When the Garden Is Planted, the Real Work Begins

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I recently had a conversation with an urban garden designer. May is his busiest month of the year. He works 18-hour days talking with old and new clients, designing, planning, buying and finally planting.

His specialty is shade gardens, where he relies on bright and textural foliage more than floral pizzazz to bring color and interest to the garden all season long. Couple the emphasis on foliage with both an automatic watering system and a shaded garden, and he says he can leave all his clients’ gardens for the summer with nary a care or concern for maintenance.

Well, I thought to myself, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

I finished planting my vegetable garden plot the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend. Nearly. I am still looking for suitable peppers, but that’s a story for another day. A shopping bonanza the weekend before outfitted me with tomatoes, kale, chard, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, eggplant, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, parsley, sage, and basil. Everything went in according to a diagram I had sketched out several weeks before. And except for those peppers, now I sit, wait, and let it grow.

That last line is a complete falsehood, of course. There’s no sitting and waiting in a full-sun vegetable garden. My designer friend and his clients may be hands-on until the fall garden clean-up, but now is the time to be ever watchful in the vegetable garden.

What am I watching for? Here are a few things:

Keeping an Eye on Temperature in your Garden

It’s the end of May, but recent temperatures have been as low as the mid 40s. These temperatures are not loved by my small-sized, heat-loving veggies such as tomatoes, eggplant, and basil. I’m watching for any cool-temp damage and am doing what I can to keep them warm (some frost cloth, for example).

Watching for Garden Pests

I haven’t seen any signs of pest damage yet, any maybe that’s because the temperatures have been cool since last weekend. I know flea beetles are out there, as are the leafminers. During my next trip to the garden center I will pick up some Captain Jack’s Dead Bug organic control from Bonide. It’ll control beetles, leafminers, moths and a bunch of other ne’er-do-wells.

Making Sure to Mulch

Now’s the time to lay down some mulch to control weeds. It could be a layer of salt marsh hay, now my preferred mulch. Or it could be newspaper between rows. Whatever your preference.

Creating a Solid Fertilizer Plan

It’s a tricky thing, fertilizing. Figure out a method that works best for you. It really depends on what fits into your schedule and what you like to use. It’s personal, really. But now’s the time to come up with a plan and write it into your schedule.

Trellising What Needs to be Trellised in the Garden

Tomatoes are small guys right now. They’ll grow quickly once the weather warms up. Better to trellis or cage them now when they are small than to wrestle with delicate vines later on.

Harvesting the Early Crops

Yep, harvest. The two different types of radishes I planted two weeks ago have at most another week to go before I begin thinning their ranks. I’ll let some grow longer, only so they have a bit more room to grow larger.

Transplanting

Remember that I sowed seeds of kale and broccolini in a large container on my doorstep? I did this so the flea beetles—which are absent at my house— couldn’t mow them down once their first leaves emerged from the ground. Once the seedlings get a bit bigger and they have a fighting chance, I’ll transplant them out into the garden.

Spring planting was just the beginning. Now the real work of crafting and creating crops begins.

Meet Ellen Wells

When you’re raised on a farm, you can’t help but know a thing or two about gardening. Ellen Wells is our expert on edible gardening.…

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