Tag Archives: Planning a Garden

Holy cow! I have a feeling I might be super-late to the party on this one– and we’re not even going to talk about favorite gardening apps, because, hello, flip phone held together by duct tape– but have you all seen the neato planting calculators available (for free!) at Johnny’s? I nearly died of happiness when Susan forwarded them to me!

You can plant your fall garden by backtracking from your fall frost date, plan out succession plantings, and even figure out how to have [x] amount of [y] crop by [z] important date. The one I’m especially in love with is the Fall Planting Calculator. You enter your fall frost date, and it tells you the date by which you need to have your plants in the ground, either as 4-week-old transplants or directly-sown.

We’ve been doing the usual round of high summer garden maintenance– tearing out the peas and transplanting in young tomatoes; harvesting the last of the beets and carrots and putting peppers in their places; digging up the last of the potatoes and throwing down squash seeds– but, at the same time, we need to start thinking about which plants will succeed the ones that are currently producing at full tilt.

A few beds have already been planted with cover crops that will protect and nourish the soil all through the fall and winter. But the rest of the beds– the corn, beans, tomatoes, and cucurbits,  which are currently producing heavily– will need to find new tenants in the fall. In fact, they’re giving us so much, they might wear themselves out over the course of the next few weeks.

Having played around with the calculator, I’ve learned that we need to get a move on our brussels sprouts, peas, broccoli, and cabbage. Since these crops need cooler temperatures to germinate, we’ll be setting up the greenhouse indoors, in the air conditioning (or, at the very least, in the garage). Unfortunately, these crops need lots of extra attention (and water) to keep from frizzling when they’re transplanted in early August– exactly when one doesn’t want to spend any more time outdoors than strictly necessary.

I still have to work out a full rotation plan, but the past few hours of paging through the catalog and dreaming of Fall have been a wonderful respite– a close analog, I guess, to sitting by the fire in January and dreaming of July.

It is officially time, y’all.

Last week, Zac and I spent nearly every waking hour out of doors. We hauled load after load of compost down to the garden, and turned load after load of it in to last year’s double-dug beds, transforming the wintry, clay crust into a dark, even tilth.

In the first bed went our root vegetable seeds: St. Valery and Jaune Obtuse du Doubs carrots, Chioggia, Bull’s Blood, and Golden beets, and, in a row together, Guernsey Half-Long parsnips and French Breakfast radishes (the radishes, quick to germinate and come to maturity, mark the parsnips’ row, shade out competing weeds, and are harvested and gone by the time the parsnips need the space. This is a trick I picked up from Country Living, which is hands-down our second favorite magazine, next, of course, to By Hand.)

Jerry observed us carefully.

From a llama’s eye view, you can see the layout of the garden a little better. In front is the root bed, the bed I’m standing and planting is the greens bed (succession planted with about 8 types of lettuce), and the bed to my back is the onion bed. Beyond that, there’s a perennial bed on the left (overwintered garlic, to be replaced by asparagus, two rhubarb crowns, and some horseradish), and a yet-to-be-dug potato bed on the right.

Further beyond that, in another fenced-off area, is the New Garden– a plot about the size of four beds, currently inhabited by Elwyn, Brooks, and White, our wonderful weed-eating geese. Once they eat the weeds down to nothing, we’ll dig four beds there: one for tomatoes, one for peppers, one for cucurbitaceae, and one for beans and peas.

I’d go in to our plans for putting berry bushes all along the back of the house, and planting herbs and dye plants all in the front, but it makes me tired just to think about.

If you remember the insane bounty of last summer’s garden (only the original three beds), you may wonder why on earth we’d want to grow any more food than last year.

It might have something to do with the best compliment I’ve ever received (I overheard Susan telling someone this weekend “Caroline never met anything she didn’t want to grow,” which, isn’t that just the best?), but there’s another, bigger reason there as well.

Baby Jalapeños

Here is the big announcement: we’re starting (another) CSA!

But don’t get excited just yet.

