Easy Street Gardening
Weekly, step-by-step guidance for gardening on the front range.
Each week, this newsletter will contain three sections:
How things are going
I will share an update on my garden as a point of reference for how my weekly tasks are adding up and looking.
What to do this week
Here I will present the 3 - 5 things I am planning or doing this week.
Resources
A deeper dive into information and perspectives that are inspiring or informing my gardening.
If you are coming to this newsletter mid-season, please take a look at the posts from the past few weeks to get a sense of context for where we are at this week!
Week 4: 1/21/2024 - 1/27/2024
A Quick Question for You
I am thinking about offering to grow seedlings for my readers. There are two approaches I am considering:
1) Taking orders, and growing you exactly what you want
2) Growing a bunch of things I think are great and simply inviting you to come buy some in early May
I want to know what you’d prefer!
How things are going:
I hope you are enjoying this reprieve from the cold as much as I am. The warmer days this week have given me a chance to check on the lettuce and garlic in my beds. I was not disappointed!
This week, I’ve been reviewing the seeds I have, and comparing them to my plans for the coming spring and summer.
I’ve made some maps of what I’d like my beds to look like for the spring and summer. I do this in google sheets, with each cell representing a 1’ x 1’ square. I frequently plant across these squares, but the grid helps me orient and plan the number of plants I’ll need.
I’ll soon make similar maps for my summer beds (May - September). These spring and summer maps help me understand what seeds I’ll need to order to be ready for the season. Some of these plants are already in my beds, riding out the winter under plastic, but others are not. Looking at these maps, and my seeds, I know I’ll need to order a few pea seed packets, and also radicchio. The rest, I have.
These maps also help me understand what seedlings I’ll need to grow for myself, and when I will need to start these seedlings so that they will be ready to go into the beds on schedule. The maps you make for yourself can be this simple and straightforward. They’re just meant to help you start organizing your thinking and begin making plans for the coming season.
This week, I’ve also started sowing some seeds, specifically, pepper seeds. This week and next, I will sow more pepper seeds. I’ve found that they take a particularly long time to germinate and grow in my basement seedling starting area, and I need to give them extra time to grow before the summer.
I am not growing all of these peppers this year, but only my favorites from this past season: Serrano, Fatalii, Thai Dragon, Jimmy Nardelo, Aji Carapita, and Gochugaru. I also want to try another super hot again, as well as habanero, and scotch bonnet, but I don’t have those seeds yet.
I’m using some seed germinating specific potting mix and a heat mat to help get these peppers growing.
I wet the soil before laying down the seeds.
I cover the seeds with a thin layer of soil, and gently water them in, taking care to not flood the cells, because the seeds can wash into other cells, making my labels inaccurate.
It’s exciting to plant the first seeds of the year! The smell of the soil has me thinking of spring, and so too will the sprouting seedlings.
My focus in the coming weeks will be finishing my summer map, ensuring I have the seeds I need, ordering what I don’t, and sowing more seedlings as the timing becomes appropriate.
What to do this week:
Here’s what to do:
Continue to refine your gardening goals for the year.
January went by in a blur, and you don’t want to find yourself saying the same thing when it comes time to start planting in your garden in May. Setting goals now will help make sure you stay ahead of all the preparations you need to do to achieve them!
Make a garden map for your spring garden.
These maps can be drawn, made in excel, or in a gardening app. Having a map is a useful tool for planning, because it gives you a concrete sense of the plants you’ll need to achieve your goals.
Consider starting some peppers seedlings or other slow growing seedlings.
Peppers are particularly fun to start on your own because there is such a wide variety that aren’t sold at your local nurseries.
Next week:
Refining maps, timing, and more seedling planting
Resources:
Resource 1
A cool example of using an app to map out your garden:
Resource 2
I really appreciate Conor’s simple approach to mapping his family’s garden. I also like how he not only considers plant spacing, but also what’s going to look like together: