Gardening Secrets

The Steps in Planting Vegetables

There really are no gardening secrets when it comes to planting vegetables... just good, old-fashioned hard work and common sense.

All the thought, care and expense your put into planning your vegetable garden are but to get ready for the two things from which your garden is to spring, in ways so deeply hidden that centuries of the closest observation have failed to reveal their inner workings. Those two are seeds and plants.

Companies I've had good luck with include Gurney's Seed and Nursery, Henry Fields Seed and Nursery, and Gardens Alive!.

If you decide to plant plants, rather than seeds, healthy plants are just as important as good seed—and of course you cannot afford to lose weeks of garden usefulness by growing entirely from seed for every vegetable.

Beets, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, egg-plant, and for really efficient gardening, also onions, corn, melons, celery, lima beans, cucumbers, and squash, will all do better in your garden if you start with plants or else start sprouting the seeds indoors ahead of time.

It is next to impossible to describe a "good" vegetable plant, but as a gardener, you will soon learn to distinguish between the healthy, short-jointed, deep-colored plant which is ready to take hold and grow, and the soft, flabby plants which have been too much pampered, or dwarfed, weakened specimens which have been abused and starved.

Plants may be bought from your local garden center or even online. Be sure to keep them indoors for a few days before setting out, so that you may be sure to have them properly "hardened off," and in the right degree of moisture, for transplanting, as will be described later.

For the ordinary vegetable garden, all the plants needed may be started successfully cold-frames. Don't worry... this doesn't take any "expert" knowledge of growing and planting vegetables... just careful regular care, daily for a few minutes.

The cost will be very little, especially if you are at all handy with tools. The sash which serves for the cover, and is removable, is the important part of the structure. The sash may be purchased ready made and painted, at from $15.00 to $20.00 each. With care, they will last ten or even twenty years, so you can see at once that not a very big increase in the yield of your garden will be required to pay interest on the investment.

Or you can buy the sash unglazed, at a proportionately lower price, and put the glass in yourself, if you prefer to spend a little more time and less money. However, if you are not familiar with the work, and want only a few, I would advise purchasing the finished cold frame. Cold frames should be about three feet by six feet.

You can also save money by constructing your own frames—the materials required, being 2x4 lumber for posts, and 3/4 x 2 x 12 in. planks.

Once the frame is built, you'll need to ready the soil. It should be rich, light, friable. There are some garden loams that will do well just as taken up, but as a rule better results will be obtained where the soil is made up specially as follows: rotted sods two parts, old rotted manure one part, and enough coarse sand added to make the mixture fine and crumbly, so that, even when moist, it will fall apart when pressed into a ball in the hand. The amount can readily be calculated; soil for three sash, four inches deep, for instance, would take eighteen feet or a pile three feet square and two feet high.

Obviously, in many cases, it's perfectly acceptable to plant your seeds right in the garden soil when the time is right. Select for the outside seed-bed the most thoroughly pulverized spot to be found, enriched and lightened with fine manure.

Here are some good rules of thumb for when to plant your seeds...

Sow the following vegetables from the end of March to the beginning of May, or when plum and peach trees bloom:

Sow the following vegetables from the beginning of May to the middle of June, or when apple trees bloom:

The three systems of planting usually employed are known as "drills," "rows" and "hills." I do not remember ever seeing a definition giving the exact distinctions between them; and in horticultural writing they seem to be used, to some extent at least, interchangeably.

As a rule "drills" refer to the growing of plants continuously in rows, such as onions, carrots or spinach. "Rows" refer to the growing of plants at fixed distances apart in the rows such as cabbage, or potatoes—the cultivation, except hand weeding and hoeing, being all done in one direction, as with drills.

"Hills" refer to the growing of plants usually at equal distances, four feet or more apart each way, with cultivating done in both directions, as with melons and squashes.

You may also be transplanting seedlings that you bought or that you have nurtured in the cold frame. Be sure you do a copious watering several hours, or the day before, setting out the seedlings.

When ready, with your rows made straight and marked off at the correct distances, lift out the plants with a trowel or transplanting fork, and tear or cut them apart with a knife, keeping as much soil as possible with each ball of roots.

Distribute them at their positions, but not so many at a time that any will dry out before you get them in place. Get down on your hands and knees, and, straddling the row, proceed to "set." With the left hand, or a trowel if the ground is not soft, make a hole large enough to take the roots and the better part of the stem, place the plant in position and firm into place by bearing down with the backs of the knuckles, on either side.

Proceed to the end of the row, and then finish the job by walking back over the row, still further firming in each plant by pressing down the soil at either side of the stem simultaneously with the balls of the feet.

So, there you have it... the gardening secrets to planting vegetables!

Top of Gardening Secrets page