How to Start your Garden

How to start your garden plot:

It’s the time of spring when farmers and gardeners are starting to till up the soil and plant the first seeds of spring!  What this article is about is how to start your own little garden plot and grow your own plants! 

First you need land to grow on.  Ask your parents or caretakers if you can have a little piece of land in the backyard or some other place.  If they say yes (and only if they say yes, do not hoe up the grass without permission), you can start your garden!  The first tool you will need is some kind of garden hoe (ask an Adult if you can borrow theirs).  In your land you use the hoe to hoe up any leaves, grass, weeds or other unwanted plants, and just in general, to loosen up the soil for planting.  Make sure you get out all of the weeds before you plant because big weeds shading little plants is just a bother.  Than with a garden rake, smooth out your loose soil to form an as perfect as possible garden bed.  Now you’re ready to plant. 

When you want to plant you have to consider what each plant is like and whether it is hardy and can stand cold weather or whether it has to be planted in warmer weather.  Tomatoes, for example, are a “hot crop” as we call them in my house.  You can not plant tomatoes directly into the ground when spring comes like you can with peas and spinach.  Tomatoes are usually planted around mid-late March in seeding containers.  Seeding containers can be as simple as the holes in a cardboard egg carton (don’t use the foam ones, they can leak chemicals).  The following plants should be seeded in cartons during March and April: tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, broccoli, cabbage, kale, lettuce, watermelon, cucumber (sometimes), onions, leeks and others.  Some plants that are seeded and planted directly into the ground are: peas, spinach, beans, cucumbers (sometimes), squash (butternut, zucchini, yellow, acorn, delicata), corn (sweet, popcorn), potatoes, sweet potatoes, non-heading lettuce (the small ones that you just cut the greens off the plant), carrots and others.  Right now put nothing into the ground except peas, spinach and a few other plants. 

How to plant your peas.  With the handle of a garden tool, make a line in the ground.  If you peas are fence-climbers use your common sense and put the line next to the fence.  If they are bush peas (a variety that grows low to the ground like a miniature bush) you can plant them wherever you like.  Plant the seeds about 2 inches apart in the indentation although it doesn’t have to be exact.  When you have planted all the seeds, cover them with soil and let them grow!

In this edition you have learned to plant your peas and good luck.  Next week you will learn to plant spinach and maybe some other early spring plants, see you next week!