Never plant anything that you don’t like to eat except some crops planted for your animals. In the wintertime, kale is a supreme fresh green for chickens, rich in iron and vitamin C, but it is too bitter for my tastes. My husband and I don’t eat a lot of corn but we’ll grow some for our chickens and also because our neighbors will think we’re weird if we don’t grow a few rows like everyone else.
The first step in planning a garden is making a list of the vegetables you want. Then you need to figure out how much of each vegetable you want. And finally, you have to make a Planting Schedule so you’ll know when to sow seed or put in transplants.
Figuring out how much you want is more difficult than you may think. With varieties of lettuce, you need to seriously ask yourself if you’re going to eat a salad every day. There aren’t many ways of preserving lettuce. DH and I like fresh mixed greens and will eat a salad every day when they are in season. So ideally, I would like five different kinds of lettuce to mature every week. Romaine and Bibb take 75 days to mature, Butterhead takes 60 days and Loosehead types and Mesclun mixes jump up in 45 days. So starting on February 27th, I’ll plant just a few seeds of Romaine and Bibb and continue to sow just a few more every week. On March 14th, I’ll start doing the same for Butterhead and Looseheads. And on March 29th, I’ll start staggered plantings of the fast-growing greens. By the end of April, I should have a steady harvest of mixed greens. Even before that I can pick the outer leaves on the older varieties and have pretty glorious side salads. I’ll explain why I start on 2/27 below the fold.
Other vegetables like potatoes, onions, and carrots can be preserved for very long periods without processing. So they are grown not only for immediate consumption but, for use into next year. Check out this Vegetable Planting Guide prepared by the Virginia Cooperative Extension. Scroll down to Potatoes and look across. Under “Approximate yield per 10 foot row,” they say 10-20 pounds and under “Approximate no. of row feet to plant per person,” they say 75-100. Do the math. They are suggesting that the average American consumes 100-200 pounds of potatoes every year! This could be true, I guess, but can you imagine storing 800 pounds of potatoes for a family of four! It would take up most of your basement, I tell ya’.
We enter every grocery store receipt into an Excel file, so we know for a fact that we consumed only 65 pounds of potatoes last year between the two of us. So I plan on planting a 20′ row of Early Reds and another 20′ row of Yukon Golds. In the Fall, I’ll put in 40′ of Irish Whites and we’ll be able to harvest them as we need them after we’ve consumed all the Reds and Golds. I may be underestimating our need but I can correct it next year.
Other vegetables like beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes and spinach can be processed and either canned or frozen. Unless you have a huge freezer, canning is the way to go with most of these altho I have a personal preference for freezing spinach because it gets slimy when it’s canned. Properly canned vegetables will stay good on a cool, dry, dark shelf for 8 to 18 months. If I end up with a surplus, I’ll box them up and ship them off to my children who have foolishly chosen to live in inner cities.
Last year, DH and I consumed a whooping 150 pounds of assorted beans and 50 pounds of peas so obviously I can plant as much as I’ve got room to grow. And I do so love towering teepees of pole beans! I’m going to try out three different varieties of peas to see which one does best and produces earliest because I love baby peas and want to show up my neighbors by having mine come in first.
The yields shown on the VCE table are based on shallow-tilled row planting. John Seymour in The Self-Sufficient Gardener suggests that much higher yields can be gotten from deep bed methods. For example, instead of getting 3-4 pounds of asparagus, I might get 10 pounds per 10 feet. Instead of 6-10 pounds of pole beans, I might get 17-30! Well, we’ll see. Given the ideal soil and growing conditions I have in my back yard, this will be a real test. I intend to be quite scientific about it, weighing and recording everything I harvest from my garden.
