Planning a garden during the cold winter nights is always fun. Dreaming of juicy red tomatoes, sweet cucumbers, spicy peppers… playing in the dirt, smell of the fresh air. Ahhh,.. This afternoon, I went out and started getting some of the area ready. It was about 45 degrees outside, and it was invigorating.
According to the NC Extension office I can now plant onions, peas, cabbage, radishes, and turnips. And in 2 weeks I can plant potatoes, spinach, lettuce, and carrots. So planting time isn’t just quickly approaching — it’s already here. I planted some cabbage and turnips today. And I have the area ready for the peas — just need to get some seeds.
Some years I plant big gardens, some years are small. I normally do just a summer garden. I typically plant and have good success with tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, peppers, and lettuce.
This year, I will have a new fertilizer source — rabbit poop. So, I’m expecting everything to grow better. Also, I would like to extend it into a year-round garden — or at least a spring, summer, and fall garden so I am planning a bigger than normal garden. In fact, I’m not sure my garden space is big enough for everything I want to plant. I have two spaces – one is 3′ x 56′, the other is 16′ x 32′. So total, I have just under 700 square feet, and I need to plant enough to feed a family of 7, plus extras to freeze or can.
Here is what I would like to plant in no particular order. The list is long and keeps growing. And of course, I want to plant more than one variety of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, etc. It reminds me of going to a buffet for dinner — a little bit of this, and little bit of that, and pretty soon you have a plate full with twice as much as you can eat — or in this case, twice as much as I can probably care for. I’m also trying to determine what kind of crop rotation I can do in order to fit more growing season into the space that I have. Many of these are cool weather crops which I think will grow well in the 3′ x 56′ space that I have since it is beside a fence that blocks the afternoon sun. If you have some ideas, I’d love to hear them!
Lettuce | Carrots | Collards | Spinach | Okra |
Tomatoes | Cucumbers | Swiss Chard | Bak Choy | Rapini |
Broccoli | Cauliflower | Kale | Kohlarbi | Cabbage |
Peppers | Onions | Cantaloupe | Watermelon | Lima Beans |
Green Beans | Corn | Garlic | Zucchini | Potatoes |
Sweet Potatoes |
We tried potatoes and sweet potatoes this past year for the first time. We tried to grow them in a large trash bag, layering the dirt with hay as the plant grew — something my husband saw on YouTube. Quite easy but very disappointed with the yields. The potatoes yielded nothing so I didn’t even check the sweet potatoes. Well, today I decided to check the sweet potatoes — and low and behold, there were enough sweet potatoes for us to have a meal. Yippee!
That’s one thing I really like about living further south. In fact I would move even further south if my honey an would agree. He wanted to move north – NOT doing it, I guess we’re in a happy medium.
Planting in February, while our ground is frozen through March! Planning a garden is so difficult for us because our mouths start watering in anticipation of fresh veggies.