Time to start planning!

I know its still January, but it's time to start planning your garden out if you haven't already. You need to start planning what you want to plant, where in your yard you want to plant, as well as how much of each you want to plant. It's easy to get a little too ambitious if this is your first garden. Start off smaller, its easier to add and change things about your garden each year. After a few years, you'll have your garden down to a science!

There are several seeds that you can soon begin to plant indoors so they have time to germinate and grow before being transplanted into the yard. Tomatoes, for example, can be started indoors. It's much cheaper to start them from seed, than it is buying tomato plants to place in the yard. Find out which seeds to start indoors and when for your specific growing area at www.burpee.com/.

Within the next few months, I will be starting tomatoes, broccoli and peppers (red, yellow, green) indoors.

Once the spring thaw is done and you have tilled the ground you are going to plant your garden in, buy a simple soil test from your favorite garden center. Spending the few dollars it costs for the kit is well worth it! It tells you so much about your soil and what nutrients (if any) you may need to add. For example, in my area, calcium is low in the soil, which can hurt tomatoes. You can buy some calcium to add or save your egg shells and crush them up and put them in the soil where you plant your tomatoes.

Where in your yard you plant your garden is important as well. You want to make sure it will get enough sunlight during the day. Depending on what you plan to plant, some vegetables prefer morning sun vs. evening sun and vise versa. Obviously, you aren't going to have multiple little gardens around your yard based on the sunlight. So choose a spot that has adequate sunlight throughout the day. It's easy to block the sun at various times. One thing to do is to build a trellis for cucumbers or another vine vegetable.



Notice that this trellis will grow the cucumbers, but could also double as a sunscreen for those vegetables that don't like sun at a particular time. Just make sure the trellis is facing the correct way to block the sun at that time.

Happy planning!!