So how do you figure out when to plant? This Vegetable Planting Schedule shows how the professional growers do it. Look across the top heading and you will find a 0/0 column. If you print this out, you should write the average date of the last frost in your area above the 0/0 column. Each column to the left and right of the 0/0 represents a 10-day period. So counting back from March 29th, the average last frost in Eastern North Carolina, I arrive at planting peas, onion sets and spinach starting on February 7th. I shouldn’t plant beans, squash or tomatoes until after April 8th.
Really big, fat tomatoes take 85 days to maturity so if I waited until April to plant seed I’d be waiting till July for a tomato sandwich. If I want tomatoes in late May, when everyone gets a hankering for them, I will have to start my seed indoors by the middle of February and put out half grown plants when all danger of frost has passed.
To simplify my planting schedule, I re-entered most of this data into an Excel file listing only the vegetables I want and putting them in order of planting instead of alphabetically. A corner of this spreadsheet looks like this:
Each planting date actually represents a 10-day window so that accommodates weather interference and I won’t be trying to plant eight kinds of seeds on one day. I’ll also check my Farmers’ Almanac and Astrological calendar to see the best planting days during any given 10-day period.
This week we picked up a load of horse manure and covered the asparagus bed with a six-inch deep blanket. We’ve left it to the earthworms to dig it in. Instead of getting the fresh horse apples we expected, we dug from an older pile that was already decomposed – pure gold for free! And there’s plenty more, at least another few truckloads.
The remainder of the manure went into building a compost bed. We had gathered some large piles of fallen leaves and pine straw from the yard. We started with pine straw on the bottom, put leaves on top of that, a layer of manure then, pine straw again and so on. Because of the acidity in the pine straw and manure, I’ll be adding some lime to the mix.
Now if it will just stop raining every other day, I can get back to digging beds!
Thanks for these gardening diaries, sjct. We are about to move from the ‘burbs to Georgia farm country and I am dreaming of doing just what you are. The red dirt is kindof scary to me, but thankfully, there will be access to plenty of horse manure.
Would that I could be as organized as you are. Your focused example is an inspiration to me.
Hubby and I came from GA, you know. Red Clay is a terrible base for vegetable growing. You have to basically reinvent the soil by adding sand, peat moss, manure, and lots of lime to beat back the acidity.
I think I mentioned before that I once had a plot on red clay so hard and dry it was like a tennis court. I built frames, chopped up the red clay and poured store-bought bags of bedding soil on top. You might consider buying a big truck-load.
It’s expensive but the good news is, you only have to do it once. After that you can maintain your soil with additions of compost. And the red clay base provides excellent drainage.
I can’t wait to garden this year.
Thanks for the planting guide and schedule links. Those will come in handy. I think this weekend I’ll sit down and plot out my garden so that I know what I want to plant and where and can start ordering seeds.
It’s been an unusually warm winter here in VA so I might be able to start things earlier than normal.
I’ve seen this kind of weather pattern before. Daffodils come up in January, azaleas start blooming end of February then wham! Arctic weather rolls in like a lion in March and there’s a friggin’ ice storm in early April. Many salad crops like spinach and lettuce don’t seem to mind too much; potatoes are snug underground. But woe to those who plant beans or put their tomato transplants out too early.
I learned about the VCE planting guide and schedule taking the Master Gardener course in Bedford, VA. It was a revelation to me! It’s made my garden planning so much more organized. Check your local county extension web site to find your last frost date, plug it in and go!
there’s a friggin’ ice storm in early April
I drove through one of those a couple of years ago. From Durham to Winston-Salem, it was Stanley Cup territory on I-40.
Given that the growing season in my neighborhood doesn’t start until Memorial Day, if then, I am loving the idea of putting out plants in April. How far east are you in Carolina?
we are 86 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, zone 7b. There are seagulls around the catfish ponds behind our house, grouped beside Canadian geese and herons. The other day, the parking lot in front of the Food Lion was wall-to-wall seagulls and I had to drive real slow to avoid smushing one of them.
Lately, the wind has been coming from the South with the smell of swampland. But, when we first arrived, it was coming from the East and I could smell the ocean with a whiff of paper plant tossed in.
