Endless Questions

Yesterday I spent a little time focusing on my garden and preparing for future gardens as well.  I did simple things like watering the garden and trimming back the black weed paper where needed.  I closely inspected each plant to look for any early signs of disease or insects.  This is my first rodeo so I'm not looking to lose all hope for a successful production because I didn't catch a few insects in time.  Through my reading, it seems like the real threat for disease and insects come a little later though, around when the plants are blooming and flowering.  It was also finally time to transplant my tomato plants to pots (with the final destination to be the garden).  I planted the tomatoes indoors on March 13th...a little shy of a month ago.  Tomato transplants take about 8- 10 weeks before they are ready for the garden, thus, growing plants from seeds is definitely not instantaneous gratification but rather an exercise in patience. 

4 week old tomato seedlings 

 I also considered what I want to do in the future with our garden.  What do I want to grow? When do I need to germinate seeds to grow them? Do I have enough space in our current garden?  Do I even want to keep the current garden as it is or change the layout? With all of these questions swirling in my head, I sat down with a couple of books on veggie gardening and a printed out calendar of the next year and a half.  I simply put on the calendar when I needed to plant transplants in the garden for the different vegetables I want to grow.  Then I counted backwards to the number of weeks it takes the seeds to become viable transplants and I logged that date too.  Now that I know the "when" for my future produce, I can focus my attention on other questions.

Snap bean (front) and zucchini (back)
4/6/2011

As a new gardener, without much knowledge there are so many questions to answer.  It seems like just answering one question leads to even more questions.  For me, tackling one question at a time makes things more manageable!  I've already learned a few things I did "wrong" with the current garden.  Some of the herbs I planted, would probably do better growing in pots for a while then being moved out to the garden.  I probably planted my carrots to early too.  Certain seeds I started indoors should have been directly seeded into the garden.  To make sure I learn from these missteps, I keep a log documenting dates, types of plants, things learned, etc. in a notebook in order to reference the information when I start my next crop.  For now, I'll hope that Mother Nature works her magic with what I've given here!