Take risks! jump in!

I'm going in! The forecast has no frosts through May 15th, which is the average last frost date - so I'm going to plant my tomatoes and everything that I was going to plant indoors last week (like marigolds) outdoors today or tomorrow (depending on the weather). Then I will pray. And possibly find out who has extra floating row cover (a white, floaty mesh covering for plants in case of late frosts - it has to be hooped up over the plants with pvc piping). I only need a little bit, so it would be a shame to buy a whole row.

My tomatoes are tall enough to be staked at this point. The peppers didn't respond well to hardening off, so I lost 2 plants in the cold frame, but that's okay. the few calendula and daisies the survived the dampening off epidemic that hit this spring are going strong. The leeks are spindly and never quite grew well. I can't tell why, but I'll try to transplant them and see how they do. I've decided I'm going to grow several of the smaller tomato varieties (Garden peach and also the ground cherries) in pots so as to have them right at my doorstep. I'm also going to try to keep the black krim in a pot, though I don't know how much they like that, seeing as they're big plants. the sauce tomatoes will be fine in the garden. I have a steady supply of chives, oregano, sage, marjoram, and rhubarb from my landlord's garden

Lettuce, chard, kale, chives, and chamomile have all germinated. More calendula has been direct seeded in the garden, which will be coming up soon. The peas are going strong and climbing up the trellis. Everything has been thinned. I'm doing basic weeding, but keeping off until the little veggies get a bit bigger so I don't weed them by mistake (and because weeds are easier to pull when they have 4 leaves). My constant weed struggle currently is with the morning glory vines that insist on popping up everywhere and grow faster than humanly imaginable. The thistle in the northwest corner of the garden is, sadly, growing strong. I might take a scythe to it to keep it from flowering.

Sorry for the lack of updating. I'v been too busy lounging outside and enjoying the weather.

Building a Cold Frame!

One of the luxuries of the early spring for the hobby gardener is that this isn't a particularly stressful time. with 2-3 hours of investment, at most, per week, it's relatively easy to be right on path. I keep the light on over my seedlings, water about every other day, plant the seeds I need, and generally keep things going. Perhaps the hardest thing is keeping the temperature in my house consistently warm enough for new seeds to germinate. The ground cherries I just planted, which are a nightshade - a relative of the tomatillo - require fairly warm temperatures to germinate. With frosts still rolling through the region every few nights and with wamr sunny days, my indoor temperature is in a constant state of flux which averages around 55*, not the ideal 70, but still workable. Heat mats, unfortunately, make for a more expensive tomato than I am willing to dish out for. Maybe next year I'll finally dish out the cash for a few.

I decided that i will bring out the cold frame for my calendula this weekend. The process of moving seedlings from an indoor seed-starting set up to a cold frame is called "hardening off." I typically do it 2-3 weeks before transplanting. It's a step between the total ease and comfort of indoor living and the harsh reality of life in the garden that helps to acclimate your seedlings before the shock of transplanting. Plop your seedlings into the cold frame and -prop it open during the day for ventilation (otherwise you risk burning your plants). Close the cold frame at sunset to lock in the heat. This will keep temperatures moderated and protect plants from hard rains while exposing them to being outdoors. If there's a hard frost coming your way, throw a blanket on top of the closed cold frame to keep the heat in.

If you don't have a cold frame, you could bring your plants outside on nice days and take them in every night. However, building one is fairly easy, and I would recommend it. I built mine with friends, a hand saw, a power drill (though I could have used a hammer), and some old windows I picked up from the side of the road, and a couple of old hinges and drawer pulls. We used old 2"X10" planks. The procedure is absurdly easy.

Build a cold frame
Cold frames are a really great home building project, especially given how much people will charge for a pre-fab one. I would definitely recommend building your own. Start out by studying what you're building so that you understand the concept. If you've built anything before, the basics of this project will be fairly obvious. If you haven't, you might want to consult instructions in this book or on the web. The type of cold frame I outline below is like this one, but made with only one row of panels in the front and two in back. While building, keep in mind that cold frames are sloped, facing south, so as to maximize the amount of sole exposure and minimize shading. Also keep in mind that any part of your coldframe that isn't flush or properly fitted will let out precious heat on cold nights.

Materials
- Salvaged window, glass door, shower door, or frame with plastic. Storm windows are best, but not necessary.
- Salvaged 2x8 - 2x14 boards (just make sure they're not pressure-treated)
- Scrap wood (preferably 2" square) for bracing, 2 cut to the width of a single board (8-14"), 3 cut a hair shorter than double that length, and 2 cut to a middle length (doesn't have to be exact)
- Screws and drill or hammer and nails
- 2-3 hinges and screws
- A Drawer-pull
- Hand saw, chop saw, circular saw, whatever.
- a chisel
- Shims, Weather stripping, and/or caulk (if you need it)

The procedure
- The first part of any building project is the math. First measure (twice!) the length and width of your window and write this down. Your longer front and back panels will be the exact size of the length of your windows. Mark this length for 3 boards, keeping in mind that the saw will turn a few millimeters of solid wood into dust. That 1 board for the front and 2 for the back.