Since it looks like we’ll be faced another deluge of food (not only vegetables, but also milk, cheese, eggs, and bread) this summer, we realized we’d need a release valve of sorts– we needed to find someone to give all this food to, so that we weren’t sneaking squashes in the A/C repair van, giving bushels of beans to the mail lady, and plying everyone who set foot in the house with watermelon jam.

Leggy Tomato Babies

Since Susan has the alchemical talent of turning everything she touches into gold, she suggested with sell 5 shares in our summer garden (20 weeks, from Mid-May through September) at the cut-rate price of $100 each to some friends. At $5 a week, the shares were gone in about 37 seconds, and we’ve got a heck of a waiting list. Since the whole venture really is experimental (how much do Zac and I like gardening for an audience? Did we plant enough lettuce for 5 families?), we decided to start really, really small.

That makes us back all the money we spent on seeds and plants, while teaching us what works and what doesn’t, and also allows us to offload our inevitable zillions of tomatoes onto our 5 lovely customers.

Little Herbs

So keep your fingers crossed for us and for our garden (and if I owe you an email, think of me transplanting thousands of thread-thin onions, and forgive me). I’m already pretty sore from shoveling– just in time for Shearing School next weekend!– and a little more tan than I’d like to be. That said, if you have a spring or summer farm stay coming up, prepare to be pressed in to service! (Just kidding (Or am I?))

This is going to be the best summer yet. And we’re never going to spend money on food again.

P.S. Zac and I are going to go cut down some trees in the woods today. Why, pray? To inoculate them with Oyster and Shiitake mushroom spores, and start a little mushroom garden under the deck. We’ll expect our first harvests in about a year. No problem.

This year’s garden just came in the mail.

That is to say, we just got FORTY-FIVE packets of seeds from Baker Creek! I had to jump up on the table to get a picture of everything! If you’ve ever wondered how a whole year’s worth of homegrown vegetables begins, wonder no further.

I got a good number of seedlings started today. There are whole flats of onions, leeks, peppers, tomatoes, and even eggplants (which I hate, but, well, I’m not the only person who needs to eat this summer). There’s a lot more work to do, but it’s a start I’m proud of.

About half of the seedlings are in flats, but the other half are in soil blocks. Everyone who uses them is positively evangelical about them, since they work so well in minimizing transplant shock. I hadn’t ever used them before, and, honestly, was a little mystified as to how a soil blocker actually worked. Luckily, we found a soil-blocker in the barn (don’t you love it when that happens?), and decided to give it a spin. It’s pretty cool, so I thought I’d show you how they work.

First of all, you get your soil really wet– like, squeeze a handful and water comes out (we did this in a big plastic tub, the kind usually used for organizing). You want the mudpie you’re making to cohere.

Next, jam your soil-blocker down into the soil, filling up the chambers with dirt. Rock and knead the block-maker back and forth– the more you compress the soil, the better your block will hold together.

You bring the block maker over to your tray (Zac put these together for me this afternoon. They’re plywood with a bit of trim nailed around the edges. Really, you could use anything that gives a good base to your blocks. These are 18″ x 25″, and hold 84 little blocks),

and, to eject the blocks, press the plunger while pulling up on the chambers.

And look at that! Four soil blocks of eight cubic inches each, with a little dimple in the center of each one, for planting seeds.

Between loading up the blocker, you can dip it in water to clean off the excess soil, if you’d like less scraggly-looking blocks.

Here, I’m planting our peppers: Sweet Italian Peppers, Hungarian Paprika, Jalapeños, and ten precious Ghost Peppers, for Zac.

All our little baby plants are safely tucked away in these two beautiful greenhouses, which were a present from Susan’s mom (thank you, Carol!). I had the distinct impression, while sliding in the trays, that I was getting putting bread into the oven– having kneaded, prepared, and sown, there was nothing left to do but await a magical transformation.

Have you all started your seeds yet? What are you growing? I would love to hear about it– nothing gets me so excited as hearing about garden plans!