(In the Garden #4)

Choosing Your Crops

Once you have prepared your garden square, it time to decide what you are going to plant in it. I recommend planting only what you know you will use. Even if everyone on the block is growing tomatoes, don't plant them if your family refuses to eat them. Prefer your veggies clean and in plastic from the produce department? Then fill your garden squares with different kinds of herbs and flowers.

It is a great gardening irony that home-grown lettuce and tomatoes do not share the same season. Lettuce is a cool weather crop and is usually done by the time tomatoes, a warm weather crop, are starting to ripen. Most vegetables fall into those two categories. Cool weather crops are best planted in the early spring and done by late June or planted in late August and harvested in the fall. Warm weather crops are not planted until after all danger of frost is past (late May/early June in the midwest).

Below are some suggestions and notes about good starter vegetables.

Tomatoes: (Warm weather crop) You can start your own plants from seed indoors eight weeks before planting outside, but I suggest buying tomato plants at a nursery if you are a beginning gardener. There are many varieties of tomatoes, but only two plant types. One is the determinate, or bush tomato, that only grows to a pre-determined height, branches out, and takes a bit more space horizontally. You can only grow four of these in a 4' x 4' garden. The second type, the indeterminate or vining tomato, grows well in a 1' square if grown upward on a stake or trellis. You can plant four of these tomatoes along the end squares of your garden and train them up an end support, pinching out the side shoots to encourage upward growth.

Pepper: (Warm weather crop) Another plant best purchased in a nursery. Plant 1 plant per square foot.

Green beans: (Warm weather crop) Two types of these as well: bush beans and pole beans. You can plant these seeds directly in the garden – 9 plants per square foot for bush beans, 8 plants per square foot for pole beans, which are grown on the end squares on end supports.

Leaf lettuce: (Cool weather crop) These can also be seeded directly in the ground, or you can purchase plants in a garden nursery. Plant 4 per square foot.

Spinach: (Cool weather crop) Seed directly in the ground only, 9 plants to a square foot.

Peas: (Cool weather crop) Plant seeds directly in the garden, 8 plants per square foot, grown on the end squares on end supports.

Swiss Chard: (Warm weather crop) Like spinach, sow directly in the ground only, but plant 4 per square foot.

Cucumbers: (Warm weather crop) Plant seeds or bought plants, 2 plants per square foot, but grow on end squares on end supports.

Onions: (Warm weather crop) Plant bought sets 16 per square foot. Green onions, also known as scallions or bunching onions can be sown by seed quite thickly with about 30 plants per square foot.

Carrots: (Cool or warm weather crop) Plant seed directly in the ground only, 16 plants per square foot. Soil needs to be very soft and loose to grow carrots, and short carrot types are best.

Radishes: (Prefers cool weather) Plant seed directly in the ground only, 16 plants per square foot.

Beets: (Prefers cool weather) Plant seed directly in the ground only, 16 plants per square foot.

Turnips: (Prefers cool weather) Plant seed directly in the ground only, 9 plants per square foot.

Tomorrow - Planting seeds and seedlings in the ground.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato.

- Lewis Grizzard