Veggie Planting Calendar

The Cornucopia Corner

Your Veggie Garden Planting Calendar

By Steffie Littlefield

After the renewed interest in vegetable gardening and edible plants during 2020 and 2021, 2022 is the year to grow more heirloom and organic vegetables. Try colorful tomatoes to impress your friends, and harvest a variety of homegrown treats the whole family will enjoy. It is fun to see visitors marvel at the variety and decorative vegetables growing in the garden. So where to start and why start now? Because starting your own plants from seed indoors is cost saving and a large variety of seeds is easier to buy than to find as starter plants. Here is the fun part. Take a quick trip to your local garden center to get up close and personal with the best seed selections for our area. Look for certified organic seeds, heirloom and local varieties for the best in healthy edibles. After you have filled your reusable shopping bag, go home and get organized. Sort your seeds between what to start now or later and what seeds are better planted directly into the garden. Then circle these dates on your calendar March 1st, March 15th, St Patrick’s 123rf.com Day, April Fool’s, May Day, Mother’s Day, June 15th and July 4th and Labor Day. Starting seeds indoors is relatively easy but knowing when and what to start indoors or out in the garden will help guarantee success. March 1st . Start your cool season crops asap, i.e., now. These are broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, spinach, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, onions & Swiss chard. Be adventurous and get that purple cabbage, orange cauliflower, Italian sprouting broccoli, dinosaur kale and bright flame colored swiss chard. These should be started indoors under grow-lights with good air circulation. Be stingy with your seeds and only put 2-3 per cell or peat pellet, then you won’t have to thin them. Keep them evenly moist under a clear cover until they sprout and mist with a spray bottle of water. Heat mats are very helpful, and use a ½ strength liquid fertilizer after the second leaves are showing. March 15th . Pepper seedlings are particularly slow to grow and mature so you can start them early and grow them on in small pots until its warm enough to transplant out in the garden. But wait and start your other warm season vegetables until mid to late March.

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Please make your check payable to The Gateway Gardener and mail it with this form to: The Gateway Gardener • PO Box 220853 St. Louis, MO 63122 Steffie Littlefield is a St Louis area horticulturist and garden designer. She has degrees from St. Louis Community College at Meramec and Southeast Missouri State and is a member of Gateway Professional Horticultural Association, Missouri Botanical Garden Members Board and past president of the Horticulture Co-op of Metropolitan St. Louis. She is part-owner of Edg-Clif Winery, Potosi, MO. www.EdgClif.com, and teaches a class on viticulture at SLCC-Meramec.

This would include tomatoes, lettuces, tomatillos, eggplant, & okra. Choose these like you do your new summer wardrobe, check the magazines, go for a new look, but with good taste. Some occasions call for mini tomatoes or hotter peppers and sometimes you want a full-size, traditional red. There’s picnic styles and large buffet platters to fill with multicolored slices. There’s peppers and eggplant for the BBQ grill and others to generously stuff and bake or roast and puree. Let your creative side have some fun and you will be delighted all summer long. Now, while these fruit bearers are gathering their energy to sprout lets get out in the garden and play in the dirt. St. Patrick’s Day is my traditional day to pay homage to those great vegetable gardeners in my family tree that fed their families from little beds around their cottages. While the earth is moist and the sun begins to warm the soil, but the nights are cool, it’s the perfect time to sow peas, beets, spinach, carrots, Italian bulb fennel, Malabar spinach to run up a trellis, parsnips, turnips, radishes & arugula seeds. I do have some tricks to share; soak your beet seeds in water for 1-2 hours before sowing. Use a legume inoculant on peas and later beans before laying in the trench. Pour the tiny lettuce or radish seeds on an index card folded in half and flick off the individual seeds with a toothpick to control the density of the planting and seed spacing. This is also a good time to plant potatoes (not sweet potatoes, wait for warm temperatures), onion sets, shallots, and other perennial crops like horseradish and asparagus. Then by April Fool’s Day you should start to harden off and transplant those cool season crops outdoors as well. May Day. While you are hardening off your last seedling plants by giving them some limited outdoor sun exposure, get ready for the big crops. Mother’s Day finish up planting seeds in the garden. Plant your beans—bush or climbing, green, purple, yellow, spotted or streaked. Try those pretty corn varieties, but always plant them in a block pattern to ensure cross pollination or the ears won’t form. Devote some big spaces to squashes—summer and winter, melons & watermelons. Then find a fence and grow cucumbers up in the air. June 15th, after everything else is planted it’s time to start sweet potatoes from slips. Finally before July 4th, in the back of the garden plant some pumpkins. Don’t worry they will find their way to the front!!! So, what happens next, well I hope you have been enjoying a bountiful harvest but don’t stop now. You can get those extra cool season plant seeds out and start those plants inside after the 4th of July, in the air conditioning, so they are ready to plant about Labor Day! Cheers!