Thinking and planning a garden

Went out one day last week, and the temperature was around 40 with wind chill down in the 20s, but I was thinking about gardening next spring. Can't do a darn thing about how cold it is or how much rain or snow we are getting, but I can plan for spring and gardening. Many times we fail because we failed to plan. This is so true in many ways, but it sure is true when applied to gardening.

We grow almost all of our tomatoes and cucumbers in our high tunnels. Many are convinced that one can't grow good-tasting tomatoes in a high tunnel, but I'd have to say rubbish. One can, but it will take extra work and take some planning. High tunnels tend to concentrate diseases and bug infestations rather than protect the plants. I've found it easier to grow tomatoes and sometimes cucumbers in an outside garden than in the tunnels.

As we begin to plan the 2020 garden, what plants did you grow in the 2019 garden that were superb and which ones were duds? For us tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers were center stage. We tried a number of varieties of each looking for those that stand above the rest. We pretty much grow Yukon Gold potatoes, eggplants are the same, rainbow Swiss chard, dill and a couple three kinds of yellow zucchini. We buy our cabbage and broccoli plants.

So how big a garden are you planning for 2020? Size is really important. One can harvest pretty much the same amount of produce off 20 plants that are taken care of as one can say 40 if they aren't tended to. It's hard cutting down the number you plant but for most people fewer plants will end up producing more veggies or fruit than too many plants. We have a large garden, so it's hard to compare what we grow to what you grow. But you can plan on what to plant and then stick to the plan. Last year we bought potatoes to plant, and honestly, we bought too many. So we went ahead and planted all of them. Dumb! Way too many potatoes.

You say you don't have a place to plant a garden. Be creative. Several years ago we had some sweet potato starts so Marge planted them in the middle of her one flower bed. She ended up harvesting quite a few pounds of sweet potatoes right there in her flower garden. Garlic can be planted pretty much anywhere. It will grow through a bunch of mulch and is pretty much disease- and bug-tolerant. Stick a cherry tomato in your flower garden. A good friend of ours used to plant a tomato or two in a car tire. Then she would put straw around the tomato plant and pretty much fill the tire with straw. No weeds. I think many make a mistake by planting in the cattle feed tubs and not partially burying the tubs. I'd cut some holes in the bottom of the tubs and then bury them say 8 or 10 inches down and then plant in them.

Make a list of what you want to grow and how many of each. When it comes to tomatoes, I'd plant a couple or three varieties. Maybe a few of your two favorites and maybe another experimental variety. We did this last year with tomatoes. We knew we liked certain varieties but had questions about a number we had read about. We grew right at 24 different varieties of tomatoes with some being red, pink, striped, orange and yellow. Some were small and some were real big at over 2 pounds. Some were really good, and some were outright duds. We grew some that were determinates where they only grow from three to five feet tall or so. Determinates tend to have all their tomatoes ripen within a two to three week period. Indeterminates keep putting on tomatoes until frost or disease kills the plant. Determinates probably are the best choice in locations with a short growing season. Where I grew up in Nebraska determinates were about all one can grow.

Look for ways to plant earlier in the spring or extend your season in the fall. One way I found was with walls of water or season extenders. They were designed specifically for tomatoes but I'm betting they would work for cucumbers and zucchini. Check them out on DuckDuckGo. Another way would be to use low tunnels or a small plastic hoop over your plants to protect them in the spring or fall. We plant in our high tunnels but even they won't protect small seedlings if the temp gets down around 26 degrees. We then rely on a fabric called Agribon fabric. You can buy different frost protection levels of it.

We normally can get by here in south east Missouri by planting in mid-April. I watch the two week extended forecast, and if it looks good mid-April I go ahead and plant. Type in "last frost date in ZIP code" in DuckDuckGo. Put your ZIP code in it and this will give you an approximate date of the last frost date where you live. I mentioned walls of water or season extenders earlier. These can be placed around planted tomato seedlings up to six weeks before this last frost date. They work.

I've found that by starting my own tomatoes and peppers and even cucumbers from seed has helped me out a lot. I figure out when I want to plant my vegie plant and then go back 9 weeks for tomatoes, 10 to 12 weeks on peppers and 30 to 40 days on cucumbers. This gives me the date I need to plant my seeds in starter trays inside. With just a few growing aides, one can grow healthy plants. It will take a little equipment, but even this won't cost an arm and a leg.

We have several stores around us that stock seeds and even live plants in the spring or you can order on line from a number of suppliers. There are a number of seed companies that put out outstanding seed catalogs, and most are free so check them out online. Once you get on the seed catalog list, you'll get dozens of them. Or you can simply Google seed catalogs or seed companies, and almost instantly you'll be on their list.