The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 3

The Year in Which I Grow Our Food Pt. 3

Planning to Plant the Plot

Deer Tongue and Romaine lettuces

When do we plant?

Vegetable gardens in this country are largely seen as a “summer thing”, and I believe this is because the crops people associate with vegetable gardens are mainly summer growing. These are most of the crops that we discussed in the last article. However, if we adjust what we are growing, we also have to adjust when we grow it, because not everything grows well in summer, and needs the cooler weather of spring or fall instead. This way, the summer-only garden really becomes a spring, summer, and fall garden. This is a far better use of our space and time, because the more time the garden is in use means that more food can be produced. Good news, if you think about it.

What can we plant in spring, then? We can plant things such as:

Onions (bulbing),Peas, Potatoes, Cabbage, Kale, Carrots, Swiss Chard, Radishes, Lettuce, Spinach

In summer, we can plant the “heavy hitters”, such as:

Tomatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Peppers, Summer Squash, Winter Squash, Pumpkins, Melons, Celery, Cucumbers, Beans, Eggplant, Corn, Basil, Cilantro, Dill

In fall, we can plant things similar to the spring, such as:

Peas, Cabbage, Kale, Carrots, Lettuce, Spinach, Radishes, Onions (not bulbing onions, though, bunching onions instead), Garlic-this stays in over the winter, Turnips

These are not exhaustive lists. Any seed company worth their salt (and there are a number of really good ones) will tell you which crops do best in which season. These are examples so you can see that there are a number of things you can grow and three seasons in which to do so. Doing so, however, is a bit of a ballet…

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