Small Garden News

For your organic garden

spring planning

Choosing Varieties for the Small Veggie Garden

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Choosing what to grow in a small veggie plot is a fun part of gardening. Right now, seed companies are sending out catalogs, and garden centers are setting up their seed displays. Pictures in the catalogs and on the seed packets all look so good!

Seeds from Irish Eyes for a small garden.  PHOTO/Amygwh

With so many wonderful seed options, how can we make choices that will be good for our own gardens?

Besides choosing crops that our families will actually enjoy eating, it helps to find out which varieties do well in our region, and it also helps to choose varieties that have been developed to stay smaller than the full-size versions.

Smaller crops can be easier to tend, since they stay “in bounds”, and a lot of the smaller varieties have a shorter time to maturity. ‘Little Gem’ Romaine lettuce is just 6 inches tall (super cute!) and should be ready to harvest as a full head in just 46 days. ‘Tom Thumb’ Butterhead lettuce is another small variety, taking 60-65 days to reach full size, and it has done very well in my own garden.

Clues to mature size are often right in the name of the variety. Look for words like spacemaster, bush, gem, little, baby, and jewel.

Of course, some veggies are naturally space-saving, all on their own. Carrots, radishes, and beets, for example, which only need a square of space 3-to-5 inches across per plant to grow well, can all be good choices for gardeners working with smaller spaces.

Spring Harvest (!) and Soil Temperatures for Planting

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My first real harvest of spring-planted veggies:

Cilantro, Black-seeded Simpson lettuce, Purple Plum radishes  PHOTO/Amy W.

The garden hasn’t yielded much since January 1 — a last little bit of broccoli before the hard freezes, a few green onions, some carrots — so the lettuce, cilantro, and radishes that I harvested yesterday mark a turning point in the gardening year. They also made a great contribution to “taco night”!

As the spring crops mature to harvest stage, the planting for summer crops needs to begin. North Carolina State University has published a planting chart/calendar that includes soil temperatures to help us all work out the best order in which to plant our gardens. Gardeners who also have jobs, families, and other additional responsibilities don’t usually manage to get the garden planted all at once, and knowing which plants can do well in cooler soil temperatures can help gardeners decide what to plant first.

According to the chart, corn can be planted at soil temperatures as low as 50 degrees F, and so can pole beans, but squashes and tomatoes need a minimum soil temperature of 60 degrees F, peppers and cucumbers need 65 degrees F, and okra, melons, eggplants and Southern peas need a soil temperature of at least 70 degrees F to do their best.

For those of us in Cobb County who are planning to put seeds in the ground this coming weekend, taking a thermometer out to check on the soil temperature at a 4 inch depth at various points around the garden can help determine what to plant. In my yard, the soil temperature is approaching 60 degrees F, which means there is a lot I can plant now. It also means that I might need to replant those cucumber seeds that I put in the ground last week, when the soil temperature was a little lower.

What Can I Plant Now?

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Gardeners have been calling the Extension office, from the beginning of January, wanting to know what they can plant NOW. Even when the ground was frozen and the forecast was for a drop down around 10 degrees F, the lengthening days, like a siren song that they couldn’t tune out, made them pick up the phone, call, and ask. Luckily, they ended up speaking with me, another gardener gone deaf to nearly all except the need to begin the new year of planting.

For those who can’t wait, I’ve assembled a couple of timetables. The first one is pulled from UGA’s Vegetable Planting Chart. The dates on the original chart are for “middle Georgia” (somewhere around Macon); I’ve shifted the dates by a couple of weeks to reflect our later warming here in Cobb County.

Crop
UGA planting dates
Asparagus
Feb 1- April 1
Beets
Mar 1 – Apr 15
Broccoli
Mar 1 – Apr 1
Cabbage
Mar 1 – Apr 1
Carrot
Feb 1 – Apr 5
Cauliflower
Mar 15 – Apr 15
Collards
Feb 15 – Apr 1
Kale
Feb 15 – Mar 25
Lettuce
Feb 1 – Mar 15
Onions, green
Jan 15 – Apr 1
Onions, dry bulb
Jan 15 – Apr 1
Peas, garden
Feb 1 – Mar 1
Peas, edible pod
Feb 1 – Mar 1
Potatoes, Irish
Feb 1 – Mar 15
Radish
Feb 1 – Apr 15
Spinach
Feb 1- April 1
Turnip
Feb 1 – Apr 15

The second timetable, though not actually in table form, is from John Jeavons’ book “How to Grow MoreVegetables …”

6-8 weeks before last frost ( Feb 15 – March 1), start in flats:
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, parsley, tomatoes
5 weeks before last frost (Mar 1- 15), start in flats:
carrot, beets
bump up the lettuce seedlings to larger containers
4 weeks before last frost (5-20 March):
sprout/chit potatoes
bump up the parsley
3 weeks before last frost (15-30 March), start in flats:
peas, spinach
bump up seedlings for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower
2 weeks before last frost (25 Mar – 1 Apr), start in flats:
dill, eggplants, peppers
transplant to garden:
broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peas, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, beets, lettuce, spinach
plant garlic, onions, radishes

A careful reader might notice that the two timetables don’t exactly match. This means that a gardener will need to experiment a little and choose for him or herself the best planting times.