- Next, measure the width of your windows (twice). Write this down and then measure the height of your boards, which should be just shy of 2 inches (and jot it down). The shorter panels for the sides of your cold frame will fit inside the long panels, and therefore need to be measured to the width of your window minus 2 times the height of the boards. Therefore, if your window is 28" wide and your boards are 1.75" high, your boards should be cut to 28-(2*1.75), or 24.5".
Again, mark out and measure 3 boards of this length. That's 1 for either side plus a third that will make the slope on both sides.

- Now that you've measured and marked everything twice, cut your panels - 3 long ones, 3 short ones.

- Now comes the Hard part. Draw a diagonal line that bisects one of your short, side boards and forms two long triangles. Take into account the width of the saw to make sure that, when cut, the triangles will be identical. These two triangles will form the slope of your cold frame. Take a deep breath and cut the board on the diagonal, so that you have two triangles.

- Phew! Now let's assemble. You're basically building a sloped box in two teirs. Use 4 of your pre-cut bracing wood on the interior 4 corners (the two short ones in front and 2 of the longest ones in back, making sure the long ones are flush with the bottom of the boards and stick up in the air). Attach the bottom four pieces by screwing/nailing the boards into the 4 corner braces - remember, the sides fit inside the front and back boards.

- Next, Add bracing wood to the middle interior of each side except the front so that everything on the bottom is flush. The 3rd long piece should be in the center of the back sticking up and the two middle-length ones should be halfway along the sides sticking up (make sure they're in a place where they won't stick up over the sloping side panels). Add the top boards on the sides and back of the cold frame by drilling or screwing them into the bracing wood. You can add toeholds into the bottom boards, but this isn't necessary. Make sure everything is tight and together. Lift the frame to make sure it's sturdy.

- Now that you have the frame done, set your window on top and make sure everything fits. Make sure the window sits flush and tight against the top of the box. Attach the window to the frame by attaching hinges to the top of the cold frame and the window - making sure to keep it it as flush as possible. It wouldn't hurt to chisel out a small depression in which to set the hinge to prevent the window from lifting off of the back by the width of the hinge. If you don't have a chisel handy, you'll probably end up having to add weather stripping to the back seam. If you've never attached a hinge before, make sure you have someone there who knows how to do it or else really spend some time with that hinge to figure out the right side, the wrong side, and how it wants to be attached. Hinges are trickier than they appear. Once attached, lift the door to make sure they're on properly.

- Finally, attach the drawer pull to the center front of the window so that you can lift it easily.

- Check for any holes and add weather stripping or caulk where needed. If you want, paint it with a light, nontoxic paint to help it weather better and to reflect light back onto the plants.

Congratulations! You have a cold frame!

Soil Nutrition

We're on the cusp of 5 weeks before the last frost here in the Hudson Valley! Have you planted all that stuff you said you'd plant indoors (oops...no!)? Are your peas in the ground (yes!)? Garlic come up (yes!)? are you preparing your beds, repairing fencing (and garden tools and hats and hoses), adding nutrients, and finalizing plans (err...mostly)?

Preparing rich beds for Spring - soil nutrition and amendments
It's easy to see the larger picture when you look at your garden soil. Rich, black soil with lots of worms, easy-to-work texture, lots of air, and a soft, sweet, earthy smell are the obvious markers of good soil. What's hard to see is the details - who know how much Nitrogen or Potassium you have in there? Or what the pH is?

You want to make sure your plants are healthy and well fed this summer. If you haven't tested your soil for pH and basic nutrient levels, I would go ahead and send in a sample to Cornell co-operative extension (if you're in New York. In Jersey it's Rutgers, in Massachusetts it's UMass). You can also find diy soil pH tests at most nurseries, though I suggest building a relationship with your extension office - they're a huge help and a wonderful resource. To get a sample, dig up a good 6-inch deep cross-section of soil from your garden, put it in a mason jar or a plastic bag, and drop it off or mail it too the nearest extension office, asking for a basic soil test (they probably have a form on their website to fill out). It'll take 2-6 weeks to get the results back, during which time you can ask any gardening/farming neighbor what they add to their soil. Asking neighbors is a great way to find out what your soil will need, and just about everything else about gardening in your area.

The most common soil nutrient folks add to their soil here is lime to neutralize acidic soil. It's important to have a balanced soil pH because many dangerous soil chemicals dissolve in solution at an excessively low or high pH causing the plant to uptake them more easily, while good chemicals and elements, which a plant needs to survive, cannot be taken up by the plants in extremes of pH. pH stands for "parts Hydrogen," low pH is acidic while high pH values are alkaline or basic, a pH of 7 is neutral. Ideal soil pH is between 6.3-6.8. If you find that your soil is acidic (a pH lower than 6), add lime (follow instructions on the bag) or wood ash (I would just spread it liberally on the beds, which is what we do in my landlord's garden all winter). Since soil acidity is determined by the bedrock in your area, it will be a pervasive and consistent feature of your garden, and adding lime will be an annual endeavor (unless you build really effective raised beds).

