Start Planning a Vegetable Garden

Light Requirements

Vegetables, like many flowers, need lots of sunlight to thrive and produce tasty vegetables. Most vegetables need full sunlight, which gardeners define as six or more hours of sunlight per day. This direct sunlight stimulates the plant’s cells to produce the food it needs through photosynthesis to build a strong root system and produce fruit.

Many people are confused about what type of light they have in the garden. Try this simple test. Pick a day when you’re home and can observe the garden. Take a look at the garden area you want to grow vegetables in first thing in the morning, and write down whether or not the sun is actually touching the ground. Look for full, bright sun, not dappled sunlight filtering through tree leaves. Now set a kitchen timer or alarm clock and return to your observation once an hour or once every two hours until dinnertime, marking down how much light the spot in the garden receives. Then, add up all the times you saw direct light. This will give you an idea of whether you’re working with full sun, partial sun or shade.

While you can grow some vegetables in partial sun, most will struggle. If the entire yard gets only partial sun or shade due to immovable objects like garages, homes, or trees in neighbors’ yards, look for a place that gets bright direct sunlight and grow vegetables in pots instead.

Peas be with you

Q: I have a community garden and am planning on planting peas for the fall. Fellow gardeners have told me they have bad luck with fall peas, but I’m going to try ‘Snowbird’ and ‘Maestro’, which are both recommended for fall. I prepared an area by working in a small amount of well-rotted manure, a good amount of grass clippings (the soil was pretty heavy and tends to compact), and a sprinkling of dried blood and bone meal–all worked into the top four inches. I’m going to soak the seeds 24 hrs. and inoculate them (I don’t know whether there have been peas in this area before). Is there anything special I need to do to have success with a fall crop? What would cause my fellow gardeners to have good spring crops and bad luck in the fall?

A: It sounds as though you’re all prepared and ready to grow a fall crop of peas. Pea seeds germinate best at soil temperatures of 50 to 77 degrees F and will emerge in six to 14 days when sown about one inch deep and one inch apart. Standard germination rate for peas is about 80 percent. Since peas grow best in cooler temperatures, perhaps your gardening friends planted too early for a fall crop.

Peas take from 75 to 120 days to mature, depending upon variety. ‘Maestro’ matures in 110 days; ‘Snowbird’ in 58 days. You can harvest right up until frost, so count back the number of weeks from your usual first frost of the season, add about a week for germination and plant on the target date for the variety you’re growing. Keep the seedbed moist until the plants emerge. Good luck with your pea garden!

http://www.garden-gardens-gardening.com/