It's that time of year again! Gardening season has official begun, and I've spend the past few weeks picking out seeds with my mom and planning my vegetable garden. This year, in additional to my incredibly garden savvy mom, I also have this awesome book to answer my questions, which I got as a Christmas gift this past year.

^{Love my new gardening book! Before calling my mom with simple questions, I always check my book now.}

Last year I focused so much on seedlings, and you can check out all of those blog posts here. This year, I've decided this year to focus on direct sow and general garden planning. Here are some of my thoughts and what I've learned about spring garden prep.

Direct Sow Versus Seedlings.

Last year when my mom was teaching me how to grow my crops from seeds in the greenhouse, she told me not to bother with some vegetables; they were better to just go straight into the ground in a direct sow. This is especially true for some of your cold weather vegetables, which, in the Northeast, you can plant as early as March (depending on what the crop is). For example, this year I am growing carrots, beets, cabbage, spinach, and swish chard in the garden from the very beginning, and they have all been planted already. I've also already planted my lettuce (four varieties this year!) and broccoli rabe, but those two were first grown inside.

^{Some of the seeds that I picked up for a direct sow this year.}

Testing Old Seeds for Viability.

My old seed packets are starting to pile up, and I would like to use them this year instead of going out and buying new ones. Problem is that you never know the viability of your seeds, and the longer they are stored, the more the seeds deteriorate. I found this cool way to test seed viability in my new gardening book.

All you do is take ten seeds per packet and place them in a row on a lightly dampened paper towel. Roll up the paper towel, seal it inside a plastic bag, and put it in a warm spot. When germination can be expected for those particular seeds (check the back of the packet!), start to check the seeds. Count how many seeds germinated and multiply this by ten. This is the percentage of viability for the seeds in the packet. My gardening book recommends that if you get 70 to 100% germination, the seeds are fine to use. If you get 40-60% germination, you can use the seeds, but sow them thickly. Below 40% isn’t worth planting. Pretty cool trick if you ask me!

Rotate Your Crops.

This was one of the first things my mom taught me, and I know that I have mentioned it before, but it really is one of the most important things to do! Different types of plants use different nutrients in the soil. If you plants crops in the same place, every year your crops will be weaker and weaker. You need to rotate your crops to ensure that the soil is not depleted of the right nutrients for your plants and that you can have a fruitful harvest. Some plants even help to revitalize your soil! You can actually plant certain crops in the fall and till it into the garden in the spring to feed your soil. If you take the time to thoughtfully plan your garden, you can ensure that you keep having great harvests (a little cow manure tilled into the soil doesn't hurt either!).

How to Plan Your Garden.

Related to rotating your crops is garden planning! It's really important not only to plan your garden, but also to keep a record of where you plant what. Otherwise, how are you going to efficiently rotate your garden? As a novice gardener, I don't have any of those intense, large garden journals like my mom does. I just have my tiny little notebook, but it's perfect for what I need. I've sketched out a rough outline of our garden (again, I'm not that intense that I am using grid paper to perfectly measure out the space, although that would be a smart idea), and I've started to make some decisions about what is going where. In essence, I am flipping my garden from last year, as most of my greens were on the left and most of my tomatoes were on the right. But there will be some variety.

^{The beginning outline of my garden this year, along with my new clippers!}

You may notice that some of the plants are sketched out to be very close together. One of the things I learned from my new gardening book is that some vegetables can have up to sixteen plants in one square foot! For example, you can place sixteen lettuce plants in one square foot, but only one tomato plant per square foot. Spinach can be up to nine plants per square foot, and herbs can be up to four plants per square foot. As my garden isn't that big and I have ambitions of growing quite a bit, I've decided to follow the plants per square foot plan pretty closely. I also found that last year I had some crops that were too crowded, and some that has too must extra space. My goal this year – use my garden space more efficiently! If you do this though, do keep in mind that the closer the plants, the fast bugs and disease can travel. You have to keep a close eye on your plants so you can pull them quickly should they get pests or disease.

I had Andrew help me make this nifty one-square foot frame out of scrap wood. I simply place the frame down, do my planting, and then move on to the next square foot!

^{The simple, but useful square foot frame Andrew made me.}

Preparing the Garden Beds.

You don’t want to till your garden in the spring, but it’s hard to fight that urge. Good news is it’s okay to turn your soil. This year to prep our garden beds for planting we loosened the top layer of soil with a grape hoe that my grandfather bought us. We then added a thin layer of cow manure over it, which we got from a friend of my mom’s who owns a farm. We then turned the manure into the first eight inches or so of the soil. To break up any large soil clumps and to make she spoil fairly level, we then ran a rake over both beds. Now our garden is beefed up with some extra nutrients and organic content!

^{Andrew helping me out on the first day of garden cleaning! Barkley was supervising from}

^{behind the apple tree.}

Happy Gardening!

Vegetable Garden 2017 - Garden Planning

Tatiana

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