After incorporating lime, you want to make sure that your plants have the nutrients they need for the coming year. The best soil amendment is finished compost (or fully composted manure). Not only does it add organic material and living nutrients, it also improves soil texture, pH, color (and therefore heat retention), beneficial bacteria, and is an all-around wonder drug for your garden soil. do NOT add raw compost or manure to spring garden beds (the one exception to this rule is rabbit manure, and if you have access to that, you've struck gold). Raw manure will burn delicate plant roots while raw compost will take hold up nutrients in its decomposition that you want to go to the plants. (In the fall, the rules are different, but we're not in the fall, are we?). If you don't have finished compost, go get yourself a bunch of manure, straw/mulch hay/leaves, and raw food scraps and promise yourself that next year at this time you will have at least some finished compost. In the mean time, if your soil is depleted (simple test - have you grown a heavy-feeder vegetable crop there last year? If so, your soil is depleted), you can use blood meal, bone meal, soy meal, etc etc etc to increase nutrient levels in the soil. Go to the nursery and get a well-balanced, organic soil additive and spread as per directions. Note that peas and beans are, in their own right, soil nutrients, and beds that will be planted with peas or beans can go without a heavy dose of additional nutrients, though I would add a little bit if you think your soil is very depleted (a 3-year rotation with beans is a classic rotation for soil nutrition).

phew! Got all that? Now that you know what spring is like, there's a lot of good reasons to put your garden to rest properly in the fall (namely that it saves you a lot of trouble come spring). Start asking around at local farms now to see if you can take one or a few pick-up truck loads of manure (1 pick-up load per 1-2 people being fed out of the garden is an easy estimate) so that you have it on hand when you put your beds to rest this fall. The longer it sits composting, the better.


As a side-note: P-K-N ratios seen on fertilizers, often just listed as 20-10-20 or something like that, stands for the amount of Potassium-Phosphorous (usually in the form of Potash)-Nitrogen in a fertilizer.

Also, I'll get around to kombucha one of these days, I promise.

Perfect Soil

I went to help friends at my old house in my old garden - the one I built out of youthful ambition, naivete, sweat, and the odd garden tool three springs ago - and had the unparalleled experience of pure bliss. I would not call myself an accomplished gardener. I am simply too erratic to make a garden beautiful, or to let all of my plants grow. For example, I did not plant ground cherries in their little pots this weekend. My cold frame is still in the ice shed. But when I walked into the garden and slipped (yes - slipped!) a garden fork into the first bed - the one that had tomatoes in it 2 years ago and lettuce last year - and turned the soil, I did what i do every year, and bent to check the soil. My arm slipped into perfect, dark, moist, and crumbly soil right up to the elbow.

After 3 years of gardening in clay and gravel, 2 of them in this very garden, I wanted to cry with joy. There was no way I was abandoning this perfect soil - so dark in color and light in weight - to spend another year in dirt and mud. Maybe I'll plant my onions and leaks and some lettuce at my house - just to have something there. the beds, after all, are tilled. I could add some good compost and call it a day. Which means, of course, that my garden plans were for nothing (though now that I remember it, my beds at the co-op are also 4' by 20'. and there are 3 of them. But I don't think I'll be able to just take up 3 beds even though there are 10+ beds roughly that size), but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter one bit because this success - having created such beautiful, dark, rich, and deep garden soil in 2 years - is a huge achievement. Far better than growing more garlic than I could possibly need for one winter, or making beautiful garden plans.

Building that garden was back-breaking. it's a huge, no-till garden built on what was, at the time, a thoroughly compacted post-construction lightly sloping hill complete with a hard pan, standing water, and more clay than i wanted to deal with. It was built by broadforking every bed just to aerate the soil, digging out paths (and dumping that soil onto the beds), then layering manure, paper, and 6 inches of straw, and watering the whole thing. It was mostly built in spring, so that year, I watched the bed seep moisture out of my seedlings (direct-seeding was not an option) and copious amounts of slugs (attracted by the straw) do a number on everything but the onions and potatoes (after an evening salt-shaker attack on the slugs). The next year was a little better, though I didn't grow much food at all, only tomatoes and garlic - and we know what happened with tomatoes last year. Most of the garden has been fallow one of the two years. And now - it is perfect.

Given how much work it is to build garden soil, I hope you can understand why i wouldn't want to do it again at a rental where I might not even be gardening next summer.

In conclusion I planted peas, lettuce, and swiss chard. My friend planted some herbs as well. I realized I should have planted chives, though I let my friend's interest get ahead of my own. Oh well. There's plenty of time, and there should be plenty of space.

Spring Weekends are here!

It's spring. I will be planting peppers, ground cherries, and tomato seeds tomorrow in the glorious sun, putting them on my new heat pad, and praying (peppers will be small and late this year, but oh well). Then I'll be working my newly-tilled garden over with a broad fork, probably bringing some soil over and forking it into the beds, adding some wood ash (in lieu of lime) and maybe even going to pick up finished manure somewhere or leaf mold, if I can find it. Then planting peas and setting up pea trellising. Definitely going for a long walk at my old house and picking a ton of ramps.

Hopefully I'll be pickling beets and root veggies, and maybe even ramps as well.

And, when it all comes down to it, I need to to get all my veggies out of storage and have a Thanksgiving-in-May party to finish the root veggies - though i think I'll plant some parsnips and carrots just for the hell of it - they're biennials and will therefore flower this year. Umbel-shaped flowers are particularly good at attracting beneficial insects into the garden, though the juice from parsnip stalks is very caustic - so be careful not to get it on your skin! I'm sure the parsnips and carrots are both hybrids and therefore I won't be able to save seed (the carrots aren't worth saving seed from anyway - they've gotten horribly woody), but it'll still be a fun little science experiment.

