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- Here’s how to prep your plot for a bumper crop of veges.

Spring is my favourite time in the garden. It is a busy time but with a good plan at hand it is much easier to manage than any other time of year, as plants just want to grow. In this article, I will share the key areas I focus my energy on during this time of year. During the winter, we plan what we will grow this year and where the main garden crops will be planted. If you haven’t finalised your crop plan, it is not too late and is well worth the effort. A well-planned garden will help you get more food out of your garden over a longer period.

We make our crop plan based on what people in our household like to eat and roughly how much we want per week. This helps us focus our precious garden space on plants that feed us and limits their numbers to quantities that we can handle (and enjoy). The key to having regular harvests throughout a long season is to focus on successions. This comes down to how many plants to sow or to transplant and how often, while not running out of garden space. For example, planting four Lebanese cucumber plants in September, four in November and four in January will average a weekly yield of 10 cucumbers over about six months.

If you keep a garden journal, you can keep records of what you have done and update your estimates of crop yield and consumption. In any case, it will be ideal to place your sowing and planting list somewhere visible, like on the fridge door, so it will serve as a guide and reminder to keep growing new plants.

But of course, a plan is one thing, and what actually happens in the garden is another.

Part of the art of having a year-round harvest is to keep clearing old crops. Although most crops have a range

of expected days to harvest, individual plants might behave very differently from one another.

I don’t tend to pull out plants that produce well or if a crop is growing well and needs more time to mature. However, plants that are growing much slower than expected or plants that have exhausted themselves generally yield lower quality produce, are more susceptible to disease and are therefore my first choice to clear and make space for new plants.

When clearing winter crops, if I have too many beds to prepare at once, I will often choose to hoe the weedier-looking beds and cover them with a tarp or weedmat for two to four weeks until I get around to replanting them. In that time, the weeds will rot and sometimes even eliminate the need to pick up any of the weeds.

Early spring is also a good time to fork beds that feel compacted. I test each bed for compaction by poking the back end of the hoe or rake handle as deep as it will go with moderate effort. If it goes in easily for 20cm or more, I leave the bed alone. If the handle goes in easily up to 10-15cm and I will be planting a quick growing crop such as mustard greens, I also leave it alone. Otherwise, forking the bed is worthwhile.

After forking or deciding not to, the next stage is adding compost.

Pretty much regardless of the previous crop, in spring I add a 1-2cm layer of high quality compost over the bed and a handful of broad spectrum natural fertiliser per metre, which I rake shallowly into the bed.

Once the soil has finally warmed up, it is a good time to lay mulch on the garden, to keep soil moisture even through the coming months and suppress weeds. These actions help feed and diversify the soil’s living community and will boost your garden’s productivity, but also remember to be realistic about the local conditions, microclimate and resources you have. Plan to grow what you can take care of without overwhelming yourself.

To maximise yield, it’s important to pay attention to the seedlings. If seedlings stay too long without getting planted for whatever reason, it is often better to discard them and propagate or buy new plants rather than transplanting plants that will produce lower quality fruit.

In mid- to late spring, many plants can be planted outdoors without protection. Early spring planting will benefit from the use of hoops and covers for most crops but especially on cold sensitive early summer plantings and crops that tend to get eaten by birds.

If slugs and snails are major pests in your garden, you can use 1.5L or 2L clear plastic bottles with an open lid and cut off the bottom to use for slug and snail protection. After two or three weeks, the plants will be big enough and can generally handle moderate slug and snail pressure.

One sore point for me is that

I am not always on top of it, but I always try to keep watering up at this time. With warmer and drier springs, a week without rain, no watering, and higher temperatures will generally signal to most vegetables that it is time to go to seed, as happens with many overwintering and spring crops in their natural environments.

If we prevent the soil from drying up, the bolting signal will not kick in, and we will enjoy our spring vegetables for a longer period.

As the garden wakes up in the spring and there’s lots to do, it is easy to forget that winter ever existed.

But with the increase in light and working hours in the garden, it is important to not overstretch yourself physically. My trick to this is to do a bit of various tasks in each working session (and take breaks), so the muscles can strengthen gradually over a few weeks.

Slowly but surely, plants grow, and the garden will thrive.

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2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

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