Starting The Vegetable Garden – Part 2 – Growing

DISCLAIMER: As with my last article in this series – in this article, you will read about the things I have done as I learn about gardening for food. This article is in no way telling you that these are the right/correct/only way to start your vegetable garden because I only know enough to logically guess that something I do might turn out okay should Mother Nature deem me worthy of some success. Basically, please read the following article with a 90% entertainment and 10% information point of view. If something does work extremely well, I’ll let you know!

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With our first two raised beds ready to go, I was beyond excited to plan out what we’d be growing. Here on the Bruce Peninsula, however, the growing season is short! Our last frost is May 18, and the first is October 9. This means we have two options:

• Stick with fast-growing plants like radishes and lettuce
• Extend the season by starting seeds indoors or using cold protection outdoors

Naturally, I opted for the more challenging (but rewarding) approach of extending the season. I wanted the chance to start growing earlier and be more hands-on with our food. It’s a bit more effort than my mom’s advice to just buy plant starts at the garden centre, but the experience felt worth it!

Seed Shopping & Choosing Suppliers

Seed shopping began! Most of our seeds came from my go-to seed source Northern Wildflowers, which has a wonderful selection of vegetable seeds under the Cutleaf Seeds label. I grabbed a few from Franken Farms and impulsively picked up some herb seeds at the hardware store.

You might be curious as to why I said that growing from seed seems more economical. Well, you do get a good number of seeds in a package – that’s many potential plants and maybe even several years’ worth of seeds. Great deal right?! But to make those seeds start early and indoors, I needed the right tools to get them growing: 

• Seed-starting trays and containers for seedlings
• Growing medium
• Grow lights – my current favorite (linked) offers great results

These initial investments add up, but they’ll last a few seasons – though it did make for some pricey produce at first!

Creating Our Planting Plan

Before I started the seeds, I needed to come up with a plan based on the planting space I have. Out came the tape measure (to double check the square footage), paper, ruler and all the seed packets! 

OH WAIT! I forgot to mention that I planted garlic and onions in the fall so I really only have approximately 33 square feet to work with. Oh NOOOOOO! Why didn’t these planters grow over the winter? I drew up a number of new plans, and quickly discovered that with limited space, it’s nearly impossible to consider good companion plants AND proper spacing at the same time. So, I simply started plugging in plants on my plan until I ran out of space. 

After watching so many GrowVeg videos, I finally decided to try the GrowVeg Garden Planner just for fun. This is what my original plan looked like using the GrowVeg Garden Planner tool:

Starting the Seeds Indoors

Now that I had something of a plan in place, it was time to prepare to start seeds. These are the steps I took to get my seeds growing into transplantable plants when the temperature is right: 

Determine which seeds need to be started early. 

This is easily accomplished by knowing how many growing days you have and what each type of seed requires. You can determine your growing days by entering “first and last frost dates + your postal code” into a search engine. If you’re in Ontario you can find the dates for a city or town near you here. From there you can make a rough estimation of the number of growing days you’ll have. 

Next, look closely at your seed packages where you’ll often find the conditions your plant needs such as sun and spacing, days to maturity, and some will even have a growing timeline illustrated.   

Gather the materials you’ll need for starting your seeds. 

At a minimum you’ll need: something to plant your seeds in, some type of growing medium, and a light source. My plan was to not spend a fortune this first year, not until I knew I’d be doing this regularly (vs. giving up and buying starts). I picked up a set of planting trays from our local Dollar Store, some seed starting mix from the local hardware store and this affordable grow light that comes with a stand so I didn’t have to buy or make a fancy contraption to hang a light from. 

Get planting! 

It really is as simple as filling your planting tray with growing medium – I put mine in a large bowl and added a bit of water to make it less fly-away, add your seed, cover lightly and press down just enough to hold the seed in place. Then spray/mist the tray with a bit of water. 

