Rosefiend Cordell - Dont Throw In the Trowel

Dont Throw in the Trowel!

Vegetable Gardening Month by Month

Easy-Growing Gardening Series, Vol. 1

by

Rosefiend Cordell

Rosefiend Publishing

Copyright 2016 Melinda R. Rosefiend Cordell

All rights reserved. Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, explosions, drunken raccoons, the wrath of Khan, tiny bugs, bulldozer races, or any other cause.

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DEDICATION

To Grandma Annamarie and Grandma Mary

I used to call you guys on the phone and say How do you guys do this?? and youd always tell me how vegetable gardening worked, because thats what grandmas do. I love you both.

INTRODUCTION

Or, Gardeners learn by trowel and error.

T WO THINGS:

First: You know more about gardening than you think.

Second: A garden the soil plants all of these are very forgiving. When it comes down to it, you can do pretty much anything to these. (Though, actually, bulldozer races through the garden are out of the question.)

A garden is forgiving. Plants are built to put up with a lot of nonsense. They obviously cant get up and walk away, so theyre made to endure. Its part of their nature.

In a vegetable garden, as with anything in life, the best thing to do is to focus on raising vegetables that you really like, stuff that you cant wait to eat when harvest season rolls around. Concentrate on the things in the vegetable garden that you really enjoy. That, more than anything, is the secret to gardening success. If youre crazy about something, it will show. If you dont care about it that will also show!

I used to write a gardening column for the St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press . I was a natural choice for the job I had worked in horticulture for most of my life, starting when I was a senior in high school when I got a part-time job at a garden center. I got a degree in horticulture and began working as a municipal horticulturist, where I had to learn the ropes quickly. As city horticulturist, I took care of 20-28 gardens all around the city, and did the heavy labor pretty much on my own, including a lot of the mulching and digging and weeding and shearing and deadheading and fertilizing. I also had 300 roses in the rose garden, and hundreds of trees. Spring was nuts. So was the rest of the year.

But every other week, I would share my experiences with a small bunch of stalwart readers, who were just as kind as they could be. It always amazed me when somebody would recognize me from my picture in the paper. I always figured my grandmas read my columns and that was it!

Id been looking at the old columns for years, wondering about putting them out into the world again. I am finally biting the bullet. This book is put together from my old columns, though Ive added a lot of new stuff and have updated information. I will be writing a series of books using these columns Vegetable Gardening, Roses, Annuals and Perennials, Houseplants, Trees and Shrubs, and Soilbuilding. It should be great fun.

Dont Throw in the Trowel! A Month-by-Month Guide to Vegetable Gardening is aimed specifically for Midwest gardeners in Zone 5, though these tips will apply to those in Zones 4 and 6. Gardeners in Zone 4 will be about a week or two behind, while gardeners in Zone 6 will be about a week or two ahead. For best results, double-check your planting and growing dates with your local University Extension center.

This book will be a month-by-month guide to vegetable gardening, and is organized as such. The prep is just as important as the planting, and in some ways more important, because a good plan, a garden notebook, and a little off-season work will save you a lot of trouble down the road.

This book is also aimed those who know their way around a garden, and beginners. Ill cover simple topics and more complex ones, and a bunch of stuff in between. Ill tell you one thing: It doesnt matter whether youre just starting out (Protip: Plant it with the green side up) or if youve been horticulturing all your life there is always, always, always something new to learn. Thats the beauty and the wonder of the world, that theres always new knowledge or old knowledge brought to light to discover.

Also, there are few hard rules in gardening. You are dealing with living things, and as with any other living beings, they have a mind of their own. The only difference is that plants cant run and they cant talk back. But they show it when theyre content and burying your garden in tomatoes, and theyll show it when theyre having a rough time and catching diseases or bug infestations or looking stunted and wilty. Then you get to figure out why the plant is stressed and find ways to correct the problem, to help your plant regain its health and fight off diseases and bugs.