Use this winter to figure out what to grow in the spring!

Carrots, snow peas, and petunias in a pot

Saturday, November 19, 2016

If you are thinking of starting a garden next spring, fall and winter are a great time to track what fruit and veggies you eat.  You should grow what you love to eat!  Keeping track of what you buy each week will give you a great list of what to plant in your first garden.

You can use a spiral notebook or an electronic spreadsheet.  Just put in a tick mark under your favorite fruit or veggie heading every time you buy it at the store.  Then, in the spring, you know what you want to grow and how much of it to grow.

This table gives you the number of plants or seeds you need per pounds of produce you want to get from your garden:  Chart for how many to plant

If you want a rule of thumb based on your family size and don’t want to track exactly what you have purchased, just use the table for how much to grow per person in your household as a rule of thumb.  You can adjust after the gardening season is over.

There are also many programs and app’s out there today that can help you know what to grow, when to plant, and will give you growing tips on each fruit or vegetable.

The biggest watch out for starting a new garden is starting too big.  Start small with what you use the most in the kitchen.  Herbs, lettuce, carrots, radishes, peppers, or tomatoes are great ones to start with.  Here is a recommendation for a first garden to modify for what you love to eat:  What to plant for your first garden