Here’s where I made one of my biggest mistakes! I started everything at the same time – and way too early. I know! I know! I read the packages and completely ignored them – ugh! I had to keep transplanting my tomatoes into bigger and bigger pots and they kept getting bigger and bigger. Eventually I didn’t have any bigger pots and I couldn’t get my grow light to reach the top of the plants. Setting the plant on the floor and the grow light on a table made the light too high. I just couldn’t win! I was so worried that the tomatoes would die off before I could get them into the beds outside. (Relax, they didn’t die.)  

Wait! And Watch! 

Keep the soil lightly damp. Then once they start to sprout the real work begins. Now you get to dance the “is this enough water or too much water – light too close, not close enough? Oh now you’re so big you need a new pot!” dance … until they either give up waiting and die or you can plant them outside.  

Transplanting & Hardening Off

Once you see the daffodils, tulips, and crocuses poke their heads through the last remaining snow, the countdown to planting out could begin. Once again you’ll keep your eyes on that last frost date forecast and your local long range forecast. You’ll also want to check each seed variety to see their optimal temperature and light requirements to see how cool they can tolerate the weather. Spoiler alert – I failed that!

Once seedlings are ready, hardening off is key. It takes about two weeks of bringing them outside each morning and bringing them back inside before nightfall. Tedious? Yes. Worth it? Also yes – it’s a crucial step to avoid shocking them with outdoor conditions.

Planting Day!

Finally, it was time to transplant! I admit, I may not have waited for “optimal temperatures.” My careful planting plan took a back seat, and I just enjoyed getting my seedlings into the ground!

You’ll see from the picture that not all areas were mulched with straw. The sections left unmulched were where I would be planting our greens directly in the beds (vs. starting indoors). 

Maintaining The Gardens

Unlike native plant gardens, growing plants for food is not low maintenance – but it is just as satisfying. One of my favorite things was to come home after work and stop by the gardens to inspect their progress before going inside to start dinner preparations.

Watering

We seemed to run into a bit of trouble with our wicking beds (or they’re just not properly primed yet) so hand watering was required when we hadn’t seen rain for a few days. The straw mulch seemed to hold the moisture in quite well for the plants that needed it. I did notice though that the straw mulch would matt down and not let the water in so well even if it did hold water in nicely. No, I’m not sure how that works … yet. As I would harvest or scrap a planting I would compost the straw and leave the ground bare. 

Challenges and Lessons Learned

Bugs: Despite the raised beds, pests still found my greens. My broccoli, beans, spinach, and lettuce were repeatedly stripped. Eventually, I dug in some diatomaceous earth and ordered protective mesh to keep future plants safe. It turned out to be too late for this season but we’re prepared for the next … I think. 

Sun Protection: Even “full-sun” plants benefit from some shade during peak hours. Not once had I considered that too much sun would be a problem for us here in the woods. It turns out that our clearing is just wide enough and our house just low enough to not provide much shade at all. Once I started to notice signs of sun stress like scorching or drying out too fast I ran and got what I had – frost cloth – to cover the plants and provide a little break from the heat. We’ve planted some evergreens in front of (but not too close to) the beds that will eventually provide shade in the heat of the afternoon.  

Value vs. Space:  I’m seriously wondering if some plants are worth the space they take up. Take peas for example: they produce a ton of plant matter to create a pod, and then you break the pod down for a few peas. Admittedly plants in the pea family are great for soil conditioning but for food I’m wondering if they’re worth it. Beans, squash and zucchini cause me the same dilemma. While I’ll have more growing space next year, I’m not sure they’ll make the cut. Good thing I’ve got all winter to think about this!

Stay aware of my surroundings! I should probably consider making more noise while I work too. I much prefer to see my bears at a bit more of a distance thank you very much. 

Final Thoughts

While we didn’t get to eat much of our produce this year – the bugs were well fed and I’m sure they fed some birds in turn – I’ve learned loads and still feel like I’ve found another worthwhile hobby. Here are my overall results:

My biggest lesson though is that every year will be different. After speaking with one of my sisters, and many other gardeners, this year was a challenging growing year for even the most seasoned of us. It was either too hot, too dry, too wet, too many bugs or too few at the right time for pollination. All we can do is the best we know how to respond to the conditions we’re given.