Now it's just a matter of getting out my farming shirts (long-sleeve button-downs) and my big garden hat, and getting to work!

Gardening is not farming and cold frames are not greenhouses

The seedlings are wet and well under their humming florescent light (which has insistently given me a headache and given my living room a bizarre glow for the past few days). I'll be starting ground cherries in a week and Okra, a spattering of herbs, and marigolds right around May Day (I started calendula and daisies already). I haven't decided if I'm going to start sunflowers in pots or try to keep the birds away and direct-seed them.

I am trying hard to figure out a way to stay home more. I have been away every other weekend for the past two months. Aside from what this does to my poor kitty, the result has been very destabilizing to my attempt to chart my desires and my future and get started. There's a certain amount of alone time with myself that I need before my brain starts clicking about certain things. Today I remembered thing I haven't though about in months and shocked myself by the conclusiveness of my decisions over the past year and where they have landed me. I think, all in all, I'm happy about the firm decisions I have made and less happy about the things I have floated through.

So I'm putting my foot down. My home, my garden, and my plans have been put on the back-burner as a result of a routine that has begun to resemble eat-clean-pack-drive-socialize-drive-repeat. It's a three hour drive to Jersey. I cannot, cannot, cannot do it twice a month. I am only leaving for weekends away from home once a month starting in April (I already have a trip planned for April to Jersey). So please, plan ahead with me, way ahead, if you want to see me away from my home. And keep in mind that it's summer, and upstate is beautiful and worth visiting. Friends and family from far away are more then eagerly invited, but it might include some help in the garden.


In other news,
Some suggestions on a theme:

Gardening is not farming and cold frames are not greenhouses. While its true that the lines blur at the edges, it is extremely hard to start seedlings in a coldframe during a typical early spring season and it is equally unwieldy to use standard farming procedures on a typical backyard garden. I learned this the hard way. For example, gardeners have enough room to start seeds in pots rather than trays so as to not bother switching from starting trays to small pots to larger pots, which farmers do to save on room (but not on labor - in fact, it'll take a tone of your time for no good reason if you do it this way).

Gardens really benefit from fencing and they're small enough for this to be possible, unlike farms (seriously).

Greenhouses and cold frames are not interchangeable. there is no heat source in a cold frame (unless you just got really fancy - though i bet you didn't) so beware the freeze and, more specifically, the optimal germination temperatures of the seedlings you will be starting. Also, Cold frames are much more prone to shading some of their contents. There is a reason cold frames are used for hardening off seedlings, rather than starting them. Unless you're willing to schlep all your plants indoors most nights and monitor the temperature and light in your cold frame extremely closely (I'd say every few hours), use the cold frame in the last, not the first, step of preparing seedlings for the garden.

No matter how much light your seedlings are getting, make sure it's enough. Full, day-long sun is key. seriously consider that it costs only $30 for a whole grow-light set up and way more than $30 to purchase all of your seedlings (and that's only for one year) if you mess up. Your window sill probably isn't enough, and please see the warning about cold frames above.

Your time, unlike a farmer's is not being compensated, and you are doing this for you - so be realistic about what you are willing to do. when you save money, you are almost always paying for it in your time - and this is a really important consideration, especially when it comes to how you might wiggle out of your best-made plans after 40 hours of work a week.

When starting 12 tomato plants, if 6 die, it's a catastrophe. When starting 120, it's to be expected. Losing that shaded-out row at the front of your cold frame that's pretending to be a greenhouse is probably not going to be worth it.


That being said, I'd love to hear if you prove me wrong.

What is this month doing??

First of all - HOW did it get to be MARCH 17TH already!? Last time I checked, it was February!

Second - Spring took steroids this year. The crocuses are blooming! The willow over the pond behind my house is that yellowish shade it gets! A flock of red-winged blackbirds followed me in the trees on my walk (which I took without a jacket) yesterday. Sugaring season is already over! WHAT!? Has anyone seen ramps yet? What are the morels going to think about this!? Please, please, weather gone wild, DO NOT kill off the tomatoes again!!

and thus begins the mild insanity we call early spring.

Which means that this weekend/week I will be:

Bringing my cold frame out of winter hiding
Marking out my new garden plot and helping my landlord till it
Going over the tilled plot with a broad fork to aerate the soil (the tiller doesn't go very deep)
planting out lettuce into the prepared soil (if you have spinach you can plant that too)
Picking up a bunch of topsoil from neighbors (anyone have a pickup truck I can borrow?)

I will be doing that on top of what I had planned for this week (err...and earlier), a whole 9 weeks before the last frost:

Starting my nightshades!
Finishing my chicken coop


It's still March and I already feel like the white rabbit! I'm late! I'm late!

In good news - I opened up the cellar and it turns out my veggies were fine. No flooding. And seriously - 5 months later, my veggies are still delicious (except the carrots, which got really woody and are going to the compost, stat), firm, and not sprouting. It has been by far the best root cellaring experience I have ever had. Way easier than the high tech cellars we had in my last house (a really lovely co-op check it out)


Oh, and my darling readers, have I told you that I will be making and selling salves and other things of that sort starting this summer? I haven't figured out the details yet, but if anyone wants to chat with me about it, I'd love to chat. I need a label design - I'll barter salves, gardening advice, garden design, or whatever else we can think up for a label design. Let me know if you can do that for me.


