Gardening with Index Cards

I'm so excited. My seeds from Southern Exposure arrived yesterday. This comprises the bulk of my veggie plantings. I still want to get onion sets, seed potatoes, and herb seeds. I wake up at night, thinking of gardening and making plans.

In the past, I gardened in central Georgia, where gardening is pretty easy: plant everything on Good Friday. I've never tried starting seeds indoors, either. I always just bought tomato and pepper plants and direct sowed my bean, squash, and lettuce seeds.

This first garden of mine in WV is going to require considerably more planning. Here's how I'm approaching it. I'm kind of anal about getting my ducks in a row, dotting my i's and crossing my t's. Many will laugh at all my planning and scheming, but for me this is working well and it brings me comfort knowing I have A Master Plan.

I began with a stack of index cards and a couple of gardening books. I made an index card for each vegetable I plan to grow. I used 3x5 but in retrospect 4x6 would have been better. On the card I noted:

• dates to start seeds indoors, to transplant, to direct sow, etc. If they can be planted again for a fall crop, I made a note of those dates.
  
• spacing.
• whether the crop is a light feeder or a heavy feeder, to help plan rotation and companions: I don't want to plant all heavy feeders together, or if I do, I want to follow them with some light feeders and then legumes, to rebuild the soil.
  
• I noted the good companions and the bad companions. Sometimes my books disagreed on this, so I only listed what they agreed on. Companion planting is not an exact science, by any stretch of the imagination!
• I noted if the plants like full sun or part shade. This way I know which plants I can safely tuck in near my trellises without having them suffer from lack of sunlight.
• I made rotation notes.
  

I got this idea from Sally Jean Cunningham's book entitled Great Garden Companions (link to amazon.com). Now I can shuffle my cards according to planting date, or heavy vs. light feeders, or what gets along well with onions. I have used the cards to create a rough schedule of when I do what, and to plan one of my garden beds.

The index card shown at the beginning of this entry is for Winter Squash, including pumpkins. You can click the little picture to get a bigger view. It's pretty simple. I can start them indoors around April 15th and transplant them outdoors around May 13th. I made a note to use peat cups for the transplants, because their roots are supposed to be easily damaged, and they don't like being transplanted. I think most folks direct sow their winter squash but I didn't note a direct sow date. Hmm... better look that up.

Here's my card for onions (clickable for larger image). They can be started indoors around Feb 25 and transplanted about April 8th. Or I can direct sow them when the soil is 50 degrees (F). I have no idea when that will be, but I plan to keep a journal and note rainfall, temps, soil temps etc. this first year. I doubt my journal will be half as wonderful as I envision, but it will leave me in better shape next year than this, when I have no idea what to expect in this climate.