Planning your vegetable garden
By mid-winter, gardeners are eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. A spell of spring-like weather stirs up hope for another productive gardening season. To ensure that this year’s garden is filled with healthy, productive vegetable crops it’s a good idea for the gardener to have a good garden plan. This should be done before you sow the first seed or set out the first transplant. Planning can be likened to one of your best gardening tools; it helps you organize, allocate and utilize your resources in a thoughtful manner.
Start your vegetable garden planning by deciding what you want to grow. Experienced gardeners usually have a good idea about what they want to plant. However, they too can sometimes fall victim to the “try-a-little-of-everything” urge. It is better to keep crop selections simple. Focus on growing a few primary crops; perhaps lettuce, tomatoes and sweet corn. Your primary crops will occupy most of the space in your garden. If you have the years of experience and the room available, you can add a few other crops to your inventory. However, it is very helpful to follow this rule; mainly grow vegetable crops that you and your family enjoy eating.
Next, stay focused on the space available in your garden; this limits how much of each crop you can plant. Vegetable plants need a minimum amount of room to extract minerals and water from the soil and capture sunlight for photosynthesis so they can have healthy growth. When crop plants are crowded they will compete with each other for the limited resources. The result is that all plants suffer which has a negative impact on crop production. Follow the recommendations given in the “Kansas Garden Guide” to allocate space for your vegetable crops. You can order this book from your local Extension office, or go online and download a free electronic copy of this Kansas State University publication. To locate the link for the downloadable copy, go to https://www.bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu/pubs/s51.pdf.
After considering the “what” and the “how much” of planting, your next step is to decide “when” to plant. The time to plant depends upon the type of crop plant you’re growing. Vegetable crops are usually classified as either cool-season or warm-season plants. Cool-season crop plants germinate and grow best in late winter through mid-spring; some can be grown again from early fall through early winter. Warm-season crops are very sensitive to freezing temperature and must be planted after the danger of frost. Warm-season crops grow best during the warm summer months.
When to plant is often decided by the calendar date, but Ward Upham, K-State Extension Horticulture Rapid Response Center director, says “a better way to determine when to plant is to watch the soil’s temperature.” Cool season crops, including peas, lettuce, parsnips and spinach can be planted when the soil temperature is 35 to 45 degrees F. Warm-season crops such as tomatoes, sweet corn and beans prefer at least 55 degrees F soil temperature, while peppers, cucumbers, melons and sweet potatoes need it even warmer, about 60 degrees F.
Taking soil temperature accurately is a bit of a science, says Ward Upham. First, use a metal soil thermometer, which is sold in many garden, auto parts and hardware stores. Soil temperature variations occur throughout the day and night with lowest readings after dawn and warmest around mid-afternoon. Take the soil’s temperature about 2.5 inches deep at about 10 to 11 a.m. to get a good average of that day’s temperature. If taking the soil temperature at this time is not practical, take a reading before going to work in the morning and again when returning home from work in the afternoon, then average the two temperature readings for the day’s temperature. Begin planting when a consistent soil temperature reading within the desired range has occurred for four to five days in a row. It’s a good idea, however, to keep an eye on the weather forecast and consider delaying the planting if a cold snap is predicted.
For more information, contact Jacob Weber, Horticulture Agent, at [email protected] or 620-724-8233.