...can you tell that I've had too much coffee today? and one too many little green cupcakes with nothing nutritious in them at all?

Newspaper pots (and other things)

Spring is definitely out in full-force. The sun is waking me up at 6 AM as it shines into the east-facing windows above my bed. The birds are singing, the weather is bright, the dog chased a raccoon all over the property yesterday as i did some outdoor spring cleaning and checked out my garden site, and the weather is wonderful! I come home to plenty of sunshine, haven't been running the wood stove during the day all week, and the space heater in the bathroom (that I keep on a timer so that it's warm in the bathroom the morning and when I get home from work - when the house was coldest in the winter) has been unplugged. I am entirely overjoyed.

I have a gazillion things to do tonight before I leave for a weekend trip to Boston straight from work tomorrow - a bit of necessary house cleaning, making presents for the folks I'm visiting this weekend (my batch of calendula oil is setting 6 weeks today - I had no choice but to put it off until the last minute), as well as cooking for and going to a pot luck! Oh my - that means cabbage salad for the pot luck (with quinoa for extra yum), and probably some late-night cleaning. Which is fine seeing as I just received The Master and Margerita on CD in Russian to listen to while I'm working (why not brush up on Russian literature and Russian language while you work - it's kind of like whistling).

In other ludicrously exciting news - here is a good tutorial on making newspaper pots that makes perfect little 3 inch square pots. If you're using half-sized papers (local papers - anything smaller than the NYTimes, like I did) skip the second and third steps. The only other note I would make for clarity is that in step 13 she means corner, not edge, folded across to the middle crease (I had to really stare down the picture to figure it out). I also added a little staple to the folded-in flaps to keep the pot standing. I have no intention of planting the pot in the soil (in my experience that never works, it just contributes to a root-bound and sad plant). I'll just throw the little pots onto a bonfire and to hell with the staples.

If the soil dries up and stays workable over the next two weeks, chances are good that there will be some tilling going on. Anyone have any finished compost or composted manure I can take off their hands? I need 2 cubic yards, but more would be much appreciated.

Planning for Indoor Seed-Starting

I'm late! I'm late! The spring season has been ticking closer and the sudden toe-tapping feeling has come over me. Oncoming spring always makes me feel late. I walked into my landlord's house to chat about laundry and thank him for keeping my fire going when I had an unexpectedly long stint away from home last weekend, and saw a fully rigged set up of shelves with florescent lighting to start the lettuces and tomatoes. I haven't even cleared enough space in my living room to start seeds yet! I haven't even ordered my onion sets yet! or discussed my garden plans with my landlord!

But really, it's okay. My farming friends are only starting their onion seeds now (they grow from seeds, not sets - sets are tiny second-year onions started the previous autumn and then over-wintered. They grow faster to ensure nice, fat bulbs, and are easier to maintain for those of us who don't have the faith in our gardening skills to grow onions from seed). They will start tomatoes in March. I will follow their example and chill out. I've already numbered all my weeks in my planner backwards from the last frost for the region (May 20th), so i always know what week it is (The week starting Monday, February 15th is 13 weeks from the last frost). In the mean time, there's a lot to think about.

Here's my plan:

This week I will:
- Design my indoor seed-starting set-up
This includes:
- Figure out how many seeds I will be started and what the system will look like
- Figure out if I need to heat the system (I hope not)
- Figure out how to keep the cat out of the seedlings
- Make a full shopping list for what I need

Also this week I will:
- Actually talk to my landlord about my garden plans and the where and when of it
- Buy onion sets, herb seeds, and other things i don't have! I will buy my next round of seeds from Fedco, which is the cheapest and most responsible northeast seed company with a comprehensive variety of seeds)

next week I will (12 weeks before the last frost):
- Buy the necessary equipment

The following week I will (11 weeks before the last frost)
- rig up the seed-starting system
- run a test-start with lettuces, and possibly okra (i need to do some more research on this Southern, heat-loving plant which grows so anemically here in the Northeast)

9 weeks before the last frost (the third week in March):
I will start my earliest seedlings (tomatoes, peppers, okra, and I'll probably start my herbs and flowers as well)

This Year's Garden Plan

Here is my garden plan, drawn out. It's designed to feed just me, with all of my favorite food and plants, taking into account what I can get cheaper and easier from my landlord's farmstand and garden, and what I'd rather grow inside or closer to home (herbs - which will be tucked into the ornamental border planted around my house), and what I'd rather not grow. I just realized that I totally forgot onions. go figure. Also...it's somewhat revised from the plan I described earlier. I'm sure it will be revised even more when I till and plant.

I always draw my garden plans oriented to the South (see the compass rose on the right), and I include the year and where I'm gardening for my records (not shown in this image). This is the last of about 10 drawings I did (most small and in pencil) and it includes planting distance, thinning distance (where applicable), and some notes on plantings as they change (ie - peas followed by beans). On first thought, I'll probably add a small bed south of the garden, I'm thinking 2 feet by 20 feet and plant it full of onions and that way I'll have enough onions for spring and winter (I hope).

Now all I need to do is make a calendar of when I will be planting everything - indoors, transplanting, direct seeding, etc. to finish with this initial planning stage. Getting the planning stage done early means not realizing a week late that you should have planted the corn already.

Feel free to use as much or as little of this garden plan as you'd like, and copy it entirely if you so desire. I hope it helps.

