Getting ready to Plant your garden. Here's the challenge! Never let any spot in your garden go fallow. It is not as daunting as you may think. It can be a fun to see how much each part of your garden can produce.
Plan 1, plant something that will take all season to produce food. or that will produce food for a long time. This would be planting something like peppers, tomatoes, egg plant, squash or pole beans. Each of the plants will sprout, grow, bloom and make fruit for a full season. Be sure to choose varieties that continue to bloom until frost or that produce till frost.
This will keep you in fresh produce for the full time of the harvest. You may however get a bit tired of always having the same things to eat.
Plan 2, planting and harvest cycle. This one is the most fun. It also adds variety to your diet. This will take some planning and experimenting. I am going to give you a head start by telling you a few things you can do.
Cycle A. As soon as you can break the ground in the spring plant you favorite pea. I like Green Arrow pea. The peas are cool weather crops and can take some moderate freezing. In my aria I plant peas in the end of February, they come up and grow in March and April depending on the year. I have fresh peas from the end of April till about the second week of June when the temperature gets too hot for the pea blossoms. Then I clean all the pods off my peas, till or spade the vines into the ground. The nitrogen form the peas will Make your soil fertile for your next crop. Plant corn in the same place. I choose a early corn that takes 90 to 100 days to mature. This gives me fresh corn or pop corn in September. when the corn is over I pull the stalks out and add a little compost then plant the same place with smaller sections of radishes, beats and several varieties of lettuce. I use them all in salads until they freeze. If I cover them at night I frequently have fresh salad until mid November.
Cycle B. Some crops can be planted in a continuous rotation. I use this method for root crops like beats, carrots and radishes that I use frequently in smaller amounts. I like to plant mini plots, I will plant 8 to 10 carrots, beats and radishes in 4 to 8 very small rows. about 1 foot long. I like the young and fresh small roots for fresh eating. As I use a row each week I replant it. That way all the crop is not ripe at the same time. If I find I'm running out of them too fast I increase the number I plant each time.
It is a lot of fun to plan your cycle. Start by finding out the number of days without frost where you live. Then pick a cool weather crop to start with in the spring. Look at the number of days it takes it to grow. Plan for a week or two of harvest, If you subtract the number of days it took to grow and harvest the first crop from the number of days without a freeze you will know how many days you have left for the growing season. Now pick a warm weather crop to plant in the same place that will produce a crop before freezing. If there are still at least 60 days left for harvest you may want to pick a third crop to finish the season with. Third crops are most often cool weather crops.
So go out and plan your garden Pick some long producers for your plan 1 and create a crop cycle for plan 2.
Be sure to use heirloom seeds so you can save them and replant the same things next year.
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