It’s National Gardening Day

It’s finally here – warm weather and it’s National Gardening Day, too!  Time to start thinking about your garden and getting it ready for the season.

It’s National Gardening Day

The weather is finally getting warmer and for me, as soon as that happens, I’m itching to get outside.  When the calendar finally turns to Spring, it doesn’t always mean warm weather comes right away.  Sometimes, like this year where I live, it was still a bit chilly.  But, as the days went on, we started to get some warmer days.

This week was especially nice – sunny and temperatures in the upper 70’s and 80’s.  My favorite.

Think Spring

Even before the calendar showed that it was Spring, I was already thinking about my vegetable garden.  I started tomatoes and peppers in February (although I could have waited until March).  Then, in March, I started some Shasta Daisies and some celery.  I wasn’t sure how those would turn out but so far, I did get some seedlings.  Now that it is April, I also started marigolds and zinnias.

It really gets me in the gardening mode.  I really enjoy watching the seedlings grow and taking care of them so that they become healthy plants that will produce some delicious organic vegetables for me and my family.  Plus, as you probably know, we’ve also been beekeeping so we should have no problem with pollination since the bees are so close.

What is National Gardening Day?

So, it’s National Gardening Day – but what does that mean?  You know there’s a day for just about anything and today is no different.  Because it’s National Gardening Day, msn.com says it’s time to get out in your garden to prepare for the season and they even offer a couple suggestions on what you can do – such as preparing the dirt and selecting your plants.

As I already mentioned, I already started figuring out some of the plants I wanted to plant.  I needed to think about those so that I could get the seeds planted so they would be ready once mid-May hit.  That way, they would be strong enough and it would be warm enough to plant those.

But, as the article mentions, it’s time to get the soil ready and that’s exactly what I’m going to do today.  Why?  Well, because it’s National Gardening Day, of course!  So, today, we’ll be tilling the soil where the new garden is going to go.

Also, even though the weather will be up and down over the next few weeks – which means non-cold hardly plants like tomatoes and peppers will have to wait until mid to late May, there are some plants I can start.  For example:

• Beets – I love beets so I’ll be planting some beetroot seeds
• Onions – get sets or use seed.  I got sets and those can go in the ground now.
• Potatoes – I have some Yukon gold potatoes, as well as some purple potatoes – garden potatoes are so delicious.

There are some other plants you can plant in your garden now.  I’m choosing to wait to plant these in mid summer for a fall crop, but you can choose to have 2 crops for the following:

• Red cabbage or green cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Broccoli

Whatever you decide to plant in your garden, whether it be just vegetables or just flowers, it doesn’t matter.  Do what you want to do in your garden.  Enjoy the weather.  It’s a great hobby – gardening and so rewarding.  It can help your mental health.  And, if you are growing vegetables, you know there were no chemicals added – which means you aren’t consuming toxins that can hurt your hormones.