This time of year is so exciting! Our seedlings are coming up after a series of warm days. Here's a few fun ones.

Row of spinach


A few up-and-coming snow peas


Mixed lettuce sprouts


Garlic is getting gigantic!

What's happening in your garden?

I took a tour of the backyard with my toddler son on a cool Saturday morning and found that, as I had suspected, spring is here. Some of my garlic sprouts are an inch or two above the soil, a few of my earliest varieties of crocuses are blooming (the deep violet ones are always first), the tulip leaves are starting to unfurl gracefully, and the early native perennials (like lupine, delphinium, and flax) are sending up their first few leaves.


Garlic sprouts on a foggy morning

All these things point to a need for me to get organized and start working. When starting the season, the first thing I always do is sit down on the couch with my husband and re-hash the previous year. He likes knowing that his opinion is important when it comes to gardening, because he's in charge of the most backbreaking aspects (like digging potato holes). He sometimes says surprising things, like "Can we plant more lettuce this year?" and so I write down 'add 1 more row of lettuce.' He makes some statements every year, and like his constant "I want bigger tomatoes" statement. I know, dear, I want bigger ones too, but you gotta remember we live in Montana and do not have a greenhouse.

Now that you know how my marriage and gardening life come together, here's a quick reminder of what you might get started on right now.

Do the gardening talk with your gardening partner, if you have one. Make sure to cover these topics:

• mistakes (perceived or real) in type and quantity of what you planted last year. Were these mistakes fixable, or were they just you learning about your climate, soils, time constraints, etc?


• Additions ("I want more lettuce") or subtractions ("do we really need a four foot row of dill?") from last year


• Infrastructure changes: New watering system? Thinking about raised beds?


• Budget concerns, especially if you are considering major overhauls like raised beds or yards of new soil

Create a list of everything you want to grow. Organize it by:

• Seeds you already have (most are good in the packet for 3 or 4 years, if kept cool and dry)


• Seeds you need to buy


• Starts that you can realistically do from home with some seeds and a sunny window


• Starts that you need to buy from a garden store or farmer's market

Start collecting reused containers for your starts, poking several large holes in the bottom of each for drainage. Both smaller (8 oz.) containers (good for smaller starts like lettuce and basil) and larger ones (for tomatoes, etc.) are great.

So far, in my house, we've come to a few key agreements for the '09 gardening season. For one thing, our new 40' x 10' garden, which has been slumbering for a year under a murderous layer of black weed smothering plastic, needs to be fenced to keep out the dog and chickens. This huge (about threefold) increase in gardening space will largely be taken up with low maintenance, high yield favorites like zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and potatoes. That sort of crop selection will keep the increase in workload down to a minimum. We've also agreed that we need to be more aggressive in our mulching strategies for the veggies - the best yields last year were in the parts of the garden that had a weed cloth and hay mix used for weed smothering.


The new garden, as partially exposed and seen from above

So now that you have your to-do list, go for it! We'll be gearing up in the next week or so with a lot of tips for growing all kinds of veggies, basic garden tasks, and more here on Gardenaut, so don't be intimidated - if you've wanted to start a small home garden, dive in and we'll be with you every step of the way.

Garlic should be planted in the fall. Your definition of fall might be different from mine (we are already getting snow) but regardless, you probably need to go buy some garlic and stick it in the ground sometimes soon.



A wonderful food and gardening writer lives here in Missoula, and he wrote about garlic last October in his column. Take it away, Ari Levaux:

Now is indeed the time to plant garlic - the sooner the better, with the freezing of the ground serving as your final deadline. Garlic planted in fall will establish roots and then go dormant for the winter. Come spring, it’s off to the races. Your garlic will be tall and majestic while your neighbors are still staring at the ground waiting for their radish seeds to sprout.

After you’ve prepared a good bed of soil, gently break apart the heads garlic you intend to plant into individual cloves. Leave the skin on. If you don’t have seed garlic, buy local garlic at the store or farmers market and plant that. If it’s local, then it’s likely a variety that will grow well in your area. Just remember to plant garlic that you like, since what you grow will bear a strong resemblance to it.

The only things I would add to his simple and excellent description would be that garlic likes rich soil (so add some compost or a bit of manure) and the base of each clove should rest gently on the soil about four inches deep here in Montana, or shallower in climates with warmer winters (as few as 2 inches in the deep South). A thick top layer of straw helps keep weeds down over the early springtime, and if you plant hardneck garlic breeds then you'll also have tasty green garlic scapes to saute over your springtime spinach. Mmmm...

This year I'm planting about five times my normal quantity of garlic - mostly because we have expanded our garden beds and I finally have the room to do so. With all that space, I'm also planting six different varieties of garlic. Should be fun next summer to taste-test them all!