2009 vegetable garden: planning

It may be 3°F here in Chicagoland, but it's January 24, the sun is shining brightly, and the groundhog is just around the corner—spring is so close I can nearly taste it. Or at least, the vegetables that I'll be planting in the garden in a few short months.

So I thought I'd spend part of today doing some planning for this year's garden. 2008 was the first year I tried growing vegetables, and it could have been a real bust. However, though I made many mistakes, it was pretty darn successful for a girl who didn't know what she was doing. I didn't even know how to cook an eggplant before last year, let alone grow one.

I've decided to base this year's garden on last year's, and simply make some modifications. Even though I'm in total-demolition mode after watching Flip This House this morning and wondering to myself why on Earth anyone would bother trying to fix up some of those hellholes ... but the truth is, 2008's garden worked out a lot better than most of the houses I see on that show. So we're going with the model that 2008 was a fixer-upper, not a demo.

So let's take a look at last year's garden. Here's the blueprint:

(I know it's hard to read, but nobody's reading it anyway.)
Now, this is a small garden. Each rectangular section is 1'6" x 5', for a total size of 6' x 20'. So it was quite crowded. The thing is, I didn't have enough confidence that all these plants would actually grow to worry about overcrowding. In the end, though, I did fill the bed.

Of all those plants, which were the winners and which were the losers? Here are the results:

Winners Tomatoes (Early Girl, Beefy Boy, Whopper, Better Boy) Parsley Collards Kale Super Chili Peppers Super Banana Peppers Jalapeños (some; enough to plant again) Habanero Peppers Squash (zucchini) Eggplant (Whopper, Ichiban)

Losers Tomatoes (Golden Boy, Ildi) Bell Peppers (all) Strawberries Cantaloupe Eggplant (Fairy Tale)

I don't know why the winners won and the losers lost. I've never been able to grow strawberries on my property; maybe it's the soil. Some gardeners have suggested that the summer wasn't warm enough for the bell peppers and cantaloupe. (I got one tiny cantaloupe on the lone cantaloupe plant, and two or three tiny bell peppers out of all 10 plants. Cantaloupe is interesting enough to maybe try again, but I consider the bell peppers a complete failure.) The yellow onions were neither winners nor losers because I never got around to even digging them up, poor dears. (It brings a tear to my eye to think of them out there right now in their frozen graves.) I'll try them again this year because I do use a lot of onions.

So, it's time to think about what to plant this year.

Tomatoes
I need to seriously consider which tomatoes to choose. I loved my tomato plants; they were so ridiculously gigantic that partway through the season I had to buy these enormous 5' steel tomato ladders to support them. With plant names like Whopper and Beefy Boy, it should have been expected. In the end, however, my favorite tomatoes were the Early Girl (also a large plant) and Patio Tomatoes, which yield little 2" fruits; I planted those in separate containers on my front porch.

But I have a set of 6 tomato ladders, and I plan to use every one. At this point, I'm just not going to decide on tomato varieties. I know I'll plant some Early Girls, but will decide on the rest later.

Peppers
The hot pepper varieties were a raging success. However, I didn't pick a single habanero. I did pick and freeze some Super Chilis, but I don't need two plants this year. Jalapeños are one of my true loves, so I'll plant a lot of those again this year, but try to figure out how to plant them better because my yield was tiny for 11 plants.

As for the rest, the Super Banana peppers grew like crazy, and I think I'm going to rely on them completely for my sweet pepper needs this year. The spectacular failure of the bell peppers is something I don't even want to have to think about again. It would be nice to have some red peppers to roast (which, like onions, I'm happy to use in just about anything) but I can try it with the banana peppers, and use store-bought roasted red peppers when necessary.

Eggplant
Think I'm going to stick with the Whopper, and plant several. That plant singlehandedly made the garden worthwhile. And I still don't even quite know what to do with eggplant.

Squash
Yes, more squash. I'll stick with zucchini and plant a few more of those.

Collards and Kale
These weren't actually great; they had some bug issues early on. But by the end of the season they were the last men standing. By the way, don't ask me how to cook them, as in my house they're used raw as pet food. I'd like to double their number this year.

Parsley
After all the whining I've done over being unable to grow parsley, it turns out that it's impossible not to grow parsley in my garden. It grew so well that I'll cut the number of plants by 75% and still have more than enough. Or, I may try planting them in a container that I can bring indoors over the winter. I tried to transplant some of last year's parsley to an indoor pot, but it turns out that that rarely works. Parsley has deep roots.

Additions
I had some bug problems this year. Nothing catastrophic, but it has been recommended to me to plant garlic and some other herbs as a deterrent. Since I love garlic (see onions, roasted red peppers) that will work well. I'm not sure what other herbs to choose, and I'm not sure about their placement. I'm going to put the garlic and herbs on the back burner and think about them later.

In addition, I'd like to plant some greens for salads. I planned to last year but never got around to it. Arugula and mesclun (a mixture of gourmet greens) are on my list.

Changes
The only major change is to spread out the plants more. Also, I plan to plant rows of greens weekly or bi-weekly to help keep a steady supply.

So here is a very rough sketch of ideas for my 2009 vegetable garden:

Omitted are garlic and herbs because I need to learn more about them first. Quantities as indicated are not set in stone.

Alas, this is what my vegetable garden bed looks like today:
I have a while to wait before I can even get out there and clean it up, much less plant anything.

For a list of 2008 veggie garden blog posts, including photos: www.madmadlife.com/labels/vegetable garden.html