Also Christmas season happened. So I was way to busy to be posting on my blog.
Being German, baking lot's of Christmas cookies is part of the Christmas season. Many people start baking in mid November starting with their Christ Stollen our traditional sweet Christmas bread and then soon after you start baking cookies. First the Lebkuchen which need to be baked early because they soften in storage, then all the other cookies made with butter and eggs and last come the Macaroons. They come last because you use all the leftover egg whites from the cookies made only with the yolks of the eggs.
So now my Christmas craziness is over I finally had time to work on my garden planning.
I always have trouble getting my vegetable plants started indoors at the right time. I always seem to get started too late and then when I finally got the seeds in the pots I kind off go on my instincts when the seedlings should be transferred to larger pots or transplanted into the garden. It is hard to get good information for this garden planning, especially for the North West. There sure is a lot of information out there, but almost all of it seem to differ from the next.
I needed some concise information with which I could make my own planner. So I found this great book which was a great tool for finding all this information.
The Kitchen Garden Grower's Guide: A practical vegetable and herb garden encyclopedia
It is mainly a data information book for all you need to know about the most common and some uncommon vegetable garden plants. A Encyclopedia for Vegetable and Garden Herbs.
There are only black and white pictures of each vegetable but for each vegetable it gives you first all the common names in different languages, then a brief profile for the plant, it's kitchen use, basic planting information, the planting situation it needs, very detailed information about it's planting, growing and care, and then it finishes off the plant profile with harvest information and varietal information.
This book gives you so much info about when to start and transplant each plant according to your frost dates it was easy to use this information to make a spread sheet for garden planning, designed to go with my freeze dates for the Eugene, Oregon location. This is a great book. So often you find in garden books the important information you need is hidden in long elaborate chapters for the plants, makes it so difficult to find what you need.
Now with the date added to this spread sheet I have all the important information in one place, I can print it out and hang it on my wall and it will be easy to figure out when to start each vegetable.
It will be a work in progress as I will be adding more plants and growing information into this chart. Even it is not completely done, I like to share it with you. The new garden season is just around the corner and this might be just the tool you could use.
Please leave me comments about how you like this planting chart. Tell me if you like it, and where it could be improved.
https://my.syncplicity.com/share/1danxrqlac/Planting_date_chart.ods
disclaimer: Not to be shared with the Dervaes Family of Path to Freedom Website. Thank You
2 comments:
Same pinch... its been fairly cold here in India as well, the coldest we have ever since in the last few yrs....we are in the process of getting our vegie patch ready, so that we can plant as soon the the weather opens up ...I loved the Orange backdrop n your ramblings!
Glad you like the color. I always liked a lot of color around me. Maybe that's why I like gardening so much, there are so many colors involved.
I also am getting antsy to get my veggie garden going. It has been somewhat warm outside, probably just a way of nature to fool me to plant early and then come back laughing at me with another deep freeze. Nevertheless I might give it a try once the rain stops. It has been raining for more then a week now nonstop. Being in the Northwest there is no telling if it will stop raining before end of April. So one has to take every break in the weather one gets.
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