Preparing and Planting Your Spring Garden

Yesterday I transplanted tiny, baby lettuce plants, 12 inches apart, from their winter sowing container into the garden.  Our vegetable garden is organized with 4 foot wide rows and 18 inch walkways.  The beds and the walkways aren’t perfectly spaced nor is the spacing of the plants perfectly done.  This is one of the marvelous things about gardening - you can choose to be precise or not and the plants will still grow if you provide enough hours of sunlight, adequate water and plenty of space in between the plants.  Spacing is a big deal.  Adequate spacing allows for plant roots to spread out and air to circulate so that disease is kept at bay. Sometimes I purposely crowd plantings with the intent of eating one crop while the other continues to grow.  Lettuce and cauliflower are an example.  By the time the cauliflower is getting big, the lettuce is harvested.

The other job that took place yesterday was repairing the fence that the deer love to jump through in winter.  We use 8 foot high black mesh deer fencing with a 3 foot high chicken wire fence on the bottom.  In theory, the chicken wire keeps out the rabbits although we have had nests of baby bunnies born in our garden over the years.  No fencing is perfect.  Some folks use a combination of chicken wire on the bottom and two or three strands of electric fencing.  One friend uses chicken wire and then collects and artfully installs branches to keep deer out. Another garden buddy collects every piece of fencing she can find and incorporates them in her ever expanding growing space. My husband and I have been watching a beautiful garden develop in our neighborhood with a professional fence done by Garden Gurus who specialize in sustainable/organic food production on the home scale including custom fencing, raised veggie garden beds and orcharding.  They can be contacted at gardengurustevenspoint@gmail.com.

Now that you have space and a fence, it’s time to plant!  The Growing Collective is a local volunteer group that grows vegetable starts from seeds including heirloom, organic and unusual selections of tomatoes, peppers, herbs, winter and summer squash, edible flowers, native plants and more.  Every year they hold a plant sale in the Farmshed Greenhouse at 1220 Briggs Court in Stevens Point.  This year’s sale days and hours are:

Saturday, May 16th 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Sunday, May 17th 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Monday, May 18th 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Tuesday, May 19th 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.

Wednesday, May 20th 12 p.m. - 7p.m.

Thursday, May 21st, 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.

The Growing Collective also offers an early sale for cold hardy plants such as kale, chard, arugula, lettuce, spinach, onion and leeks on Saturday, May 2nd, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. The sale will also take place in the Farmshed Greenhouse.

Additional information on the plant sales can be found at https://www.growingcollective.org/events.