Helpful Hints 2 from Al Kirchhoff

20 January 2008

Helpful Hints

Welcome to a new gardening year. The “off season” seems to have gone by quickly. Hope you each had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Now we start off fresh and rested into a new gardening season.

It is always good to start with a quick review of the previous season. What did you learn during your previous year’s experience? Did you learn the importance of timing in soil preparation, fertilizing, planting, spacing and harvesting? I’m sure you now realize more than before that gardening is more than putting seeds and plants in the soil.

In the previous Helpful Hints we gave you some planting considerations, i.e. planting timing and sequence, variety selection, crop cultural considerations. Some crops recommended for small gardens are beets, broccoli, bush squash, cabbage, carrots, eggplant, green beans, onions, peppers, radishes, tomatoes, spinach and lettuce. Crops such as cantaloupe, watermelon, pumpkins, potatoes and corn require large areas to produce meaningful harvest and while they certainly can be planted they are not recommended for small plots. Today we will add a couple more considerations.

Now think about what you can do with the space you have to maximize your harvest without crowding your plants. One such thing is choose plants and varieties that are heavy producers for the space they require, have plant form, shape, that minimizes the area required. What about cool season vs. warm season crops? Can you gain space by mixing these? Have you ever heard of pole vs. bush, determinant vs. indeterminate, vining vs. bush? First I was referring to beans,second tomatoes, and finally squash types.

Careful advanced planning will help maximize the production in our 60 sq. ft. plots. It is good to start with a scaled drawing of the plot and lay out the row plan, then label in the crop for each row. Let me give you a for instance. Suppose I want my garden row spacing to be 30”, recommended for most crops, and to run the shorter distance, 72”. This will give me only three 6’ rows or 18 ft of row length. But by adding rows to give just 15” spacing and alternating warm and cool season crops I can have seven rows for a total of 42’ row length. The cool season crop will be harvested and gone before the warm season crop requires the space. ‘That’s just one way to “gain space”. Some crops can be planted closer than 15” for instance onions, just stop by the garden and see what the Wallace’s have done with theirs. Personally I have gone to sowing my carrots and radishes or sometimes planting two rows just 8” apart. Sometimes I will plant full rows of beets or carrots where I plan on putting tomatoes and when it is time for the tomatoes to go in I just sacrifice the short row distance necessary to put the tomato plant in the ground and let the remaining cool season crop grow along with the tomato. There are other options for you to discover and try, One consideration doing these techniques is the water and fertility demand will go up.

Finally, seeds can be expensive, especially if you use only a small portion of several different packets. You may want to cooperate with your garden neighbors and share your remaining seeds or you buy one crop and he or she buys a different crop. The packets typically tell how much row length it will plant.

We certainly have the fixin’s for a great year in the Old Town Community Garden. I can hardly wait for you to get the seeds and plants in the ground. If you have any questions refer to the website http://www.aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/ or feel free to call me and I will get you and answer.

Your fellow gardener, Al