The Planned Garden

I have finally designed my garden. By comparison to other gardens I've designed, it's tiny. My past life of backyard gardening has been at a housing co-op of ten people and while I never actually grew a garden big enough for 10, I designed and built gardens on the scale (a crazy endeavor I fondly blame on being youth-drunk and excited about the new-found love of my life). I am proud to say that this garden is a model of restraint. Here are the details:

The loveliness of my new garden is in its simplicity. It is designed as one 4' by 20' raised bed and another 4' by 18' rectangle. The bed, which will run East/West and will have a 6' by 4' rectangle of potatoes and bush beans (with sweet peas in the spring), a 4' by 4' square of carrots, parsnips, and beets, a 2' by 4' rectangles each of kale and peppers, and two 2' by 6' rectangles one for okra and one for cabbages. parallel to this bed and just north of it will be my tall plants (north of the other bed so as not to shade anything out). I will have two rows of mixed tomatoes (6' by 4'), then a corn/bean/squash rectangle of 8' by 4', which will have a row of lettuce tucked in behind it (to take advantage of the spring light before the corn grows tall, and then to take advantage of the shade in the high heat of summer), flanked by another double row, 4' square of my paste tomatoes. The beds will be lined with calendula/marigold, daisies, chives (around the caggage and root crops), and borage (around the tomatoes). I'm sure I'll also plant Sunflowers (the decorative kind) along the north and east of the garden.

I've picked out a spot I like by my house, in case the landlords don't have room in their garden for mine. Other than this, I have a beautiful bed of garlic planted at my old house. My rotation plan for next year is to add a bed to the north, rotate everything one plot over and back (potatoes into roots and kale, roots into cabbage, kale into okra, cabbage and kale back into one of the tomato plots, cron/beans/squash back to a new bed, tomatoes into corn/beans/squash bed and back into the new bed).

I made a general plan with dimensions of each plot per vegetable/companion set and then I made a specific planting guide down to planting patterns (traingles or rows) and number of plants, distance of planting, etc. for each section (tomatoes - 8 paste, 10 total mixed, cabbage and okra - 11 plants each, 8 heads of spring lettuces, 6 heads of summer lettuce, etc.)

And that, my friends, is it. Please do tell me about your garden designs and plans this year. I'd love to know!

Designing the Garden

I've taught many a workshop on designing a garden, and I know from experience that it's hard to know where to start. That said, I have stopped dreaming about perfect gardens. It is enough for me, at this point in my life, simply to garden. A walk through Eden takes much more background work than I'm willing to put in. So, very realistically, here's what I do.

First, I take into account my goals. This includes how many veggies I'd like to grow, ideal harvest (data and tables can be found in this quintessential book ), and anything else I want. This includes dreaming big (if I had it in me)

Then, I observe my landscape. This is the part where I figure out what kind of space I actually have, how much sunlight I get, what my soil is like, where flooding or extra frost or wind damage happens, where roadway runoff may have oversalted my soil, where compacted areas might make it hard to till, where in the yard I never go and probably will never go to tend to a garden either, etc. etc. In reality, I do this at the same time as I figure out my goals. This is the "reality check" part of the project.

I combine my goals and my observations in site assessment, which is where I figure out how to meld my goals and my observations. Thus I pick the perfect general site and size for my garden. This includes basic things like "well...I guess I don't be growing good carrots because of how rocky this soil is" or "I can basically do whatever I want. Sweet."

Only after this point do I design my garden. I lay out beds and rows, I make measurements, I draw diagrams and maps. First I plan out the general size, shape and design of the garden at large, and once I have an idea of the general plan, I figure out what goes where (including an easy rotation pattern for future years (rotation refers to not planting the same veggies in the same place more than once every 3-4 years to ensure that pests and disease don't stay in the soil and attack the plants again and also for nutrient replenishment)), how much of each veggie to plant, and other charming features.

Once I plant my garden, I always make sure to have a detailed map of what I planted where, because next winter it'll be hard to remember what your rotation plan was, and you risk planting carrots in the same spot two years in a row out of sheer carelessness. I have a devoted Gardener's notebook so everything (including seed buying receipts and daydreams) goes into one place where it'll be easy to find. A file folder would serve the same purpose.

Notes
Always design from broad concepts to details. Knowing where the carrots go before knowing how big the garden will be doesn't make sense no matter how you swing it. Also - this will guarantee that your details will work towards an effective and comprehensive broader concept and actually meet your goals. Sewing together scattered details to form a well-design whole rarely works.

If you want the best design possible have fun and play around with it. sketch out several different designs with thick markers first, and then do several renditions with pencils for details. Move things around, try different shapes and patterns, even if you are absolutely sure where the garden will go, try moving it to learn something new about other potential landscape factors or how you might go about designing the layout of the garden itself. You'll be surprised how much fun it is and how much more effective it is to mix and match ideas from different designs than to just plough ahead with the first great thing you thought of.

Seeds!

I said it about a week ago, and now I've finally gone and done it - It's time to order seeds! So I chose my favorite seed company - our very own Hudson Valley Seed Library and picked my favorites. Not only is the seed library an incredibly exciting local venture into the often nebulous world of seed companies, it is also a lovely and friendly organization. Thanks to buying a membership I got several free seed packs (see below) and discounts on all of my purchases (which is fairly exciting). Being the wonderfully thoughtful and community-oriented business that they are, the Seed Library works with local artists to design art packs for a selection of their seeds which are beautiful and fun to have around. My favorite perk though? - they're small enough to keep me from buying EVERY seed I can possibly think of wanting! Which is important, because even the 20+ seeds I bought will be excessive for my home garden.

