It’s time to plan the vegetable garden

Now, in the thick of an unusually gloomy, depressing winter might be a good time to plan your new vegetable garden. What? You weren’t planning such a thing? Give it another thought.

It might be a good way to start to lift yourself out of the winter doldrums.

This winter has given us nearly a month of sunless days.

Maybe you weren’t contemplating any kind of garden at all. But nearly everyone here in the NW Corner has a little bit of outdoor space that could be transformed into a small flower or vegetable garden.

And for those who do not, the Town of Salisbury has a community garden with dozens of bedroom sized individual plots and a wide variety of enthusiastic gardeners, most of whom are glad to help should you need it and are friendly companions in any case. Contact Salisbury Family Services to secure a plot.

Give a look at the seed catalogs and garden supply houses online. They should help you find what you might need and get your imagination going.

Start by thinking about where you might have your garden. A home vegetable garden needs lots of sunlight to be successful. Think about what would be the right size based on the available area and your available time and energy for caring for it. And your appetite. It should be located in an easily accessible spot to induce you to go there frequently.

Will you need fencing? Probably not unless you are beset with marauding deer. (If so, the deer fence should probably be at minimum six feet high.) While some flowers are edible (i.e., daylilies), most flowers are not grown for food but for beauty and can be easily grown outside of a special garden. Vegetables seem to need more of their own ilk as companions. However, vegetable gardens are often enlivened to good effect with flowering plants nearby.

For those with a scale, or even just a ruler, it may be very helpful to draw a scaled plan of the proposed garden that locates what goes where, spacing plants in the drawing the recommended distance apart. And leave yourself enough room to walk around without stepping on your plants.

Most seed varieties available today are able to grow in whatever low quality soil they are planted in. Most garden vegetables prefer a soil that is not alkaline but is just slightly acidic. This can be quickly determined with a simple soil testing kit. Probably any problem with the existing soil can be corrected with the addition of a few inches of hummus (decaying organic vegetable matter), raked or tilled into the existing soil below. Any additional fertilizer should be used very sparingly if at all (many chemical fertilizers such as those recommended for lawns are more like amphetamines than plant food).

Whatever crop(s) you choose to grow will require copious amounts of water, gently applied. Unless your plot is extremely tiny, you will need a garden hose and perhaps a sprinkler.

Make sure you have a reliable water source easily available. I determine when to water by watching the weather and sticking my fingers into the soil to judge dryness.

Many inexperienced gardeners with small plots try to grow too many different items. A more rewarding solution might be to select just a couple of favorite vegetables, especially ones that even roadside stand vendors cannot match in taste quality. I am planning a batch of crenshaw melons, a particularly delicious fruit that has not been available in the local stores for years.

Unless you are considering a rather large plot, corn is not a very good choice: it takes up a great deal of space snd excellent corn is available in season at the farmstands.

Consider fruits. Strawberries are a good choice and small enough to commingle with vegetables, fruit trees such as peaches, pears. nectarines and apples can be planted nearby. All are available in easy to pick dwarf varieties.

Our growing season here in the NW Corner is very short. But it can be lengthened a few weeks by starting seeds indoors in little specially made “flats” and then planted outdoors in prepared ground when the danger of freezing is past. I grow various varieties of string beans that take anywhere from 40 to 70 days to mature. With indoor starting I can have fresh beans for nearly four months.

Gardening, particularly too much at once, can be exhausting. However, unlike regular work, it can usually be done in modest doses at one’sconvenience. Planting a vegetable can be a revelation. As noted garden writer, Michael Pollan put it: the garden is “a place where we can meet nature halfway”.

Architect and landscape designer Mac Gordon lives in Lakeville