The Growing Season is Around the Corner

My windowsill starts

Have you started your seeds yet? It isn't too late for some of your veggies like tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins. There are even some seeds you can plant out now, lettuce, onion seeds/sets, and cauliflower. 

Just a reminder though, don't get too vigorous with your planting yet, the last frost may occur in the first week of May. 

Okay, having said that I usually get my seeds in the ground in mid-April, 1st week of May. My garden is usually pretty successful.

My garden on August 17, 2013

I didn't use the space efficiently and it was a new spot so I didn't choose wisely for the sun, but I wasn't totally disappointed with the harvests. Again having said this...this year we have different plans. 

First, I decided where I am placing my plants based on the knowledge obtained last year as to where the sun hits and when. 

Second, I laid out my garden plan using a free garden planner I found at Growveg.com. You get a 30 day free trial of the planner and you can definitely plan out your garden space in that time. I was impressed with this website. 

Third, instead of burying my potatoes, I am going to try towers. I found a great plan at Growing Lot Suburban Farm. I will putting up 2 of these one with russets  and one with reds. 

Fourth, we are repurposing as much as we can including using a trampoline frame and free discarded wood to make a greenhouse. I'll post pictures of that later.  There are several "plans" out there, but some of them don't make a bunch of sense so we are doing it Jeff's way. But if you want to see what one can look like, check it out here...Organic Adventures in Farming. We also pulled some old metal shelves from the fabrication pile and have using other materials we had lying around, we now have starter shelves for our greenhouse. 

And finally, I am going to experiment with Square Foot Gardening. I've never tried it before, and in my case I have tons of room for rows, but the thought of planting 99 green bean plants is a bit overwhelming, but when it's laid out in a grid like this, it doesn't seem so daunting. We collected used 2" x 6" deck boards and have built our boxes. We had enough left over to build a couple for a daughter as well. I just happened to have some slats under my woodworking bench, so grids are no problem. This could be a way to reclaim some of my backyard.

photo courtesy of http://www.versusbattle.com

You can find pros & cons at VersusBattle.com of either SFG or row gardening.

Good luck and good gardening!