Last year I showed you how I started my seedlings indoors. My process worked, but as I have been upgrading
my container garden, I decided a needed I a little bit more preparation this
year in order to have a smoother spring/summer.
Usually I plant seedlings and put those seedlings into pots when they
are big enough to go outside, however I never really thought through the space
or number of pots that I had on hand. So,
I ended up putting a plant in either too small or too big of a pot, not having
enough tomato cages, or not having the space to put them altogether. This year, I decided to decide what my garden
is going to look like BEFORE I start my seedlings so that I don’t waste time or
effort later when it comes time to put them outside.
Last spring, the Mr. Fix-it husband upgraded my watering system from hoses
and 360 degree sprayers that mostly just got the ground wet, to a fantastic
built in piping system that allows me to have rows of container plants on my deck! This is perfect because from where our
kitchen is, I get to look out at my garden each day, as well as have easy
access to the veggies for a fresh salsa or salad. Below is a picture of what my “garden” ended
up being organized last year:
I really enjoyed this set up last year, so I decided I wanted to do the
same thing this year. But first, I had
to decide what I want to grow. I had a
few plants last year that I still have in the freezer that I don’t need anymore
of (lookin’ at you jalapeno pepper plant) and some new ones I wanted to
try.
I started this process by writing down a list of the plants I knew I
wanted to grow (tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplant, and herbs), then looked
through my seedbox to find the seeds I already had on hand, and then looked through
several seed catalogs to find new plants that I hadn’t grown before. This process took most of January. I took my time with this process because, everything
was frozen and I really enjoyed looking at all the plant catalogs! This process shouldn’t be rushed, and I
wanted to take to think about what I
wanted to harvest in the future.
Part of the process of looking at my own seeds included building my own
seed storage box. While searching for my
seeds, I realized I had them stashed in all sorts of places and I wanted one
container to call my seed box. I shopped
in catalogs as well as online for a box that I liked, but I couldn’t find
anything in the shape or price range I wanted, so I decided to use my new wood
working hobby to make my own. (Let me
know in the comments if you’d like to see the process in a post!)
After I had settled on a list of plants and purchased seeds for the
items I didn’t already own, I decided to stay organized and write this
information down. (I know, sounds simple,
right?) I have not been very good at
keeping a garden journal so I don’t have a good sense of what time of year we normally
have our last real frost. There are several
websites with rules of thumb, so I decided to use that date until I had a
better understanding from my “future” garden journals. My area’s average last frost date is April
15th. This date is important because
most seed packets reference a “start you seeds” date based on the last frost
for the year. I made a list of each
item, how many weeks before or after the frost date they should be planted and
made an excel formula to tell me when I need to start the seeds (yes, I’m an
excel nerd). Now I know exactly when to
start the seeds for each item instead of looking at each of the seed packets
each weekend and doing to math to decide if I need to start some or not.
Once I had the seedling start date, I needed to decide how many
seedlings to start! In order to do that,
I need to know how many mature plants I want.
I started to list in my same spreadsheet the quantity of mature
plants. This would be another helpful piece
of information to keep in a garden journal, for example, do four tomato plants
produce the quantity of tomatoes I need, or should I plant five to keep up? Or were eight eggplants too much for one year
and I should cut back to six the next, etc.
I had to guess this year based on what I remember from last year and
picked out how many I wanted of each. I
then categorized each item by what type of pot they would go into, and used a
count formula to add up the quantity of each type of pot. This way, I already know many of each kind of
pot I need. Lucky for me, I have twenty
of my five gallon vegetable pots and I want exactly twenty vegetable plants (don’t
you just love it when a plan comes together)?
Here is an idea of the pots that I use:
- Vegetable Pots: mix of different five gallon pots are the perfect size for one plant (tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, etc).
- Small Pots: mix of one to two gallon pots for smaller herb or lettuce plants
- Rectangular Pots: foot long rectangular plants for onions (see post here).
- Trough: very large 150 gallon trough on sale that I am going to try and use for large crops, and perhaps potatoes in the future
- Grill: an old grill that I converted into a planter which is the perfect standing height for a planter and works well for small herb plants like basil, rosemary, and cilantro.
- Decorative: pretty pots I have collected over the years that I use for flowers
Once I had my full list of plants, quantities, and pots, I decided to
map out how the container garden would look, much like my 2018 view. This is really helpful because, now I don’t have
to think about where I’m going to put each plant when it comes time to place
them outside in a couple of months! I
already did all the work!
Now to get started on those seedlings!
How do you decide what to plant?
Do you keep a garden journal? I
want to know!
