garden planning pt. 3

I said seed starting would be next, but I lied. I guess the progression is dreaming, scheming, organizing, and THEN seed starting. ;)

I love planning and dreaming of the garden on these dark and gloomy February days. I like adding more pages to my garden notebook until it is full of hopes and dreams and hot summer days. I save all of the seed catalogs I ordered from, and like to go back through clipping pictures or copying descriptions so that I have them all in my garden notebook. Many seed packets will have the basics - height, when to start seeds, when to plant out - but some are really vague and don't have images on the packets, so it might be hard to remember it all in late May and June when planting out when I ordered in January. Putting it all together now while I have time and clean new seed packets is perfect. ​

So, the garden notebook. Everyone that keeps one has different ideas and plans and favorite ways to use them. I like to keep a 3-ring binder. The first thing to go in is printouts of all of my online seed order receipts. My receipt from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds has the best layout - a small photo, the name of the item, and a nice space where I can then write all of the planting details. Many seeds really just want to grow and are not that picky. But medicinal herbs and native plants are a little more particular and often require soaking or scarification or cold periods. It helps me to write it all down.  This is where I also like to clip and insert any growing information or descriptions from the catalog.

The garden notebook also gets printed seed starting charts. Fedco Seeds has some nice printable PDF guides which list many herbs, flowers, vegetables, and their particulars, such as planting distance, row spacing, seed depth, ideal soil temps, planting dates, which helps me organize my seeds. They have great easy to use printables - vegetables - flowers - herbs. Look at the top left in those pages for a printable PDF. 

My garden notebook also has my sketches of where and what I want. Since we have a newly built house, I made copies of our builders lot diagram that shows me where the house is placed on the lot, easements, landscaping features, measurements, and slope. It is on a grid too, so it is perfect for me to just sketch my stuff right onto the grid paper and see it all. I don't do this for individual plants, but for where I want the basic landscaping to go.  I found a free website where you can create your garden in color and include any infrastructure, furniture, house, fences, driveways, etc. to have a nice color visualization - it helps when showing my husband what I am planning. I've been plugging in the design and am getting close to a final draft! Here is where you can start your own:  http://www.gardena.com/ca/en/garden-life/my-garden/

​Any micro design I want to have in the beds I will sketch out later as I see how many actual seedlings I have at the time. I do the same thing with the community garden plot - I just sketch it out on grid paper with each square equalling a foot, so that I can easily sketch out what goes where. 

I also like to keep any printouts about the plants in my garden notebook. Since I grow more uncommon medicinal and tea herbs, it helps me to have detailed information on their planting, growing, and harvesting requirements. Heirloom Organics has growing guides for many medicinal and culinary herbs, vegetables, and fruit. I use their guides every year.

For the past few years I have used a photo box to organize my seeds. I made little folders with dates to start seeds, all counted back from last frost for my area. So I have a folder for -10 to -12, -8 to -10, -6 to -8, -4 to -6, -2 to -4, 0. That is my reference for seed starting and I put seed packets in the right folder and every time I start a tray, I pull seeds from the right week. I also have folders for direct sowing, including  DS-6, DS-4, DS-2, DS0, +1, etc. These are seeds that I can plant in ground from spring to early summer. Again, I just pull my little mini folder and all the seeds for that period are in the folder. It makes it so easy to organize hundreds of seed packets. I just organize them all once, and pull them each week as I start trays. By the time spring planting arrives I can just take my box into the garden or to the community garden plot and plant out seeds too! Very simple, organized, and flexible.  I have used this simple box/folder method for years and it is still working for me! 

Over the past few weeks we have also been working on getting the seed starting setup going. We have our growing setup in the basement. It is an unfinished space, but we have my art studio, a few couches, craft & art supplies, a treadmill, rugs, a trampoline, and an office down there. With kids running around and a lot of foot traffic, I wanted to tuck the seed starting under the stairs so that it is away from the action but easy to access. We use standard shop lights for our seed starting. I have several types of bulbs, and use warm, cool, and full spectrum grow bulbs so that seedlings get a healthy dose of everything. The nice thing about under the stairs is that it is easy to install hooks to securely hang the lighting, and we have room to put the light timer, a fan, and keep supplies stored safely. We don't have anything fancy, but I can fit over 500 seedlings at a time in here (and I still have several shop lights left over at this point, so plenty of opportunity to expand). I will also have some flats on trays in sunny windows upstairs as we go along, but most seedlings will easily transition from basement to our popup outdoor greenhouses this spring. We have two small popup greenhouses, and then I added a 6'x6'x4' walk in which can hold another 2 dozen or more trays. I should be able to grow a LOT of seedlings in a pretty small amount of space. And my neighbors will only see peeks of the backyard greenhouses for a month and a half or so, before the bigger ones go back in storage.

Growing from seed takes more attention and care than buying plants at a nursery, but you can get SO MUCH MORE variety, grow organic end to end, and save a lot of money when you look at the final output. Seed starting isn't HARD, it just requires organization and a little bit of time and attention. You could easily have just two shop lights with warm and cool bulbs over a few seed trays in your basement or closet and have enough plants for your garden.

So I have my garden notebook setup and ready, my seeds are in their folders, the lights are setup, and I have all of my seed starting medium ready to mix and start. NEXT...seed starting (really)! 

---