We were first re-located to the foothills of Virginia alongside the Blue Ridge Mountains. So, one of the selling points my husband used to get me to come here was the extended growing season. Heck, I get to plant beans twice! I still miss those mountain vistas tho.
Where are you? I bet you get to plant delphiniums and have them thrive. Everywhere I’ve ever lived — except the UK — the summer heat kills them.
So, you’re somewhere maybe east of I-95. Much warmer there. I’m on the coast in eastern Maine, and around here the seagulls at this time of year sit on people’s chimney caps to keep their feet warm.
I planted a couple of rather expensive, locally-grown delphiniums a few years ago, and they . . . disappeared. Just vanished into the tangle of undergrowth that my flower garden became that summer. Maybe the critters ate them.
The idea of more temperate winters appeals, as does proximity to the Blue Ridge. I’ve been thinking about the Piedmont, but so far it’s just thinking.
Lettuce from seed – is it hard to grow?
I’ve been planting starts but finding it hard to get different varieties from my supplier (small organic nursery). Also is there a seed producer that you like that sells heritage or organic seeds?
We eat salad every day or every other day….right now the hardest part is getting home during daylight to harvest it. Weather has been just about right except for some window frost this morning so my 2 dozen lettuce plants are in various stages of growth.
I really love these diaries!
Busy day but I’ll read more thoroughly later – particularly on beans. We eat LOTS of beans – of every type – in every type of dish you can imagine.
Also suggestion for summer / fall: food dehydraters. We are looking into all types particularly for beans etc.
The only hard part is getting one teeny-tiny seed to stick to your fingertip. I usually go ahead and put three seeds in each hole — “One for the mouse, one for the bird and one for the house.” Then, I use tweezers to pinch off the two weakest ones. Or if another hole has been disturbed, I’ll gently separate one of my tiny lettuce plants and move it. This year I may get one of those fancy seed dispensers.
Burpee.com offers organic and heirloom seed varieties and lots of them. Also, I like monticellostore.com; they carry organic seeds from Thomas Jefferson’s restored garden and have some unusual varieties of flowers, too.
John Seymour describes how to Salt Runner Beans:
“Use a pound of salt to three pounds of beans. Try to get “dairy” salt or block salt but vacuum salt will do. Put a layer of salt in the bottom of a crock, a layer of stringed beans and sliced beans (tender young French beans do not need much slicing, whereas runners always do) on top, another layer of salt, and so on. Press down tightly. Add more layers daily. When you have enough, or there are no more, cover the crock with an airtight cover and leave in a cool place. The beans will be drowned in their own brine so do not remove it. To use, wash some beans in water and then soak them for no more than two hours.”
Shelled beans, laid out on cookie sheets, can be dried in a regular oven by setting it on warm (150 degrees) and leaving them overnight. Of course, you can simply leave the bean pods on the plant. Harvest the plant at ground level and hang it up in a dry place. When the whole plant is thoroughly dried out, you can thrash and winnow out the seeds and store them away in jars.
I really like these diaries.
Is canning vegetables hard?
What’s the best way to keep birds from eating your tomatoes?
Speaking of tomatoes. You know those big square white buckets? Those are great for starting tomatoes in early. They can grow in them longer than a littler pot. You can put them outside on a deck or patio mostly, and if the weather forecast calls for a freeze, then you just bring them inside for the night. My dad used to have competitions with a guy he worked with, to see who could get the earliest tomatoes.
I’m frankly afraid of canning vegetables because of the risk of food poisoning. Most vegetables are very low in acid so they don’t offer a natural inhibitor. Tomatoes — being a fruit, really — are very high in acid and can be home-canned with a higher degree of safety. I plan on making huge pots of meatless spagetti sauce and salsa and such and bottling it.
