Raising the Root

This is the planning stage.  I usually start this part around January 24, right about the time we are getting that fourth snow storm since the holidays, I just finally put away that last Christmas decoration I kept not seeing, and I am completely over wearing boots and sweaters (and I love my boots and sweaters).

I might be jumping the gun just a bit, but you do want to have a plan before you get out there and start digging.

The two most important things to do before planning what to plant:

• First, ask yourself:  What do I love to eat?  If you really don’t like the texture of eggplant, don’t plant it.  Do you eat a salad every night with dinner?  Then lettuce is a must!  Make a list, and prioritize.
• Second, if you haven’t already, go measure that garden area.  Plants need room to grow–some more than others.  You can get over 500 carrots in the same space that one tomato plant needs.  If you have a very small space to work with, think about planting several vegetables that grow on small plants, rather than just a few larger plants.

Traditional vegetable gardening has always been done in rows, where you dig a trench in your soil, throw a bunch of seeds in the trench, and cover it up.  Then in two weeks, when the seedlings start coming up, you have a billion little plants that are all smashed together.  Since veggie plants can’t grow that close together, you have to get down there on your hands and knees and pull all those extra little plants out.  Doesn’t that sound wasteful (not to mention kinda painful)?

Instead of the using row system, plant individual plants.  Here’s why:

• It doesn’t take any longer—in fact, it will save you time, since you don’t have to go back through later and pull out the extra seedlings.
• You will use less seeds (and can save the rest for next year—more on that when I cover starting plants from seed).
• You can get more plants in less space.  Don’t we all want as many fresh veggies as possible from our garden?
• I think veggie beds look more natural and prettier this way.  I like pretty.

I like to think of the space each plant needs as its own little circular patch of ground, where the stem goes in the middle.  Some veggies don’t take up much room at all, while others need lots of space.  Your seed packets will have all of this information on the back—best to use those numbers when you actually plant, but here is a list of some common veggies and approximately how much space they need.  These numbers are the diameters of each plant’s “patch”, to give you a basic guideline for planning:

1”        carrots
2”        onions, radishes, peas
3”        beets
4”        pole beans, arugula, mustard greens
6”        lettuce, cucumbers, corn, potatoes
8”        most herbs
12”      bush beans, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage
18”      spinach
24”      tomatoes
4’         squash

Here’s the part where you get to be artsy!  Get some graph paper and a pencil (or if you are a complete nerd like me, break out your lap top and fire up Adobe Illustrator).  Draw out your garden area to scale.  Then draw a circle in the correct size for each veggie, and label it.  Or—cut out little circles for each veggie, label them, and move them around until they look good.  You’ll want to use a ruler here unless you have an uncanny sense of proportion.  For tiny plants that don’t take up much room, like carrots, just designate areas for planting.  Fill up your garden however you want!  Your circles can butt up against each other, but shouldn’t overlap.  The plan below shows 4 beds that are 4 by 8 feet (click it to see a full size image). 

A few things to note:

• Notice how in the top left bed, there are large circles for zucchini and squash, while there are other plants that run around them.  The reason is this: peas, mustard greens, and spinach are all early season crops.  They will be harvested and the plants removed before the zucchini and squash plants reach maturity.
• You will want to keep shorter plants out from the shade of taller ones—if you haven’t yet purchased seeds or plants yet, you might have to do a bit of rearranging later—no big deal.
• With certain plants—like corn—you will want to keep all together in one big patch.  (More on those specifics later when we are ready to actually get plants in the soil.)
• If you have a big garden area that you will need to walk through to reach the plants, leave a two foot wide path down the middle so that you can access all parts of the garden.  The deepest you will want your garden to be at any point is about 5 feet, with access from both sides (or 2 ½ feet with access from one side).  Any deeper and you won’t be able to reach the stuff in the middle.

If you have some open space, that’s OK.  There are going to be things that catch your eye at the nursery that you just HAVE to buy that you didn’t plan on.  In fact, you might want to leave some open space in anticipation of the must-haves.  Gardening is, after all, organic.  The process might as well be, too.  Right now we are just trying to figure out what and approximately how much and what you are going to plant before you go shopping.

One other thing to consider…  if it’s cheap at the grocery store, and if there is not a discernible difference in taste when compared to one from the garden, then it might not be worth planting.  For example—butternut squash.  Takes up a TON of room in the garden, and I think a big beautiful organic butternut from Sunflower Market is just as good and costs just a few bucks.  It’s not going in my garden.  However, tomatoes at the grocery store can’t compare to the heirlooms that come out of my garden.  I don’t buy tomatoes.  Ever.  (More on this in coming posts.)

OK.  Got your list?  You have two options:

1. Buy seeds and grow your own seedlings.  While not terribly difficult, this involves a good bit of time and certain other criteria.  My next post will address this process in pretty specific detail.
2. If you want an easier but more costly route (or if you are reading this in May and it’s too late to start seeds), buy plants that have been started for you.  They are everywhere in April/early May.
   2a.  Certain veggies—peas, beans, radishes, carrots, corn, parsnips, turnips, spinach, squash, and cucumbers—grow better if you just plop the seeds straight into the ground.  Unless it’s past their plant dates (again, see the back of the seed package), I would recommend starting these veggies from seed rather than buying plants, since you don’t have to start them indoors, and most of them don’t transplant very well.

You are ready to do some shopping!  If you are going to buy seedlings, you have some time.  Wait to buy them until they are just about ready to go into the ground, which in most cases is after the last frost.  In Denver, rule of thumb is the last frost is usually right around Mother’s Day.  However, I have a good friend who spent all of MD bonding with his Mom while planting his (gigantic) garden, only to loose almost everything to frost later that week—ouch.)  So I generally wait until at least a week or two (depending on the weather that season) after MD to put any plants into the ground that can’t handle a hard frost.

If you are starting your own plants from seed, you’ll get an earful about that next…