One of the helpful features of the Jeavons’ timetable is that it includes times for bumping up and transplanting seedlings, very useful information for those of us who DIY our garden transplants. One of the hilarious features is the inclusion of carrots as a crop to transplant. I’ve tried it — it’s possible — but the carrots come out all bent and mangled.

Also, I usually bump up my tomatoes – and start my peppers – much earlier than indicated in his timetable. (He bumps up tomatoes – from the flat to pots – on the last frost date, which I count as about April 12-15.)

For my yard, parts of the UGA timetable seem a little early, but my yard is in a hole and stays cooler longer than much of the rest of the county. Other parts of the UGA schedule seem late. For example,  I can’t imagine planting collard greens as late as April 1!

For peas, I use an indicator plant; I plant peas when the trout lilies are blooming in my yard. The leaves of those native wildflowers aren’t even poking up above the soil yet, so this year the peas may get planted a little later than normal. Irish potatoes usually get planted in my yard in mid-March, and my onions and garlic get planted in late October or early November.

Based on both timetables, and all the possible timetables gleaned from other, local gardeners, there is plenty to start working with in terms of spring planting, beginning now. I hope the information is helpful!

 

Garden Plans and Events

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After my very eventful December, it has taken some time for the pattern of my days to seem familiar again. I realized this afternoon, though, while hoeing out a few weeds and spreading more mulch in the onion/shallot/garlic bed, that everything feels just about normal. Parts of the garden even LOOK normal, in spite of the drop to 5 degrees Fahrenheit a week or so back.

The onions, garlic, and shallots mostly are vibrantly green, firm and growing. Nearly every other crop above ground has gone to mush  – even the chickweed that I feed to my bunnies! Underground crops, the carrots and winter radishes, seem to have survived the unusual cold pretty well. Only some individual plants that poked up out of the ground were affected.

At the little farm where we volunteer, the winter greens all look very damaged, except for the spinach. That bit of information is probably worth remembering, for future winter gardens.

Tomorrow I’ll be working more in the yard. My compost pile is stacked pretty high with nearly-finished compost that I plan to move onto one of my garden beds, rather than risk letting the nutrients wash out across the back yard. I’d rather have them soaking into my garden! I hope to spend some time planning what to grow where, too.

My last, most favorite seed catalog finally arrived, which means I can place a seed order for my garden whenever I’ve completed the plan. I’ll also be ordering seeds for a Seed Starting class that I’ll be giving in February. Those seeds will all be UGA-recommended varieties, some of which are heirloom. I’m planning to order from a source that sells untreated seeds, so that organic gardeners won’t have to worry about accidentally introducing unknown fungicides or systemic pesticides into their gardens.

The first class I am planning for this year, though, is a Planning for Seed Saving class. It’s scheduled for the 28th at the Extension office, and I’ll have some seeds to share at that class, too, in honor of National Seed Swap Day, which falls each year on the last Saturday in January (this year it’s on the 25th).

I always enjoy meeting more gardeners, so I am really looking forward to both of these classes!

When to Begin . . .

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Several years ago I spent some serious time working out a veggie-garden planting calendar for my yard. I have since discovered that the Old Farmers Almanac website has a feature that will create a planting schedule using US frost dates for gardens all over the US. A gardener just has to specify a location, and a schedule will appear!

The schedule includes dates for gardeners who also like to consider phases of the moon in their planting. I have checked the Old Farmers Almanac schedule for Kennesaw, and it is not too far off from the one I created for myself for most crops.

It shows later planting dates for potatoes (old-timers around here get their potatoes into the ground in March), and it has a very small window-of-opportunity for planting radishes. Some years I start sooner and others I end later. It also is only for the spring/early summer garden. However, a new gardener could do worse than to consider the planting dates suggested in the schedule.

PAR Planning

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The group that volunteers at the Plant-a-Row-for-the-Hungry (PAR) garden met today to talk about where to plant which crops in the garden this year. It was great to see everybody, both the old friends and some new friends, too. We had fun, but we also worked. There is a lot to think about in planning the garden!

The needs of the food pantry where we donate the harvested food have a huge effect on our choices of what to grow. One consideration is that the garden needs to produce a lot of good food, since the pantry works hard to feed a whole lot of people. The pantry also can’t take any kind of greens because it isn’t equipped (refrigerator-wise) to keep greens fresh and un-wilted. The food we grow for donation needs to “keep” pretty well without much pampering.

Once the choices are worked out, there is the step of figuring out where in the garden each crop should be planted. The garden had its first year at the current location in 2006. This means that the crop rotation is beginning to be a bit tricky.

We didn’t make any final decisions (our fearless leader has that honor!), but we had copies of drawn layouts from the past several years to look at (so we would know the history of each patch of the garden) and we had blank maps to doodle on.