DH’s mother used to home-can corn, lima beans, squash w/onions, and soups as well as tomatoes and he was never sickened. So I’m currently studying the subject and plan on getting a pressure-cooker and boxes of mason jars. I’ll let you know how hard it is when I get to it. From what I’ve read, if you boil canned contents for 10 minutes before you eat it then the possible bacteria is killed. That’s fine for soup but I think if I boiled squash for ten minutes it would be mush.
I’m more inclined to make up a mess of sliced squash with onions, put it in serving-sized containers and keep it in my freezer until needed. A former mother-in-law used to put up prepared veggies in ice-cube trays. When they were frozen, she’d toss the cubes into freezer bags. When needed, she’d throw in the amount of cubes she needed and slowly warm them in a sauce pan. This was before microwaves, of course; now she would, no doubt, simply zap them back to life.
Garden centers sell bird netting that is used to drape over fruit trees and bushes and it does the trick for tomatoes, too.
I have a friend that does like your dad, taking out and bringing in his tomato plants. Looks like a lot of work to me. I’ll just keep my plants inside next to a sunny window until it’s safe to put them out.
Oh, I’d heard that about canning, now that you mention it. What about all those potatoes and carrots and things that you said can keep all year? How are you planning to store them?
I think the point of bringing the tomatoes in and out is that you don’t have to have them in the house, most of the time. But then again it freezes a lot less in Louisiana than it does in North Carolina, I expect.
My down-home country house actually has a cold pantry. This is a walk-in closet, lined with shelves, on an outside wall of the house that never gets direct sun. The first time we viewed the house it was 80 degrees outside and the power in the house wasn’t on — so no air conditioning. But, when I stepped into the cold pantry it was 68 degrees! It’s got brick walls on all sides so it’s kinda like a cave.
A shaded garden shed or a corner of a garage can serve the same purpose.
I expect we’ll eat all the Early Red potatoes as fast as they mature. The main thing about storing potatoes is not to wash them and let them dry out in the sun before putting them in mesh bags. Then, store them in a cool dry place. One of the reasons the potatoes that come in plastic bags from the grocery store rot is that they are washed to make them look more attractive.
The Irish White potatoes I’ll plant in the Fall will stay in the ground until I dig them up and use them. As the weather gets colder, I’ll keep putting more dirt on top of them. Leeks and celery can be kept the same way; putting more dirt on them to protect them from frost is calling “heeling.”
Carrots and turnips can be stored in dry sand in a barrel or box. The trick is none of them should touch.
Onions can be braided into strings and, again, if they are hung up in a cool, dry place they will keep indefinitely.
Our 1911 house has one of these basement rooms, too. It is really quite wonderful for storing food and other things you’d like to keep cool as well. Great advice on storing food.
Canning isn’t hard (not that I’ve done much of it – just enough to know it isn’t really hard, just time-consuming). If you want an interesting source of information, look for a copy of the Good Housekeeping Cook Book from the WWII years or earlier. I have the 7th edition from 1943, (which my mother grew up with), and it has a very nice section on canning. I especially like pickled beets – it’s a childhood thing – and home canned tomatoes are really great. With a good freezer, however, lots of things that used to be canned can now be frozen with safer (and often better) results.
The other great thing with a cookbook from the war years is all of the substitutions, some of which are excellent in a modern sense: doing without so much sugar or fat, for example.
Excellent diary series! This week’s New Environmentalism diary’s going to be on agriculture, so I hope to see you there.
I’m thinking about starting a backyard garden this year. We don’t exactly have a large backyard, but it’s very open (to the west), so I think it has potential.
I’m looking forward to it.
With a small backyard, I can’t recommend “Square Foot Gardening” enthusiatically enough. Mel Bartholomew has a web site that explains it all.
Awesome! I think I can use that to flesh out the “micro-agriculture” section of the diary quite a lot. Thanks!
Now, I love your diary. But I have to say I disagree with your first sentence. Flowers – only a few of which I eat – are good for the soul. That has value, if not physical nutrients.
