Cheat Sheet #2- The Comeback

If you buy a Startin’ Garden, this Cheat Sheet will help you get to know your plants, and have a quick-referencing guide to keeping them alive. The Comeback includes asparagus, strawberries, lettuce, peas, chives, beans, marigolds.

The Early Days:

If you haven’t planted yet, wait until the danger of frost has passed. You can find out what date this is expected to be by Googling “USDA Zone [your city].” Once you find out your USDA Zone (Southeast Michigan is Zone 6), Google “Zone [yours] frost date.” This will tell you when we expect to be free of frost danger. You can plant after this!
Check the seed packet (if applicable) for plant spacing and planting depth. A good rule of thumb is to plant as deep as twice the thick- ness of the seed. Water immediately—you want the soil to be well-saturated so that the first inch of soil is moist. In this early stage, plants need constant moisture—water at least every other day, but if the weather is hot, water daily (mornings/evenings is the preferred time to water, but whatever). Let the soil dry out (but just barely) between waterings—too much water/standing water can rot the delicate roots. Once plants get established and have grown 1-2 sets of true leaves, they won’t need such frequent watering. (TLDR: keep plants warm, water daily, lots of bright light)

The Seedling Days:

Seedlings are plants that have their “true leaves.” Most seeds sprout and immediately present “starter leaves” that act like emergency solar panels to sustain the plant as it gets its roots established. The true leaves will be shaped differently than the starter leaves. Once seedlings have 1-2 sets of true leaves, they will be more self-suffient in the garden, and will only need watering every other day unless it’s super hot (rain showers count as watering!). They will also need nutrition. If you have good soil, they may be receiving as much nutri- tion as they need. It doesn’t hurt to add some liquid fertilizer to support your growing plants’ needs (especially if your seedlings are not yet in the ground).

If you need help figuring out where to plant each item, Google “square foot gardening [plant name].” This will tell you how many of this type of plant you can plant for every square foot.

If you see that cold weather is coming (under 50 degrees), consider protecting your seedlings with a bedsheet, sheet of plastic, or cloch- es until the temperature rises again. (TLDR: seedlings are stronger and need less fussing-over, but they need more space and have a bigger appetite.)

The Garden Days:

This is the part that loses many gardeners: the mundane. Once plants are comfortably established, but before they are ready for harvest, it’s easy to “check out,” and accidentally forget that your garden still needs you. In this stage, it will still need regular watering, but may- be as infrequently as every few days. Plus, you’ll want to begin looking out for pests (including the cute ones, like bunnies and deer).
The marigolds in your garden are there as a pest deterrent! Basil, too—and other herbs like it—has a strong

smell that can deter some predators.

Keep an eye on your plants as they move through various stages: growth, flowering, and fruiting (if applicable). Keep track of any issues, and use Google or reach out to find solutions!

Get to Know Your Plants

Peas (1/sqft):

Peas are spring plants, so they will likely be your first harvest! Peas are big climbers whose tendrils like to hold onto thin-gauge items like wire fencing or other nearby seedlings! Make sure you provide them a trellis or wire tomato cage to grab onto as they grow. To encourage bushier plants that give you more peas, pinch off the tops of the plants (pinch right above a set of leaves). Bonus, pea shoots are delicious, so when you prune your peas you get an instant tasty snack! Sugar snap peas are ready to harvest when a pod forms about the thickness of a pencil. Pop it off the vine and eat it raw or in a stir fry!

After a few weeks, the quality of the peas provided will begin to decline. Stop harvesting and let the pods dry on the vine. When they are dry, or if they fall to the ground, collect them and let them continue to dry on your kitchen counter. Throw away any that mold. When you are sure that seeds are completely dry, store them in an envelope to plant next year. Snip the vines off at ground level (leave the roots), and take the vines out of your garden to make room for your tomatoes to use the trellis.

Chives (a million/sqft):

Chives are an extremely low-maintenance perennial plant that comes back year after year, increasing in size and number along the way. When you want to use chives, simply grab a handful and snip them off with scissors at any height. The blossoms are also edible! Leave a few flowers all season and you will have seeds! Give the dried seed heads a shake and make it rain seeds! Next year, you will have tons of new chives. (you can also snip the seed heads and put them in a brown paper bag to dry, then shake the bag! See note under “lettuce.”)

