Planning Your 2014 Gardening Year
During the next two months I will help you through the planning stages of your 2014 gardening year. Each week’s email will address a new subject. Tor and I are working hard over the winter months to build an organic website to help spread the word throughout our Country. We have a discussion forum for you to participate in. We will need your help and we need to build this site together. I feel it is important to get organic gardeners to exchange their ideas with other organic gardeners. We not only learn from Mother Nature but we learn from each other. What you have been able to accomplish in your own garden with your hard work is important to teach to others. Your successes will encourage others to follow suit. Your feelings and your story will mold their thinking and inspire others. Taking some time to write your story and share your pictures will help.
NEW WEBSITE – NATURALGARDENNEWS.COM
As my valued friends and costumers I offer you a sneak peak at the new site. The address is http://www.naturalgardennews.com. Please give it a visit and bookmark it. Visit the forum and register to join the group (you only have to do it 1 time) Start a discussion or post a picture. Let’s start building our on-line community. We also have interesting articles already posted on the main page and you can now read and reference my weekly emails both past and present by clicking on “Krautter’s Korner”. Let us know what you think but please keep in mind it is still under construction and we still have a long way to go
Tor will continue to develop the site and we will continue to add interesting features as we go along. Sprainbrook Nursery has a great website in itself which we have worked on building over the years. We will move this website over and incorporate within the site. There is a lot of information we already have available and a lot more we need to add to make it the best organic gardening website on the web.
PLANNING YOUR GARDEN FOR 2014
Gardening is the number one pass time in the country and engages the mind and body for twelve months during the year. Each month is important for different reasons. January and February are the months to plan your garden. On a cold winter’s day with the sun streaming through the window and with a roaring fire in place, sit yourself up in your most comfortable chair and plan your spring garden. Think about your past season and what you would want to accomplish in the next season. Planning is the most important aspect of having a great garden. This is an aspect that many neglect to engage in. From it spring great ideas and better methods. Gardening is many things too many people and no two gardens are the same. What is important to one person may not be important to another, but it needs to be important to you. Many people are obsessed with a beautiful organic lawn, others with an organic nutritious vegetable garden and others with a pleasant yard to enjoy with privacy from their neighbors. Beautiful gardens are built by people with vision that have taken the time to plan. Gardeners love to work the soil, feel the sun on their back and the rich earth between their fingers. They often neglect the planning phase which is so vital to a successful gardening season. Gardening is more than doing the work it is informing oneself and how to improve each year. The many options open to you can only be realized when you think about them. Many like to enjoy a beautiful garden but want to pay others to do it for them. I personally feel a lot of value to you is lost in this process. However if you choose this route you still need to participate in the planning phase.
In my book 12 Steps To Natural Gardening I have left many open pages for you to record notes and observations. These are very important pages because they are your personal history. A green thumb is a thumb of knowledge and experience. You need to log in and list your experiences as you go and at the end of the season you need to evaluate the results. Once you review your data you can make the changes where necessary.
I am of the strong opinion that every garden should have a vegetable and herb garden. I have not always been of this opinion for I thought at one time it was cheaper to go down to the corner farm stand and buy your vegetables. I am no longer of this opinion. I am not happy with our food chain and the way we grow our vegetables for the mass market. I am strong believer that the most nutritious vegetables’ can be grown in your own back yard. The greater the mix of organic products added to your garden the greater the nutritional value. I love raised beds for they are easier to work with and tremendously increase production. A vegetable garden requires a great deal of planning. It needs to be located in an area with six hours or more of full sun. It needs to fit into your back yard. It needs to be protected from animals and if you decide to build raised beds you need information on how to accomplish this. You need to research the vegetables and herbs you want to grow. Spring time is work time and wintertime is planning time. Next week I will attack the Vegetable Garden.
Great gardens are not built overnight they are built over years. Each year we take on a new project or tweak and improve our existing garden. True gardeners stay engaged all year long. Our dreams are what fuel our drive. Take a critical look at your property and see how you can improve it. The more members of your family you can have this discussion with, the more fruitful will be the direction to follow. You will also find, the more people involved in this planning decision the more cooperation and help you will have for the project.
I know putting things on paper can be a pain. Probably very few of you will take the time to do this but it is worth the effort. When I do a landscape design I like to use 1/8” squared paper. Use the large sheets and come up with a scale that fits your property. Once you get everything plotted out you will see things and opportunities that you never thought existed before. Make several copies so you can come up with several plans. If you have creative ability, you will have a ball making changes and coming up with new ideas. Add screening, curving lines, focal points and more. Spend a long time on this thought process. Lay it down and keep coming back to it. The mind likes to process things and add to them as you go along. Make it a family project. If your dream can become a family dream, it is more apt to get done.
Send this email along to anyone you think might benefit from it. The months of January and February I will be focused on getting your garden planned for spring. We will need your help building our new web site. We need your pictures your garden layouts, your accomplishments and your successes to be posted on our forum. We need your story to show the rest of the world what you were able to accomplish. Your thread will stimulate a discussion and help build the site. Your pictures are worth a 1,000 words and will be a powerful motivator to others.
A COLD WINTER
In my fall emails I have been predicting we were going to have a cold winter. On my fall Sunday runs my close friend Frank pointed out to me the tremendous amounts of acorns that were on the Oak trees this year. He said do you know what this means. He said we are going to have a cold winter. He said Mother Nature knows more than we do just wait and see. Record low temperatures have given me renewed confidence in the “Might Oak”. At Sprainbrook our logo is the acorn. “From the little acorn grows the “Mighty Oak”. It is a fantastic tree and I marvel at its majestic size and wisdom.