And besides, my tiny yard is extremely shady in the back, eliminating most edible stuff there, and sunny only in the front. With a neighborhood group/historic district ordinances that don’t much like rows of veggies in the front yard, the flowers are necessary camoflage for the vegetables.
I’m teasing, obviously – but I’m not going to stop growing flowers!
Leaving my rose garden and hosta beds back in Georgia really made my cry. This year, in my new home, I’m concentrating on edible stuff mainly because my husband has insisted that we leave the “fancy stuff” until next year.
Also, I’m conducting a scientific experiment about whether I can truly create a self-sufficient garden that sustains itself nutrient-wise and provides year-long food for my husband and me.
Even so, there will be nasturiums and violas in my salad bed — they’re edible. And marigolds to ward off insects from my tomatoes and carrots. I’ll be planting an herb bed later with lavender — stretching the boundaries of functional.
Next year, if I’m still doing these weekly Journals I’ll be talking about my rose and cut flower beds.
In your shady garden, you could stick in some spinach and parsley to cover the feet of your flowers. One year I let my parsley “go to seed” and it put out marvelous flower crowns like Queen Anne’s lace, only green! I had a florist friend who bought all of it because it was so unusual in cut flower arrangements.
I truly understand the soul part of gardening and my dictate was strictly limited to vegetables. No one should plant radishes if they don’t like eating them. Or beets. Or brussel sprouts.
One thing that’ll be mentioned in my diary on Saturday… It is perfectly possible to plant flowers alongside veggies in a garden. You have to choose your veggies and flowers carefully, but you can mix the two of them, and it can look good and be functional, too. Apparently, a good selection of flowers can help with pest control, attracting beneficial insects.
(The information comes from these people. Their site was very, very useful when I was working on that diary.)
the grandfather of organic gardening in the USA. ’nuff said.
One of the most impressive gardens I ever saw had lettuce and parsley interplanted with rose bushes. And, hey, you know old-fashioned roses make rose hips that make a great high Vitamin C tea. So I’m going to try to infiltrate Hubby’s utilitarian scheme… But, I don’t want to lose focus on my basic experiment…
Measuring deep beds yields and comparing them to row crop results. If we don’t have food for our bellies, our souls are going to waste away…
They’ve got a really impressive web site, too. Whoever’s running the show there really knows their stuff!
Parsley! What a good idea. We built raised beds in our tiny back yard with some pink granite cobblestones that were the first streets in our neighborhood around 1895. We have very gradually been filling them, and parsley should mix well with what we have there.
And we are here in Michigan with hostas we have no more room for! We’ve given away dozens, and have more to go. Our new neighbor cut down most of his big front yard trees in August – which made our partially shady front yard very sunny. Even with the coolness of Michigan (relative to Texas where we once lived), it was a shock to our hostas, and we had to move them at the worst possible time.
We are, however, enjoying the rugosa roses that we planted to replace our long line of plantaginea hostas, though I still miss the tall white blossoms every August.
We have been quite successful with our composting. Our neighbors all subscribe to the same lawn service that sprays their yards monthly. We don’t, and though our dandelions are cause for comment (we weed them out as they come up, and we are winning, slowly) our soil is not as dense as others are. The basic soil here is gray clay, very alkaline (red clay I grew up with, and know how to handle; this stuff was a challenge). Our composting has helped greatly, too. And we get all of the butterflies and hummingbirds around here (less fortunately, all of the bees, too. I won’t use pesticides even if my leaves look like dotted swiss, but do use some soapy water. Our green beans probably wouldn’t meet organic standards, but they were delicious, as were the little squash. The beans mixed nicely with our clematis, too.
I strongly encourage people to build a compost bin. We built two side by side – we don’t turn it except when we remove the finished stuff at the bottom of the pile, and annual vines (and small melons, too) grow up nicely in and around the two bins, making them if not attractive, at least not ugly.