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By DR. DIANE RELF Extension Environmental Horticulturist
To the beginning gardener, September seems like a strange time to start a vegetable garden. But, if you want a good garden next spring now is the time to begin planning and preparing your soil. Here are some tips that will insure success and satisfaction for your new gardening endeavors.
• Talk to everyone you can about their gardens. All good gardeners love to “cultivate” a new gardener. Bring your questions to your local gardening experts — neighbors with productive, healthy gardens, garden club members, and your local Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners.
• Plan, plan, plan, and put it on paper. Many experienced gardeners start planning their vegetable gardens this month. They start the garden with frost-tolerant crops (beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, Swiss chard, collards, kale kohlrabi, lettuce, onions, parsley, English peas, radishes, spinach, and turnips); then add warm-season vegetables (beans, cantaloupes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, pumpkins, squash, sweet com, tomatoes, and watermelons).
As experienced gardeners review seed catalogs and their notes from this year’s gardens, they are planning next year’s strategies. For later in the season when crops needing very warm soil do best, they will plan to plant crops such as okra and sweet potatoes. They also plan possible succession schemes. Consider the entire gardening year.
• Study old seed catalogs, but keep a cool head — don’t order yet, and when you do order, avoid the beginners
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