Last year I gave an account of how I went about planning the Sprouting Off vegetable garden.  This year was similar to last, only more involved.  Last year we quickly realized that 150 square feet was not nearly large enough to feed our family of 3.  We ate and preserved more than our fair share of tomatoes, but things like peas, beans and broccoli were not abundant enough.  We also didn’t have room for any squash or other large brassicas like cauliflower or cabbage.  In addition, we dislike mowing our lawn weed field.  Our vegetable gardening area is growing from 150+ sq. ft to over 3600 sq. ft.  We are covering the East lawn with a vegetable garden.

My plan for the garden is what factored in to the very ambitious list of seeds that I purchased last fall.  I also went out and purchased a few seeds that weren’t available from Heirloom Seeds.  I will likely need to fill in with a few others, but for now I think I’m set.

This year I am not going with the square foot gardening method.  I didn’t find that it worked for me.  It was too constraining.  Think me crazy, but I’m a sucker for rows of vegetables.  I also like a flowy garden.  Contradictory?  Probably, but go with me.  The new garden is a meandering path with intermittent raised beds.  It will (hopefully) allow for both sides of the equation.

I stared (as usual) with my trusty Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades book.  It helped me determine which vegetables I could grow or attempt to grow and which to leave to the farmers (I don’t think I could do Celery).  I then employed a new program that I found on the internet.  I made a list of the veg I wanted to grow and then pulled out my trusty calendar and garden plan.  I translated the hand drawn plan into the GrowVeg program and then started laying in the plants.  I’ll get to a review of the program in another post, but for now I’ll just say it is worth the money (that I haven’t paid yet because I’m still in the free trial period).  I also stuck a few things into spots that won’t actually exist just to get planting dates.  Those plants will go into the 150 sq. ft. raised bed garden in the West yard.

GrowVeg will give you a chart that shows when to start seeds indoors, when to start outside and when to expect a harvest.  I followed the chart for each month and cross checked it with Growing Vegetables West to get a more accurate indication of when things should be started.  GrowVeg is also handy because it tells me how many of each thing to plant so I’m not grossly over planting pumpkins like I did last year.

Now I have my plan, my list and when to plant.  I am keeping track of when to plant and when I actually get around to planting.  I also don’t start my seeds indoors in a light box or other lighted room 1) because I don’t have either of those and 2) because I have a cold frame outside.

My calendar indicates that I should have started broccoli and cauliflower inside on February 5th.  I did not do that.  I wasn’t ready.  My cold frame needed repair.  The beautiful weekend weather allowed me to make the repairs and broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage were all started on Sunday.  Peas should have been put in on President’s Day weekend, but I’ve found I have better germination if I wait just a few weeks.  Theoretically, I could start trying lettuce right now, but I’ll wait on that one too.  First lettuce will go into the raised beds and they have been tilled, but need the addition of more organic material to bring them back up to the proper level.

Hopefully we will be able to start building the new garden in a few weeks and this season can really get going.