Garden schedule is planting guide

Kale

Gardening is all about scheduling. This blog keeps me on schedule. My Mom would write planting events on her calendar and then keep the old calendar for the following year. Events like when to work the ground and what to plant and when. My mom's garden will not know what to do this summer, since she is gone. We haven't sold the property yet and it is doubtful that anyone will attend to it like she did.

Container lettuce

When to plant
In my Michigan garden, I looked back and we planted peas on April 8 in 2010. With the fluctuating weather this season, we didn't plant them until April 15 this year.
At this time in Southeastern Michigan, it is past the starting date for planting peas, potatoes, lettuce, onions, radishes and parsley and of course the greens: spinach, Swiss chard, kale can be planted as soon as the ground is workable. I have heard mid-March is fine.
 We could plant broccoli, cabbage, celery, kahlrabi, Brussels spouts and cauliflower plants outside at this time. Although we haven't yet. Maybe we should do that tomorrow.

Eddie, the garden patroller watches the Broccoli Raab and parsley.

 As you can see from the pictures, the lettuce and greens from Renee's Garden are coming up. I think every seed planted has sprouted except the peas, which we only planted a week ago.

We will wait until mid-May to plant beans and squash seeds.
We might plant the egg plant, peppers and tomato plants a bit earlier this year, normally we wait until late May.

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Lasagna gardening cuts down on weeding

Lasagna (or sheet) gardening is an easy way to start a garden in a new spot or enrich an existing garden. Not to be confused with the Italian dish, this method eliminates the need to work the soil with shovel or rototiller. The reason for the name is because it requires layering of newspapers and compost.
My neighbors used a form of this method for their garden 10 years ago. They mulched with lake seaweed and decomposed chicken manure... it worked well. There were still weeds though and I don't see how you can completely eliminate the need to weed. One of my coworkers uses a weed eater when her garden gets really overgrown. Here's the steps to start a lasagna garden, minus the pasta and weed eater.

1. If you are starting a new garden, pick a spot that will get sunlight most of the day and that will drain well. You don't want your garden in the low spot or the high spot in the yard. Outline the area where you want the garden and mow the grass short.

2. Cover with a thick layer of newspapers, 5 pages thick. Then saturate with water.

3. Next layer with 2 inches of peat moss or other brown organic material such as: leaves, pine needles, straw, rotting hay, composted horse manure or other compost, humus, sawdust, grass clippings, barn litter, coffee grounds, seaweed, paper, cardboard and wood ashes. (whatever you have available).

4. Next layer with 1 inch of green material such as grass clippings, vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, unwanted plants or weeds-that haven't gone to seed. (Fresh grass clippings are high in nitrogen, so don't use very much). It is ideal to use twice as much brown material as green.

5. Continue layering 2 parts brown and 1 part green, as deep as the roots of the plants prior to planting, (usually 8 to 10 inches).

6.  Plant the plants, covering around the roots with organic matter. Or... let the raised beds sit and decompose before planting. Either way, give the bed a good saturated watering right away. After planting, continue mulching around the plants as they grow.

In an existing garden, stomp the weeds down or use a weed eater. Then follow steps 2-6 above.

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Planting delayed due to Bittersweet vines

I hate it when the temperature warms up outside and then gets cold in the Spring. It's not good for the fruit trees and flowering trees. But it doesn't really faze the greens, onions and peas, as long as it stays above freezing most of the time.
If I had planted St. Patrick's Day weekend, it would have been fine. But alas, instead of planting Swiss Chard and other greens, we had to counter attack a siege of mean Oriental Bittersweet, (not so sweet) vines that seem to have only one purpose: Kill all trees nearby or even several yards away. They intertwine themselves around the tree, then, like a boa constrictor, they choke it, slowly. The only way to kill is with herbicides, which also kill the trees. So we were manually cutting and removing the vines. With this method, we will have to stay vigilant on guard against their regrowth because they have an underground network of roots.
People actually plant Bittersweet vine when landscaping. The American variety is not invasive, like the Oriental variety.

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