Here's a note from their website for the curious:
"We have three kinds of seed packs now to help distinguish between our seed sources. Our Art Packs are the colorful, flower shaped packs that have original artwork from 16 different New York artists. Our Garden Packs feature a design made by us and contain seeds from responsible commercial sources pre-selected by us to do well in the Northeast. Our Library Packs, which feature an image from an antique 1881 New York seed catalog, contain only local seeds- either grown here on our farm, another New York farm, or a mix of seeds from other seed saving members.

Here's my order:

Membership Pack
Garden Pack All American Parsnip -- included with membership
Library Pack Amish Paste Tomato
Library Pack Aunt Molly's Ground Cherry
Garden Pack Benning's Green Tint Patty Pan Squash
Garden Pack Bibb Lettuce -- included with membership
Library Pack Black Krim Tomato
Garden Pack Blue Lake Pole Green Bean -- included with membership
Art Pack Borage
Library Pack Bridge to Paris Pepper -- included with membership
Library Pack Calendula
Art Pack Calico Popcorn
Garden Pack Chives
Garden Pack Clemson Spineless Okra -- included with membership
Garden Pack Danish Ballhead Cabbage -- included with membership
Library Pack Garden Peach Tomato
Art Pack Painted Daisy
Library Pack Purple Podded Pea -- included with membership
Garden Pack Red Russian Kale -- included with membership
Garden Pack Royal Burgandy Bush Beans -- included with membership
Garden Pack Royal Oakleaf Lettuce -- included with membership
Art Pack Ruby Queen Beet
Garden Pack Scarlet Nantes Carrot


My Reasoning
Yum! As you can tell from my selection - I tend to ignore flowers. I try, really I do, but I have trouble focusing on them. This year, I'm giving in to what I've always known to be true about myself and only growing 2 flowers - calendula, which I need for salves, and borage, which is a perennial and is easy.

I have avoided certain productive veggies that are just too easy to come by in the summer. I'm not a huge fan of cucumbers, but when I need them, the local farmstand (aka - my landlord's farm/garden) will always have them - and they're too prolific for my small needs. Plus, I prefer pickled pattypans (seriously) to pickled cucumbers (same goes for zucchinis). My landlords have a large and prolific herbs section of their garden, and I have decided to rely on their surplus rather than to grow my own.

Then there are my splurges - 3 kinds of tomatoes? Absolutely! 1 for canning and drying (Amish paste - which will be the most dominant plant variety in my garden) 1 for fresh eating (Krim) and 1 for fun (peach). I love tomatoes. Love them. And they make summer worth it (which is why last summer was not worth it)

I already have garlic in the ground and potatoes for planting in the cellar, plus the library doesn't sell these. The only thing left is to get onions, some extra herbs, and possibly a few herbal favorites from Fedco, which I will share with you when I buy.

Share your list with me. I'm so excited and invigorated now that I cannot wait to go home and plan my garden!


Also, check out this wonderful and well thought-out article. We need more of this kind of debate in our lives: (I found it on Bitten)

Sprouting Seeds, Dreaming Dreams

At home last night I could not bring myself to look through the seed catalogues. I am not ready for the decadent laziness of winter to come to an end. Don't get me wrong, I would love to run outside without 7 layers on as much as the next person, and I know that it's still only early January, and I'm nervous I don't have enough wood, but I do find the winter's glorious laziness to be a spa treatment, just as much as I find the meditation of gardening to be a balm for the over-stimulated soul. That being said, I'm nervous and humbled every year before the commitment of gardening. I dream for weeks before planting my first seed about the impossible miracle of a seed sprouting and growing for me. How is it that this tiny seed will grow for me? Am I worthy of its life? Why would she want to grow in my garden? As absurd as it seems, these questions start running through my slowly waking mind as the sun moves toward her longest day. There is nothing left but to be awed and humbled by the miracle of a seed growing for me in my garden.

So if you have the energy to look forward into a new year of garden work and toil, and if the miracle of a sprouting seed doesn't humble you to the point of immobility, check out this awesome blog which tells you all about how to check the germination rates of your old seeds which, it turns out, you don't have to throw out! So if you're prone to overdoing it (like I am) it might not all be for naught. And if you're in the Northeast, do order a few seeds for them. Their artist packs make for great presents, and they're very much worth supporting.

Ah, but my dear readers, I'm worried about the spring. not to the point of immobility, but to the point of vivid dreams. I've worked full time before while having a large garden. It's possible, and even enjoyable, after a day of office work to come home at 5, when the heat has abated, and work until 9, when the sun is just setting, in the garden. But I am worried. What if the potatoes won't grow for me, or the soil turns out to be too rocky to smile on me? What if I really don't want to work full time at this desk through the summer? What if I'd rather be making salves and teas and jams and selling them at farm markets? What if, what if, what if!?

But, my dear readers, we must all work for a living, and that, in itself, is not and cannot be a tragedy. The tragedy, I find, is when it forces us to dream our dreams in secret.