This drawing shows some of our thoughts:

The yellow writing represents one possible layout and the pink another. We discussed going back to the 2006 layout for this year, but we aren’t growing exactly the same crops at this point. For example, back in 2006 we grew corn, but the resulting harvest didn’t provide enough food to justify its inclusion in the garden. We also have more trellised area now (but still not enough!), which means the spaces are going to work out a little differently.

Part of the group discussion was about crop rotation: trying to keep plants from any one family from being planted in the same spot within three (or more) years. This is one goal that we just aren’t going to be able to meet every year. Some years, the tomato/pepper/potato/eggplant group is going to be planted in a patch too soon, and so is the cucumber/squash/melon group. It’s a good thing that we aren’t too hung up on perfection!

Another part of the discussion centered around the desire to try some different crops, and maybe some different varieties (to “trial” them without risking a whole harvest). We may save one of the wedges to use as an experimental plot. One of the crops for that might be carrots. I promise this wasn’t my idea, even though I have been dissatisfied with my current carrots. We may get together in a couple of weeks to make seed tapes for carrots, and possibly for some other crops (radishes? beets?). The suggestions for things to try were flying!

We briefly discussed the idea of succession planting, but a fuller discussion for that will have to wait for later. The main ideas were that some kind of Southern peas will probably follow the potatoes & onions, and that we might want to have two separate plantings for the tomatoes. I do at my house, and so does Fred (long-time gardener who moved here from Alabama). The later crop sometimes is what makes the tomato-year a success.

In a week or two we will make our pilgrimage to the farm supply store up in Euharlee for seed potatoes, onion sets, and seeds. I already ordered enough Schoon’s Hardshell melon seed for the PAR garden, and our fearless leader has stored leftover seeds from last year. Soon, it will be time to turn under the cover crop of Austrian winter peas and to get busy in the garden. Looking forward to it!

Seed Decisions

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My friend Cheryl and I usually put in an order to Fedco together, so we can meet the minimum order size for free shipping. Separately, we never have big enough orders to qualify. One of my activities for the day was to work out my final order for that seed company. Cheryl is taking a turn filling out the form, which is a little more complicated than most seed-order forms. Thank you, Cheryl!

One of my seed packets from Fedco will be filled with seeds of Jericho lettuce. I am planning to grow Jericho next to Slobolt so I can compare the two varieties. They both do well into the warmer weather of early summer, but I want to know which will be best in my yard, and for more qualities than just the slowed down development of bolting and bitterness. Growing them together in the same bed at the same time should help me figure that out.

My other seed order is to Sand Hill Preservation. One packet from that source will be filled with Tennessee Greasy pole beans. They are supposed to be good to dry for leather britches, and that is a food preservation/preparation method that I want to try on a larger scale than in the past.

I’ve dried other green beans from the yard in small quantities, but I haven’t been impressed with the outcome. I’ve also dried small amounts of overly-mature white mountain half runner beans from the Plant-a-Row-for-the-Hungry garden. These were beans I’ve taken home because they were too far gone (turning tan, tough) to take to the food pantry. I am hoping to work with beans at a more tasty stage of development; hence the need to “grow my own.”

Wanting to try this old-timey method of food preservation/preparation may seem weird, but canning, which I do a little of every year, takes some time. With all the other responsibilities in my life right now (as with so many other gardeners!), I am hoping for a few more crops that require minimal effort to keep for the winter. Right now, sweet potatoes are the champs in that regard. Although there are a lot fewer now than there were in November, the sweets that remain are keeping just fine in a basket in the kitchen.

In addition to these little goals/experiments, I will be growing a few tomato plants from seed I saved last summer, and I will be working on my melon de-hybridization project. This will be the second generation of melons, and the first crop for which “choosing wisely” becomes important.

In other news, we adopted a special needs kitty this weekend. His name is Louisiana; he has a heart problem, he sneezes, and he has no teeth. He is about eight years old, and, as cats go, he is fairly small. My youngest son volunteers at the shelter (Good Mews) that had been housing Louisiana, and he has been nervous after every “adoption day” that Louisiana might be gone the next time he went to clean the shelter and feed cats.

In the good news/bad news department, Louisiana has enough health problems that he is designated a Halo Kitty. This means that the shelter will help with his medical expenses, covering everything related to his heart problem. When his prescriptions need to be refilled, we can pick up his meds at the shelter, for free.

Here is Louisiana:

He is such a sweet little cat when it comes to humans, that his reaction to our dogs was a bit surprising. Here he is with Zack. Just looking at the picture, you can almost hear the hiss and the doggy-toenails scrabbling on the wood floor as Belle (barely visible on the right) backs away.

Even funnier, Louisiana actually stalked Moksha and scared her enough that she climbed up onto my chair and tried to worm her way around behind me.

I had been working on my little laptop (with assorted papers all around me) and had to shift everything else off the chair in a big hurry to make room for 65 pounds of quivering dog. Right now, she is tucked behind my chair on the floor.

In a week or two, the animals will all work out a truce, but until then, and for several weeks afterward (just in case . . .) Louisiana will stay in Zack’s room when the humans are all out of the house.