Peter Bowden

WITH Gardening PETER BOWDEN

WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY PETER BOWDEN

108 Circular Street as it looks today.

Every spring, I deal with a lot of beginning vegetable gardeners. Among these well-meaning folks there seems to be a nearly universal fear of planting seeds. Some seeds like tomatoes and peppers must-be started inside in March, but the real value to be gained from vegetable gardening is from crops that we grow from seeds sown directly into the garden. It may seem very early, but peas and spinach seeds can and should have gone into the ground in early April to grow in the cool weather of early spring. Our vegetable growing season is actually much longer than Mother’s Day to fall’s first frost. There really isn’t anything at all difficult about starting seeds directly in the garden. Lettuce and all the other greens like chard, kale and spinach can go in right away. Later on in May, green beans, corn, cukes, and a host of other vegetable seeds can be planted. Radishes are also very rewarding since you can sow a row every two weeks and they grow and mature in less than a month providing a continuous supply once they get going. If you’re going to try your hand at vegetable gardening (and it seems like many are this year), drop by any Hewitt’s and pick up a copy of our “Vegetable Schedule.” It is a wonderful resource for the beginning gardener and even a seasoned veteran can use it to keep on track. It shows when the different transplants and seeds should be planted out in the garden. Take a look at greens beans for instance. They are one of the easiest and rewarding crops you can grow. According to the vegetable schedule, you can start sowing them in early May or anytime through the third week of July. As you can see, there’s plenty of time to start a crop or two of beans. Take a look at a bean seed pack. These are bush beans so no trellis is necessary. The front of the pack is pretty but the back has complete growing instructions. This is pretty simple stuff; honest! Let’s go step by step. Make a little trench 2” deep and place the seeds at the bottom. Cover them with 2” of soil and water them in. Now you just need to keep them lightly moist (not soggy wet) and they’ll sprout in a week or less. After a couple weeks, most of them will be up and growing. Often too well, so you’ll need to thin them out.

Thinning is removing any that are closer together than 6” as the seed pack indicated. It is tempting to leave them all, but they’ll produce more beans if they have the proper space to grow without crowding each other.

That’s pretty much it. With minor variations, all seeds work the same way... corn, carrots, beets, radishes and so on. All you need is a little patch of soil and the information provided on the back of the seed pack. Once you go through a season with well timed plantings, you’ll see that it is possible to get a great deal of food from even a small plot. Learn to read the information on the seed packs and trust the seeds. This is the way to really make your garden pay maximum dividends. Thanks for the read. S S