Now that the snow has finally melted and the lakes are turning back to water, I can start planning the garden for the year. If I was the type who started my own seedlings, this step would have been complete long ago. But I’m not, so here we are.
In a prior article, I talked about the timing here in Minnesota, which is later than many other parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Mother’s Day is often the first weekend to start planting tender vegetables like tomatoes and peppers, depending on what the weather looks like. Thankfully, our late-season blizzard was not a sign that winter was going to last until June, and we’ve been enjoying warm days and cool nights for the last couple of weeks. More importantly, local weather guru Paul Douglas is saying spring is here.
It’s time to get moving on the garden. Here is how I put it all together.
1) Determine your crop
While it may seem odd to start with the plants, there is a good reason for it. Different plants require different amounts of space and root depth. If you want to grow a sweet potato plant, you’re going to need a lot of room and a deep box or container. Radishes, on the other hand, require little room per plant and can be grown in a shallow container. These two items will determine where they can grow and how much space you’ll need.
When we started our gardening journey years ago, we wanted to grow as much as possible in a limited space. We had two problems: Our native soil was terrible and of questionable safety; and we didn’t have much money left after buying the house (a story for a different time). My in-laws told us about a method that was popular in LA for people with small lots. You may of heard of it:
Mel Bartholomew’s plan is simple: Create a shallow frame (6″ or so), fill it with a mix of equal parts
Over time, we decided that this method wasn’t ideal for us as it’s a pretty intensive. In the spring and early summer, you need to get out there and hand-weed every day. With such a shallow container, methods like hoeing can damage your vegetables as their roots are forced to spread out instead of going deep. Additionally, the mix, despite the use of vermiculite and peat moss, dried up quickly at the peak of summer. With the shallow box, plants relied on only 3-6″ of dirt for water. Deep mulching could help with that, but with only a 6″ box, you don’t have a lot of room to work with.
Because of this and more, we moved away from the method. However, we continue to use the plant spacing rules, as Mel did have a very good point: you waste a lot of space when you put 1′ to 2′ rows between everything.
2) Create a map
Once you know what you’re going to plant, you need to figure out where. Whether in the native soil or a raised garden bed, you have a limited amount of space. You want to maximize it to get the most from your garden, and to do that you have to know two things: The amount of space you have available and the space requirements for your selected plants.
The easiest (and cheapest) way to map things out is to simply measure your space and draw it out on
To get around this, there are drawing tools you can use. In a prior life, I had access to the premium version of a tool called LucidChart. LucidChart does have a free version, however, and it lets you keep three documents with up to 60 “objects” each. This is pretty limited in terms of what you can draw, but it’s just right for me. Below is an example, which can be shared with collaborators, embedded in a site, printed out, or saved to many different formats. And it’s live, so as I make changes to it, you will see it.
This is one of three 4’x8′ raised garden beds we have. The dashed lines are at one-foot intervals. While we don’t do Square Foot Gardening officially, we still use the grid pattern as it helps easily sight and place plants.
Past experience and growing guides for tomatoes tell us they need about 24″ of space between each plant, or 2′. So what I do is assume that it needs 4 square feet of space (2′ x 2′). That gives us a nice little square, and if you put it right in the middle of the square, you can fit up to 8 in our box. Peppers can be as little as 12″ between plants, and some things like carrots can be literally inches apart. If you have a vegetable that only needs 3″ per plant, you can put up to 16 plants in a single 1’x1′ square.
A word of wisdom: some plants, like bushy green beans, can also be sown 3″ apart. But because they really spread out as they grow, it becomes a dense thicket of leaves, stems, and beans. A patient person can pick through this. I am not patient. If you are like me, dial it back to 9 or even 4 per box.
I’ve also included a PNG version of the file below that I welcome you to share or use.
3) Source your veggies
This is highly variable based on where you live. If you are in an urban or suburban area, it’s likely you have numerous nursery and garden center options. If you are in a small town or rural area, you may be more limited to what you can find. Not all is lost though.
Almost everything can be sourced as seeds without much difficulty. If you want organic and/or heirloom varieties, Seed Savers Exchange is a great option. They have thousands of seeds, ranging from the normal stuff to exotic or rare things such as Asian greens and sunberries.
Given where I live, transplants are the only option for longer growing plants like sweet potatoes and peppers. You can either do your own seed-starting five to eight weeks before you can plant outdoors, or buy transplants from local sources. You can also buy online, though I haven’t tried that yet. I just don’t know how well they ship. More importantly, you might end up with something not ideal for your area. For example, peanuts are an option in Minnesota, but only specific cultivars. If you get a Virginia cultivar, you might run out of growing season (though that’s exactly what we grew a few years ago without issue).
Besides supporting your community, local nurseries and garden centers typically have a better idea of what works and doesn’t in your area. Plus, they can provide a good source of information about local results or tips. You can also look for Master Gardeners in your area, who either are accredited by the local university extension program, or some other local program. If your garden center options are restricted to big box stores, they might be less knowledgeable. However, My experience is they are rather conservative about sourcing plants that grow in your area. In that case, you’re unlikely to get something that will have problems with your growing season.
You can also look forlocal plant and seed exchanges. These are often run by cities, non-profits, or Facebook groups, and they are used for gardeners to get rid of extra seedlings, swap plants, or show off some interesting cultivars of their own (saving seeds over the years and being careful how things get pollinated). Seeds and seedlings here may not come with instructions, so be prepared to write down the type of plant to research later or tidbits provided by the gardeners.
The other option are local fundraisers for schools and groups. Many are small and very local, but some have grown to enormous size. Here in Minnesota, there is one run by the Friends School of Minnesota, which is held at the State Fairgrounds. If you happen to be in or around the Twin Cities over Mother’s Day weekend, it’s a great place to get all sorts of vegetables, annuals, perennials, and house plants. Very cheap, too. This is my main go-to for plants, especially now that the nearby nursery shut down.
4) Store seedlings until planting
The last item is mostly about transplants. Transplants are fragile. They’ve likely been grown indoors under grow lights in special seed-starting soil. When it gets close to planting time, they’ll be facing sun, wind, hot/cold temps, and bugs for the first time. There isn’t much to do about bugs (they happen), but the rest can be eased into. The process is called hardening off, and it’s something I’m really terrible at.
Be that as it may, the idea is this: You introduce your seedlings to the outdoors gradually, usually by putting them in a shaded, wind-protected area of the yard. This protects them from being damaged, but gets them ready for the new environment. Over time, you increase the amount of time spent outdoors in that protected location, until they’ve been outside for 7-9 hours at a time. This can be done over a week or two, and shouldn’t be rushed. Seedlings can suffer from wind damage and sunburn.
If you got your transplants from a garden center or some other outdoor location, it’s probable they are already hardened off. It’s always a question to ask, however, or to assume that you need to finish it yourself. If you don’t the transplants may not bounce back quickly and they may be stunted for a while after planting, assuming they even survive.
What about your kid(s)?
I realize to this point, I haven’t documented much with my own kids. Much of that is because of the weather, plus these first steps aren’t really toddler-friendly. If you have older kids, though, these are some of the first steps they can help with. There is no heavy lifting, sharp tools, or anything else. Just a wish list and some simple math. And drawing.
As for my own kids, I plan on getting sunflowers to plant in another part of the yard, as well as some other large-seeded plants like beans, squash, and melons. And next weekend is the plant sale, and it’s likely they will come with so I’ll document that a bit as well.