Lettuce (4/sqft):

Lettuce is a low-to-the-ground crop that enjoys the shade of other plants around it. Full sun may burn its delicate leaves, so it’s great to interplant with taller plants like beans or tomatoes. There are two ways to harvest lettuce. Either let it grow all season until it forms a head (some varieties form a tighter head than others) and cut the entire thing off at its base with a knife. It’s a bit of an art to know when to do this before it “bolts.” (see below) The other approach is called “cut-and-come-again.” This approach allows you to harvest a little lettuce from each plant regularly. Simply pinch off the outer leaves of each plant near the stem. Leave at least 3 leaves behind to continue nourishing the plant. More leaves will grow and in a week or so you can harvest again! When the weather gets hot, lettuces start to “bolt,” that is, they stop growing new leaves and start growing taller with a goal toward flowering and making seeds. Let at least one of your lettuces bolt for lots of plants next year! After the flowers completely dry, cut the entire stalk at its base and whack its flower head against the dirt! This will release the seeds. Or, cut just the top off and place it in a brown paper bag. If it’s completely dry, you can close and shake the paper bag, and hope- fully collect many seeds inside.

Green beans (4/sqft):

Beans prefer being planted directly in soil rather than starting indoors and being transplanted, but transplanting is usually not a death sentence. Otherwise, beans are generally low maintenance and high productivity. Pole beans produce more vigorously than bush beans, but either variety can be stimulated by harvesting. Or, avoid harvesting altogether, wait until the entire plant has dried out in the fall and the beans are rattling in their pods. Voila! You’ve grown dried beans for soups and chilis. You’re an agricultural genius.

Asparagus:

Asparagus is a surprisingly tough and versatile plant that forms an enormous, dense root system called a “crown.” The hardest thing about asparagus is ignoring it for the first few years while the crowns get established. When the asparagus pokes through the soil in the spring- time, harvest any that are as thick as your pinky finger or thicker, by using a sharp knife and cutting the stalk below soil level. Asparagus will come back year after year, and also produce seeds that will naturally fall to the ground and make more asparagus! Asparagus that you don’t harvest get quite tall, so they may benefit from being caged or staked.

Strawberries (8/sqft):

Strawberries are a hardy crop that comes back year after year and loves to spread. They spread by “runners” and “pups.” The runners are long stems that go out from the main plant, and the pups are the new plants that form when the runner touches the ground. Pulling or snip- ping runners will help your plant focus on making fruit, but it’s always okay to let it make more strawberry plants!

Marigold (9/sqft):

Marigolds are your adaptable, cheerful, sunny best friend. They don’t mind being crowded, their blos- soms are edible, they help protect your garden from pests both by repelling them AND by attracting beneficial insect predators. Plus, they bring a blush of bright color to your garden bed!

General stuff to know:

Plants are not juts good for us, but can be good for the environment too. They breathe in carbon dioxide (yes, that “carbon,” the green- house gas that everyone is trying to get out of the atmosphere), and transfer it out of the air and into the soil, where it stays. That’s right— plants actually remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Disrupting the soil—tilling it, diggin in it—releases some of the captured carbon, and breaks the connections inside the soil’s structure that allow nutrients to pass from soil to plant roots. Trying our best not to disturb the soil (unless we have to, and even then, as little as we can) keeps the carbon in the soil (which the plants love!), and allows nutrients to be more “bioavailable” to feed your plants. This means that you won’t need to use a bunch of added fertilizer: healthy, undisturbed soil will quickly begin feeding your growing plant.

It’s also important, especially in a raised bed garden, to follow the rule of “no bare soil.” This means that after you plant, you cover the soil with mulch (don’t cover the plants!). This can be leaves, grass clippings, wood chips, or compost. Mulch helps keep the soil cool so that the water you give it doesn’t simply evaporate away the moment the sun starts shining. Mulch also suppresses weeds that might compete with your desired plants for nutrients or water. Mulch won’t eliminate weed risk, but often makes managing weeds much easier, and makes better use of the water you give your garden.

When different kinds of plants are grown together in the same space, it’s called “intercropping.” This is different than row-cropping like big farms might do, and different from the way other home gardeners might say, “this is my tomato area...this other area is my lettuce area...” Rather than keeping like crops apart, intercropping is a way to completely utilize your avaiable space, and take advantage of the ways that plants can help each other as “companions.”

For any questions, you can always reach out to me! getstarted@thestartingarden.com

I also recommend joining a local gardening group (in Ypsilanti, Garden Party is a fantastic group! They meet at Dawn Farm, and your registra- tion fee gives you access to hundreds of free plants along with friends and support in your gardening journey) in person or on a social media platform of your choosing. You can learn a lot just by watching what other people do and the questions they ask!

Recommended resources:

The Vegetable Gardener’s Guide to Permaculture by Christopher Shein
No-Dig by Charles Dowding
Down to Earth with Zac Efron, Netflix, season 2 episode 2, “Regenerative Agriculture”
Kiss the Dirt, Netflix
Sustainable World Radio, podcast. especially Episode 153, “Gardening the Permaculture Way: How to Create an Abundant Perennial Garden.”