How to get an early jump on your vegetable garden.

There are several ways in which you can get an early jump on your vegetable garden. This article details several things which you can do when braving the cool early planting season!


1. Make sure that you have all of your seeds and plants ordered. Nothing is worse than having gorgeous weather to plant in, but not having the seeds to plant.

2. Start your seeds early indoors or in a greenhouse if you have one. By starting seeds indoors you can get several weeks or even a couple of months of a head start on the growing season over seeding directly to your garden.

3. Make sure that you garden is staked out, soil turned over, and rows made or marked out. Also, make sure that you know where you want all the different plants to go in your garden.

4. If you have raised rows or mounds to plant in, then try covering them with black plastic several weeks before the last frost date in your area. Believe it or not this can warm the covered soil several degrees more than the surrounding soil. You can also leave the plastic on all season long to help control weeds, you simply need to cut slits in the plastic where you want to transplant your seedlings to. I personally do not leave the plastic on all season as I like more direct watering to my plants, but many people do like to leave it on and it works fine for them.

5. If the weather gets cool then try covering your plants with protection of any type: mulch, wood chips, sheets, plastic jugs with the open end cut off, plastic sheeting, etc.




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Many new articles on my website!

There are many new articles that I recently have published which I hope that viewers of this blog will find helpful! Please visit them at: http://getready2garden.com/page6.html. Some of the topics that I have written on are: starting seeds early indoors, starting a garden, keeping pests out of your garden, composting, and much more. I hope you will view the articles and give me feedback!

Rain, Rain, Go away!

I'm sitting here looking outside at the torrential rain and it makes me hope that this spring will not be as much of a wash out as last one. Last year it was difficult to get out into the garden to till and prepare the soil for planting because it always seemed to rain at exactly the wrong time (weekends). Hopefully this season will be better.

Here are a couple of tips to handle rain:

1. make sure that your soil had proper drainage, clay soil or soil that has depressions that hold water can be a major downer for all of your vegetables in a wet year.
2. if possible make mounds and slopes to help deal with rainfall, I am blessed with a naturally sloped garden that takes care of all my drainage issues
3. watch for blossom rot on your vegetables, this rot happens when the leaves are too wet (especially at night time) for extended periods of time, visit your local garden store to find out how to combat this
4. weed after the rain, I love weeding when the soil is saturated, nothing makes weeding easier than damp soil, so grab your old boots (because you will get muddy) and head out to your garden for a little weeding
5. when possible, try to get seeds and new plants into the ground right before a nice gentle rain (hard downpours are not so good) that will water the plants and seeds without washing them away!

Lots of work to do!

Due to recent extremely stormy weather I now have extra work to do to my greenhouse in order to get it ready for use this spring. Replacing some plastic sheeting (hopefully with rigid plastic) and fixing a problem with the roof panels. Oh well, at least it will give me something to do until I can start seeds.

Speaking of starting seeds. I have over half of the seeds that I need for my garden already and plant on finishing off the seed purchasing in the next couple of weeks. My local nursery will be getting garlic and seed potatoes in soon so I will pick them up in February or early March. Take a look at this planting guide I put together: http://getready2garden.com/page7.html . Hopefully this will help when deciding what to start early and when!

Don't forget to visit my site at : http://getready2garden.com/

Finally a new website!

Finally the new website is being unveiled. http://getready2garden.com/ - This website is brand new and created by yours truly. I am not an awesome web developer so this site is not as streamlined and as polished looking as I would like. Please bear with me as I will continually update, upgrade, and streamline this site. You will be able to find helpful articles, a forum, links to helpful sites, and more on http://getready2garden.com/ . Please browse the site and feel free to contact me with any suggestions or comments.

Seed Viability Testing

So I pulled the seeds (wrapped in a damp paper towel and placed in a ziploc bag) that I had saved from last seasons veggie crop out of the wine cooler, after two weeks, to see how many of the seeds had sprouted. Good news! Every one of my 8 pumpkin seeds sprouted and 6 of my 8 pea seeds sprouted. I am very happy with the results. I cannot wait to save even more seeds from my garden this coming season. I plan on saving seeds from peppers, peas, beans, cucumbers, crookneck squash, waltham butternut squash, zucchini, eggplant, watermelons, muskemelons, and pumpkins. I never realized how easy saving seeds is until I tried it out. If you have never saved seeds to use the following season then give it a try this year. Just follow the simple steps found on my article at: http://getready2garden.com/page6.html.

Can't wait for gardening season!

This is the time of year that I dread in terms of gardening. There is simply not much to do. Soil preparation is not yet started, composting has slowed down, to early to start seeds, simply not much to do but gaze fondly at the garden and "patiently" wait for the weather to warm up. Or is there? How about doing the following:
1. look online, in stores, and in catalogues for seeds that you want this year and start ordering.
2. sharpen and clean off any tools that are dull or worn
3. plot your garden to include any changes in where you are planting things are any new plants your are adding to the mix
4. check the viability of seeds that you saved from last year (I like to do this by selecting 5-8 seeds, wrap them in a very damp paper towel, place them in a ziploc bag, and put the bag in the wine cooler for a week or two)
5. get stakes, twine, and plant markers organized and ready to use
6. set some goals for the garden for the coming season ( I would like to grow --- successfully, etc)
7. make any necessary repairs to greenhouses or garden sheds ( I know my greenhouse needs some TLC)
8. Keep dreaming!