Planning Your Spring Garden
March is a great month for planning your garden and starting a few plants indoors. The vegetable gardening planting calendar begins on the first day you can prepare a bed and plant that first crop. In Central Wisconsin, that is usually around April 20th.
How much to plant of any given crop depends on your preferences. For example, if you want to plant enough onions to last you through the winter, simple math gives you the answer. 3 onions per week starting at harvest in late July and going through March (most onions won't last beyond March but some do, such as Red Mountain), you would need a total of 108 onions (36 weeks times 3 per week). Planting from seed, you should plant 10% - 20% more than that total to allow for poor germination and other problems during the growing season. During the last week of February or the first week of March, you would want to plant 120-130 onion seeds indoors. Then transplant out at least 120 onions around April 20th as onions grow well in cool weather.
Keeping a map and notes of your garden from year to year helps tremendously. Keep track of what you plant, the date planted, what grew well and which varieties you enjoyed. In the winter, you can lay out garden maps from the last few years to help you plan crop rotation. Planting vegetable families together helps with crop rotation. Here are the families to keep in mind: Legumes: peas, beans. Brassicas: cabbage, kale, broccoli, collards, cauliflower, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts. Vine Crops: cucumber, melon, squash. Nightshades: pepper, tomato, potato, eggplant. Root Vegetables: beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, radish, rutabagas, onions, garlic, leeks. Corn. Leafy Greens: spinach, chard, lettuce.
My freezers, canning jar shelves and cold storage areas offer insight into how much of each variety I should plant. If I know how much I planted last year (my maps and notes tell me this) and I have a lot left over then I know I need to cut back this year. Or increase production if I don’t have enough of a certain crop. Or plant with wild abandon and give away what you don’t need. This is my preferred method as I can’t seem to stop myself from planting! As a sign on a greenhouse said - If it’s plants, it’s not hoarding!
