Plan for Tomorrow by Planting Today
“Gardening is a labor full of tranquility and
satisfaction; natural and instructive, and as such
contributes to the most serious contemplation, experience,
health and longevity.”
– John
Evelyn, 1666
“Constructing you own square
foot garden can maximize your harvests.”
Personally, I
have a very small back yard, so any planting I do has to be planned out
well. As in the pictures above one great
way of planning out your vegetable garden is using the system commonly called
Square Foot Gardening. This technique
allows you to make wise use of every square foot of space available.
Plan
out your garden wisely –
1.
Planning for how
you are going to give your plants their best possible chance of doing well takes
some careful thought.
a.
How much room you
have available is the 1st thing to consider?
b.
Then ask
yourself, what types of fruits, vegetables, and herbs are you interested in
growing.
i.
Tomatoes, green
peppers, potatoes, and onions grow well in small spaces.
ii.
Peas, beans,
squash, melons, and pumpkins require a lot of room to spread out.
2.
For help deciding
what to plant and when refer to the back of your seed packets to decide how
much room each plant will need.
Preparing
your Garden effectively –
3.
To accomplish
this, you will have to get down and dirty, there’s just no way around it. Plan out how much lumber you will need to
construct the framework for your planting beds.
Also, if your available space is even smaller than allowable for wooden
planting beds, you can purchase large clay pots to use.
a.
Ideally, you want
to have your planting beds to end up at least 12 to 18 inches deep for a good
soil bed.
b.
Add 4 to 6 inches
of good organic fertilizer (manure) to the soil and use your garden tools to
mix everything together well. If you are
planting in large clay pots you can use your bare hands to mix the fertilizer
in and wash your hands afterwards. (Getting dirty is all part of the planting
of a garden)
Planting
your Garden efficiently –
4.
Different plants
require different depths for placing the seeds in the soil.
a.
In general, seeds
should be planted in rows 2 to 3 inches deep, and 4 to 6 inches apart.
b.
Keep rows at
least 2 to 4 feet apart, depending on what you are planting, to allow plenty of
room for growth.
5.
Crops like
lettuce, beans, carrots, peas, and radishes can be planted every 2 to 3 weeks;
thus, making sure you have plenty of vegetables to last you the rest of the
growing season.
a.
You ought to see
seedlings begin to sprout up within 2 to 3 weeks following the date you
initially plant the vegetable seeds.
6.
Tomatoes are one
of my favorite crops to plant because they keep on giving throughout the entire
growing season, but you have to watch for pests, and they are particularly
susceptible to rotting. They need a good
kind of support to keep them up and off the ground such as the tomato cages you
can purchase at any nursery.
7.
For growing Peas
and Beans because of the weight and delicacy of the vine you need a strong
support system that can both handle the growing weight of the vine and provide
a safe support.
a.
I recommend that
you use wooden stakes at least 6 feet long and about 2 inches thick. Place these stakes approximately 3 feet apart
between your plants and going right down the center of your row.
b.
Then use a heavy
string (twine) run down each row of plants, wrapped several times around each
stake securely then back down the row again until you have several rows of
string for the plants to weave through as they grow.
Finally, and probably most important, remember
to make sure your plants have plenty of water, kept weed free, free of
undesirable insects, and free of critters who would just love to chow down on
your growing crops. A good friend of
mine had all his tomatoes eaten by the deer that frequent his back yard, even
though his tomato plant was one of those suspended type.
With good soil, plenty of loving care,
and sunshine from the Lord, you ought to have a great growing season. I wish everyone a great and bountiful growing
season.
“Gardening
is medicine that does not need a prescription ...
And with
no limit on dosage.” – Author unknown
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