Gardening Season has Begun! Starters and Early Season Plantings

colinhoward (61)in #gardening • 6 years ago

This upcoming season will be my 5th year gardening in Colorado

When we first moved to Denver in 2014, we specifically looked for a house with a large backyard, both for dogs and for gardening. We have stayed in the same house since moving here, as it provides everything we need in terms of space and affordability.

As a result, we have been able to build upon our garden each year. Last year, we expanded our garden to include a front-yard plot as well as an additional plot along our back fence.

This is the backyard plot, where we tried a 3 sisters planting of corn, beans, and squash last season with moderate success.

This is our frontyard plot. As you can see, there is still some swiss chard leftover from last season that has survived the winter. I'm guessing it will go directly to seed, as the kale we left last year did the same thing.

One of the things I've been doing the past two years is to cover all garden plots with leaves. This prevents weed seeds from blowing into the plot and it also improves the soil content by having the leaves break down over the season. If you garden, don't ever bag your leaves up again! They are a valuable resource :)

This is our main plot. As you can see, it is covered with leaves:

Yesterday, I planted two rows of lettuce mix, one row of beets, one row of radish, and two snap pea cage circles. This is the earliest I have ever planted these crops, but with the mild winter we've had I think it'll be ok. A heavy snow won't kill these crops.

This year, I intend to spend as little money as possible on the garden

One of the benefits of growing your own food is the aspect of saving money on produce. Unfortunately, every season we end up splurging on a new tool or excessive flowers or starters, making the monetary value from our garden negligible when compared with buying from the store.

I am attempting to spend no more than $50 on equipment, seeds, and starters this year. We are aiming to start almost all of our plants from seed, and as a result we started our nightshades yesterday.

We have eggplant, hot wenks peppers, jalepenos, poblanos, sweet peppers, black krim tomatoes, sweety tomatoes, cherokee purple tomatoes, and brandywine tomatoes.

I intend to transplant our nightshades to the back fence plot as a way to rotate where we plant them. We have planted nightshades in the same spot the past few years, and it's good to rotate them every year or two for the purposes of soil quality.

I look forward to our most successful year yet, which I am confident the 2018 season will be. Happy gardening Steemians!