Planting A Spring Garden

Planting a spring garden is the perfect stepping stone to lead into a full summer garden! Whether you are brand new to gardening or a seasoned pro, it’s always nice to get a head start on providing freshly homegrown food to your family.

When to Plant

Timing a spring garden varies for everyone. However, it is always an easier option in my opinion, since the plants you typically choose in spring are much hardier and easier to care for. I am in zone 6a. To find your zone use this handy site. For a spring garden, you can choose big or small, in ground or in containers. It truly is up to your preference. For my spring planting this year, I started small with some large flower pots. I planted some radishes, lettuces, spinach, and carrots. That’s it to start with. Soon I will try to plant additional vegetables but I wanted to make sure I could manage to remember just a couple pots first. So far, I have one pot growing and one pot undecided (thanks to our dog and cat finding it just hours after planting and having quite the fun time in it). My daughter planted her own smaller pot and has some lettuces growing already! Talk about a proud 5 year old.

Preparing to Plant

Being prepared to plant your spring garden is crucial to its success. There are a few key steps you can take to make this happen. First, determine where you want to plant this garden. Knowing the size of the space you have will help immensely when you are choosing what vegetables to plant and how many. There are multiple options to choose from when it comes to spaces.

• Container
• In- Ground
• Raised Bed
• Garden Bags (newer option, used mainly for potato crops)

Any of the above options will work just fine for a spring garden. Some people do not have an in ground planting option, so some type of container or raised bed is going to be the way to go. Other people may have the ground available, but the soil needs some work before trying to grow food in it. Regardless of what you are planting in, you still need to determine how much space you have to work with. After gathering that information you can move on to planning what all you will plant!

Choosing Your Plants

For a spring garden you are limited to what all vegetables you can grow. For most, the weather is much cooler and only certain varieties of plants can tolerate it. There is still a lengthy list of options, but do not plan a spring garden thinking about fresh tomatoes and corn on the cob. Those will come later. Here are some of the vegetables you can count on in a spring garden.

• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Onions
• Lettuces
• Swiss Chard
• Arugula
• Beets
• Spinach
• Kale
• Radishes
• Peas

Now you are ready to choose what to plant. Make a list of what you will actually eat! I have been guilty, more than once, of planting something we do not even enjoy eating. My focus these days is to only grow what we truly enjoy and can utilize the most. After choosing what to plant, estimate how much you want to grow. This depends on 1. your available space and 2. if you are growing enough to only eat fresh or enough to preserve as well. Remember, you will also be able to plant a second crop of these spring plants in late summer. Then you can have a fall harvest as well, weather permitting of course.

Preparing the Planting Area

This is a very important part of gardening. An area I have overlooked too many times. Your planting area must be in good condition if you want a successful harvest. Unfortunately, tilling up a part of your yard and throwing some seeds down will not work as you would hope. Our current garden is a great example of how important it is to keep your soil healthy. It is a huge area that was already there and even had soil that was so soft and deep, you sunk into it after it was tilled. Super exciting, right? It was and still is, but we quickly found out how depleted the soil was. No, I did not do any testing. I knew from my garden growth and harvest just how depleted it was. Not only was some of the plant growth slow, many did not get to the size I was used to seeing. We dealt with a terrible case of potato beetles. Unfortunately, they did so much damage, my entire harvest was extremely low due to them. Thanks to the beetles eating sections out of so many potatoes, I had a very short storage time of most of them. Steps had to be taken to build up the soil for next year.

Amending Your Soil

Once our garden harvest was done for the year, I began taking steps to build up the soil. It will take years to get it to where I truly want it. However, I have to start somewhere. I began throwing extra raw milk from our milk cow Lucy (you can read more about her here) onto the garden. Any time I made butter, I would throw the buttermilk onto the garden. We have a massive compost pile thanks to a milk cow, chickens and goats. A lot of that pile got spread onto the garden before winter. We also have friends who own a tree removal company. Thanks to truckloads of wood chips, we were able to utilize them as weed prevention that also broke down into dirt in our garden. Year 2 in the garden was certainly better than year 1. However, we are approaching year 3 and I am most excited to see what this year brings. We took extra steps last year with tilling in late fall, spreading “black gold” all over the garden that we traded a friend for, and also dumping much more whey, buttermilk and raw milk than the previous year.

Purchasing Soil

If you are planting in containers or raised beds, you may not even have them filled with soil yet. Therefore, you need to take extra precaution when choosing the soil. Find a reputable source locally. Ask questions! You do not want to pay for soil that has come straight from a field and has nothing nutrient rich about it. Trust me, I am well aware of this. We garden in raised beds for years before moving to the country. We bought soil almost every year and had to be so careful. Regardless, we always seemed to have more weed issues than I thought necessary. After more research, I determined it had to be the soil. We honestly were never quite sure where it came from. It certainly worked for us and we grew many, many harvests with it. However, I am thrilled to be done purchasing dirt. We always requested a mixture of black dirt and peat. Depending on what is available in your area, you may not have those options. Anyone who is selling dirt should be able to help you choose the best combination for a home garden. Just be up front with them and ask for the best growing medium they can provide. After all, you are putting a lot of hard work into this garden, so you want to be able to sow a great harvest!

Planting the Spring Garden

Now that you have chosen an area to plant, made a list of what you will plant, and taken any necessary steps to build up your soil, it’s PLANTING time! Spring garden planting can be so tricky due to the weather. You need to be able to work in the soil, so it has to be dry enough. However, the rains in the spring can be so sporadic, it become quite the puzzle to find a decent planting day. Do not fret though, I have literally “mudded” plants into my garden before. They still grew! I am not a “by the book” gardener at all. I do what I need to do. This spring I plan to get a lot of plants/seeds in early. While my planting area is already good to go (thank you hubby for being so motivated last fall), I still need the temps to be right and at least no standing water. This is the time where patience is key. There will be a good timeframe, it may just need a little extra time. While you wait, just go over your plans again. Make sure you have adequate row/plant spacing and the veggies you really want to eat. I typically end up changing things up at least once. This is the time to do that!

Plant and Pray

This is my garden motto. There is no formula that is going to guarantee you will get the harvest of your dreams year after year. The factors that play into a garden of any kind are endless. From weather to bugs to illness, the things that can affect the garden never stop. I have learned to let go and let God. After all, He created all the plants, so I figure He certainly knows what is best for them. For now, I will continue to plant my spring garden and pray that I get a great harvest for my entire family, and others, to enjoy!

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