bed so that it won’t shade out the smaller stuff.

Remember that you need to be able to reach all your plants in order to tend them and harvest them. I made that mistake and spent a summer playing twister with a dense forest of tomato plants so that I could harvest the green beans I had growing on a fence behind them.

If you have a fence or wall, consider going vertical and growing something on them. Also if you can’t reach all the way around your garden, plant the tall stuff in the back, so that you can reach over the short stuff to get to it.

Once you’ve drawn, re drawn, tweaked and made yourself a beautiful garden that’s filled with yummy things you just can’t wait to eat, the next step is to ask yourself two key questions:

Where are I getting all these plants from?

and

When do I need to do stuff?

I’ll be answering those two questions in my next blog post!

Sweet dreams are made of seeds! (Planning your veggie garden Part 1)

Gardening puns are starting to grow on me

Being able to grow your own food was once a necessary life skill, even more valuable than reading. Unfortunately that was lost to a great number of people. Although thankfully there have always been farmers, and there are today, modern factory farming has made it so anyone can go to just about any grocery store, at any time, and find any produce they might want. Many people don't even know what seasonal crops are! (Seasonal crops are the vegetables, fruits, and other crops that are growing in your area at the time in question. In Pittsburgh in January there aren't a lot of in-season crops.) Home gardens were popular up through WWII with
Victory Gardens, but fell out of popularity and are only just now enjoying a modern resurgence through movements like and Grow Food Not Lawns and Urban Gardening. I myself live in an urban setting and although I don't have enough space or sun for self-sufficiency, I do grow a lot of vegetables all summer. Growing a home kitchen garden can be a lot of work, but it's fun and well worth it.

The first step in any garden project is to plan it out. January and February are prime time for garden planning. We're past the fun Holidays part of winter and now into the long slog of ice and slush and cold grey days until Spring. To keep the winter blues at bay I like to focus on what I have in front of me for the coming year. Also there's plenty of time to get all your dreaming, planning, researching and ordering done before any roots need to be put down. 

Now I am a compulsive planner, I love my day planner, I love my journals, I carry a little bag of colored pens and pencils so that everything is nice and orderly and colorful. You don't need much to plan your garden space well, just a little bit of time, some paper and pencils, or even just an internet connection. 

There are three steps in any garden plan:

Step 1: Dreams vs. Reality

Step 2: Getting it all down on paper (or at least saved to your hard drive)

Step 3: Procuring seeds and plants (aka- The fun part)

Dreams vs. Reality:

Around the end of the old year and beginning of the new year seed catalogs start coming in the mail. If you don't get any seed catalogs I recommend them highly. My roommate calls them "plant porn". And they are. I get a great deal of pleasure out of curling up on the couch with a seed catalog while it is cold and dreary outside and dreaming of Spring.  If you need some seed catalogs I recommend Botanical Interests (BotanicalInterests.com), Baker Creek Seed Company (RareSeeds.com), and Burpee (Burpee.com). You can visit their websites to browse seeds, and most of them will have a "request a catalog" link where you can get them mailed to you. 

Later on I'll be reviewing seed companies, however as of right now those are my three favorite catalogs.

Take some time to think about what you like to eat. What makes do you buy the most at the grocery store? What would you like to eat a lot of? This is actually a critical point. One year I planted a ton of radishes. They grow quickly and can be planted much earlier than many other vegetables, meaning that you can use the space for more than one crop in a growing season (more on that later too). So I thought "Score! Get some early planting in, lets grow some radishes!". And I did. And I grew an absurd number of radishes. They were really yummy too, and if you are a radish enthusiast I highly recommend growing your own. However, I am not much of a radish enthusiast and aside from the odd radish in a salad I'm not terribly enthused about them.  So then I had a rather large number of radishes and no desire to eat them, neither my husband nor room mate much like radishes either. Fortunately we have a neighbor that does enjoy radishes and so I gave them to him. Vegetable gardening is great for making friends with your neighbors.

Once you have a general idea of what you'd like to grow it's time to break out all that sweet sweet plant porn. If you've never planted a garden before you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed by the options. I fondly remember the first year that I decided to grow tomatoes and started looking for "tomato seeds". As it turns out there are basically a million different varieties. They come in different sizes, shapes, colors, textures, growth habits, basically any variation of a tomato you can imagine probably exists out there.

Don't Panic. There will be lots and lots of information out there. And there are plenty of good sources for help in decoding it. Check out my glossary page for some vocabulary words, and also feel free to shoot me an email over on my Contact page. Or leave a comment.

The best thing to do as a new-bie, or as an expert is to Read The Seed Packet (or plant label). I have another story about the marigolds that ate my garden, but I'll save that for another day

Compile a wish list. Dream big.

Then acknowledge reality.

The unfortunate thing about gardening is that no matter how much information there is out there, or how many different varieties of amazing mysterious seeds you buy, you will need some space to plant them.

Consider your space carefully.

But keep dreaming anyway.

Next post: Getting it all down on paper- Planning your veggie garden part 2.