Vegetable garden plans

Pictured are tomato and pepper plants from the nursery along with seeds and peat pellets to start other vegetables.

Spring is here and the weather has been warm enough to start planning our vegetable garden. For our garden we usually buy starter-plants in six-packs for peppers and tomatoes. The rest we start from seed in little peat pellets that we later plant directly into the garden.

We went by the nursery the other day and picked up some plants for our vegetable garden. Jalapeno is one of our favorite hot peppers, but we also like less fiery types like Anaheim. For sweet peppers we choose several bell varieties. This year, the variety of tomatoes we choose was Celebrity, Big Beef, Champion and Beefmaster.

The peppers can be used fresh in salads, to spice up other vegetable or main dishes. Tomatoes are something we like to eat fresh, add to main dishes, as well as to make juice and sauce with. When making our tomato juice and sauce we include a variety of peppers to suit our taste.

This year we are changing to a new area for planting the tomatoes. They need to be moved to a different area every few years to get better production. Tomatoes are deep-rooted plants and once established they can usually tap into underground moisture. The peppers we put on a drip-irrigation system to water them as needed. Drip-lines are added to other vegetables if needed when they are planted.

We constantly battle gophers and Johnson grass, as well as weeds in general. Using raised planters and wire baskets have reduced the impact of the gophers. However, controlling Johnson grass requires digging up the roots or it will reestablish itself seemingly overnight.

Vegetables we plan to plant from seed include melons, summer and winter squash, cucumbers and carrots. We plant several types of each to give us a chance to have something different coming ripe all summer long instead of everything coming all at once. The winter squash are mostly grown to last us through the winter.

Growing fruit is another part of our gardening. This year we started eight blueberry bushes to add to our raspberries, boysenberries, rhubarb, wild blackberries and elderberries. We also added a new nectarine tree to our variety of fruit trees.

Our goal is to have fresh vegetables and fruit from our garden through as much of the year as possible and to can, freeze or dry enough to last us the rest of the year. We try to plant more than enough to compensate for what the wild animals, birds and insects eat, but it is always a guessing game. If we end up with a surplus our friends and family are happy to help us with that.

Happy gardening to all those who venture to dig in and give it their best.