Garden Planning & More
Our Gardens
Oh how I wish I had pictures of our past gardens. We have gardened in gardening zones 7A, 6B, 6A, and for two weeks in February of 2021, we had temperatures of zone 5B! All zones in Missouri. We have gardened in soft soggy soil, clay soil, perfect level soil, and now we are currently gardening on shelf rock. We have no soil here. Our property sits on solid shelf rock that is very sloped and eroding away each season. We may have 1/4″ top soil in places and that’s being generous. Directly below the “soil” is shot rock, gravel, large rocks mixed with clay which continues down until you hit the shelf rock. Due to this ungardenable (is that even a word?) area, we have had to build raised beds, and unfortunately we have had to bring in countless loads of dirt and sawdust in order to build up any kind of area to garden in.
On this page you will find posts with helpful documents and information on how to plan your garden.
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How to Decide where to Plant Your Garden
After reading the article, 5 Simple Beginner Steps to Planning Your Garden, you are ready to get the crops in the ground, but first, you must take some things into consideration.
Understanding the Difference Between
Male and Female Flowers
Did you know that there are SEPARATE male and female flowers on squash, zucchini, pumpkin, cantaloupe, watermelons, and cucumbers plants?
5 Simple Beginner Steps to Planning Your Garden
Here are 5 simple steps to get you started on your gardening journey. There are so many things that can overwhelm a beginner gardener. I am hoping to make it easier to understand for those foundational things. With all the seed choices available, how is a newbie supposed to know what to plant and why do some crops fail? I will tell you that after reading this article, you will understand why.
Gardening Journal
This 60 page Gardening Journal contains a variety of forms so you can keep a proper record of your garden each year! The first several pages are devoted to helping beginner gardeners understand the basics such as the importance of frost dates and figuring the length of their growing season and the fun part of getting creative on where to place your garden or multiple garden spots. There are pages for sketching out and planning your garden, organized forms for keeping you on top of your gardening tasks, a wonderful plant information sheet that is quite valuable, records for the end of the growing season such as production reports, pests and disease record, and end of the season journal pages where you can keep a written record of what you learned, how the garden went, and much more!
FREE Garden Planning Guide
These 11 pages of charts include a variety of crops and each crop is noted whether it is a warm or cool crop; how many you can plant in a square foot; how tall the crop gets; when to start the seed indoors; when to transplant; when to direct sow; companion and non-companion plants; days to germination; days to harvest; and more.
Understanding the Different Types of Seeds
Have you ever wondered what all the seed types mean? Such as heirloom; open-pollinated; hybrid; and GMO? What about organic seeds? I explain all that and help you to understand cross-pollination and self-pollination as well.
