4 ways to get the most out of your vegetable garden

One ofMeg Cowden’sgoals is to harvest something to eat from her Minnesota garden for as many weeks as potential each year . She think of it like many of us do our bloom gardens , where the destination is multi - season interest . Meg focus on growing the right amount of food for her family through sequence planting scheme like repeatedly sowing crops , staggering due date and turn out crop throughout the season . She also uses these techniques to keep top harvests less overwhelming . The finish is to have enough for sweet feeding , sharing with friends and donating , and to keep up with canning , freezing and dry .

Meg partake in lots of helpful garden bakshish in her book“Plant , Grow , Harvest , Repeat . ”Here are a few that ’ll avail you debase out your harvests for month .

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Meg Cowden vegetable garden: An 8-foot deer fence protects the plants on this sloping ¼-acre vegetable and flower garden plot.

1. Start your vegetable garden early

A typical growing season in geographical zone 4 Minnesota starts in May , but Meg likes to start planting in April . The closed book to this early commencement lies in work that she does calendar month in the first place : When she ’s pick up the garden and spreading compost on her beds in fall , she also opt a couple of beds and sets up PVC hoop frames over them . In February she fasten thegreenhousepoly fabric in the photograph above over the frames . Even when temperatures are still below 20 degrees and there ’s snow on the basis , she say that in two calendar week , the grease is thawed , and by mid - April , the ground is warm enough for bok choy , broccoli , gelt and kohlrabi . afterwards , she warm up the soil for her tomatoes and peppers with tunnels so she can get an earlier beginning there too . She leave those tunnels up until after the jeopardy of Robert Lee Frost has passed .

2. Succession planting

So you ’re not overwhelmed by more green goods than you’re able to consume , sow several small plantings of the same crop , make out as succession planting , so you’re able to reap enough for a few meal at a time . Meg plants three row of sweetcornevery three hebdomad from other May to former July . you could also do this with carrots , beets , Chinese parsley , lettuce and cabbage .

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3. Grow plants with staggered maturity

Growing the same plant with different maturity dates is another mode to prevent overpowering harvest in the garden . Meg does this with dough , planting an other time of year ‘ Tiara ’ , midseason ‘ Famosa ’ and belated - time of year ‘ Integro ’ at the same time . She say you’re able to toy with type and timing for the ultimate succession planting of tomatoes : cerise typically mature first , salad tomatoes and modest slicers mature next , and orotund gripe steaks are harvested last .

She stagger when she starts dissimilar type of tomatoes indoors , which in turn , affects when they are quick to plant in the garden . This facilitate her stretch the harvest over a twosome of months starting in other summer instead of being overwhelmed all at once in late summertime .

4. Know when to pull the plant

I will admit , I am one of those gardener who keeps my crop long after they have get more than I could ever need . But why not just pull the plant and substitute it with something new ? Meg does this with her pickling cucumber : After she has pickled enough jars for her family , she removes the industrial plant , making room for a fall crop of radish , Eruca vesicaria sativa , Spinacia oleracea , coriander , turnip cabbage or lucre .

The other seam she covered in February get four or five successiveness plantings every time of year . However , not all crop are good candidates for this method acting . Tomatoes , peppers and other member of the nightshade household are peculiarly susceptible to soil - borne diseases . To help minimize photo , she move them around the garden from year to class and does n’t grow other plant in their bed in the same yr .

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Meg Cowden vegetable garden: An 8-foot deer fence protects the plants on this sloping ¼-acre vegetable and flower garden plot.

Garden tunnel covered in snow: Plant crops earlier by covering raised beds in late winter to warm the soil. No need to remove the snow: As the temps warm under the poly material, it’ll soak into the soil.