The January Garden To-Do List

Every year, usually around May, I realize with a sudden flash of fear and clammy palms that it will be another one of those years where I will always be at least one week behind. This year, that happened today, IN JANUARY, the same day I found my favorite seed catalogue in my mailbox.

Thankfully, I am no true homesteader. My life and livelihood doesn't rely on getting onions into seed trays anytime in the near future. In fact, I fully intend to wait until the end of February to do anything along the lines of starting seeds. Hell, I don't even have a garden to speak of! A whole new year of garden planning and seed ordering and seed starting awaits!

So, to keep you from breaking into a cold sweat sometime in March, here's a quick reminder: Gardening starts in the winter. (Other things that homesteaders do in January include ordering hives and bees, hunting small game, and trying not to freeze to death) So start your gardening adventures now and stave off winter boredom. Here's how:

The January Gardener:

Overview:
-Plan garden
-order seeds

Planning your garden
This time of year is when you can day dream all you want. If you don't have a garden, plan your garden now. Helpful tools include John Jeavon's guide: How To Grow More Vegetables, which I would go ahead and buy. I would go ahead and scour your library's garden section and talk to anyone you know who has a garden and ask for tips.

Here are some of my garden-planning tips to live by:

- Don't over do it! (I have always overdone it.) No one person needs, in their first (or even third) garden enough space to have a small farm, unless you intend to sell produce and farm. If you are a part-time gardener, figure out how much time you'd like to spend in your garden and about how much produce you'd like to harvest and plan accordingly. You will never eat a 20 foot row's worth of lettuce, and 20 feet of tomatoes is only plausible if you intend to can them.

- Plan your garden out on paper, and work from concepts to details. First plan out where the garden will be and how big you want it, then move onto how to lay out beds and how to make the beds (double digging, sheet-mulching, etc.), and only then figure out what to plant where. When figuring out what to plant where, your future self will be grateful if you plan in a simple vegetable rotation plan.

- When thinking about where to put your garden, consider important details such as shade (you want good southern exposure), runoff, soil compaction, soil structure, previous gardening in the area, and anything that grows in the area that might thwart the garden (such as a black walnut tree or thistle).

- Plan your garden close to home. A garden in a distant back corner of the yard is not a garden you will ever tend to. put your garden somewhere that will require your attention - preferably on the front lawn staring you down on your walk to your car. That way, you will see every weed popping up and will be compelled to actually work in your garden. If you refuse to plant in the front yard, at least plan your garden next to a path you walk on every other day or so (such as the path to your compost). You will want to be in the garden at least 3-4 times a week (depending on the weather), so plan accordingly.

- Do not lay down anything permanent, like stone paths, for the first few years. Just trust me on this one.

- If there are deer where you live, you will want a fence. The easiest dear fence is wire stretched across posts- one string 2 feet off the ground and another at 6 feet up. If there are rodents, rabbits, and groundhogs (who just don't respect fences), I'd invest in a garden-friendly cat.


Ordering Seeds

-Once again, don't overdo it. (and once again, I always do). Seeds don't last forever (most don't at least), so buy only as much as you need, which is a surprisingly small amount

-Catalogues are always cheaper than buying at nurseries. Fedco, Seed Savers Exchange, and local seed libraries such as Hudson Valley Seed Library are awesome, grass-roots sources for seeds grown, saved, and kept alive by family farmers and the like. Most other seed catalogues carry seeds owned by major conglomerates such as Monsanto without letting you know.

- Quick vocabulary: Organic seed refers to seed grown by certified organic standards. Organic farmers are required to use organic seed. You can grow your plants organically even with conventional (read: non-organic - grown with chemicals and whatnot) seed. Open Pollinated (also known as "OP" or "heirloom") refers to seeds that are bred and saved using traditional seed saving techniques. Seeds saved from plants grown from open pollinated seed will produce a second generation true in kind. You can only save seed from open pollinated plants. Open pollinated plants are not hybrids. Hybrid seeds (commonly listed as "F1" in catalogues) are high-performing seeds made from two very different varieties of plants that were forced to cross. This forced cross creates a seed that will produce a plant in its first generation (F1 refers to the first generation cross) that has certain favorable traits - usually productivity. However, any seed saved from plants grown from hybrid seed will produce a second generation of plants that is completely confused and not true to kind. This is because seed breeding is actually a long and extended process that requires the stabilization of traits over several generations. If you want to know more about seed saving, check out this book. In general, I would buy OP for the variety and the beauty, with the exception of sweet corn, which, in its OP form, isn't actually sweet.

- Don't even bother buying: seeds to commonly found perennial plants that need to be split or grow abundantly. Instead, talk to your friends and neighbors and see if you can split some of their plants. So many people have rhubarb that needs to be split, or bee balm that you can transplant, etc. that it just doesn't make sense to wait 3 years for the plants to mature. Things that fall into this category include: comfrey, mint (which grows so abundantly that it would be a sin to pay for - excepting special varieties) almost all flowering bushes, most perennial herbs (which are easier to propagate by cuttings or transplanting than seed), etc.

-Certain things aren't typically grown from seeds - and so you shouldn't look for the seed. The examples of these are potatoes and garlic (which should have been planted in October anyway). Also, people tend to buy onion sets rather than seed - which are second-year onion bulbs which will grow faster and easier than seed.


Enjoy your garden plans and don't stress too much! We're all in this together.