Planning a Vegetable Garden

Bernie Dinter, Horticulturist and owner of Dinter Nursery

Every year there are more incentives to grow your own food. With raising commodity prices and supply chain issues creating bare shelves in the grocery stores, we need to become more self-reliant. Home grown food is fresher and healthier and gives one a sense of accomplishment. Successful gardening comes from experience, and it is never too late to start.

Vegetables can be grown in any location that receives six hours or more of direct sunlight around mid-day. Good soil is important and if not present, can be brought in to supplement the existing garden beds, fill raised beds or containers on sunny decks. If you have a sunny location, you can grow food.

Analyze what kind of food you are eating and what can be substituted from the garden. An easy start is salads, with greens such as lettuce, spinach, kale, mustard greens, mescluns and more. Many of these are hardy and can be planted in March with rotations ending with the last harvest in early December. This is nine months of harvest!

Tomatoes top the list of high

value crops but cannot be set out until the heat arrives in May. Get a head start by growing them indoors for setting out in space created by early greens being harvested. Alternatively, grow tomatoes in containers with 7 or 10 gallon sizes being ideal for the larger growing plants.

If you have limited space, look to crops that you can make full use of and rotate through several plantings. Root crops such as carrots can be seeded twice with the second crop staying in the ground for harvesting over the winter. Potatoes do well in grow bags that free up valuable garden space. Early planting of peas in cool spring weather can be followed by beans in warm summer temperatures. With careful planning a garden can put something on your table year-round.

HOME GROWN FOOD

It starts here

• Fruit trees • Fruiting bushes and vines • Vegetable transplants • Seed potatoes • Onion sets and starter plants • Tomato plants • Seeds - a large selection • Seed starting supplies • Soil amendments • Potting soil for seed starting and containers • Fertilizer - all types

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Serving local gardeners since 1973 www.dinternursery.ca 250 748-2023

5km South of Duncan on Hwy 1