Planning to Plant

  You might think February is a little early to start planning that garden, but for our Dirty Rascal Jr. Master Gardeners (JMG) it was a plan that is just in the nick of time.  This month the group worked on planning what will go in their raised bed garden and where it will go.  The Master Gardeners have agreed to help out with this project, and a new raised bed will be constructed at the Extension office for the JMGs to plant and help tend to.  The bed will be four foot by eight foot (or 32 square feet, as they learned to calculate last night), so the youth had to decide what to plant, where to plant it, and in some cases get creative on how it would be arranged.
  To help make the plan we created a two dimensional garden that is the exact size our raised bed garden will be.  Using the information from seed catalogs, a seasonal growing chart and the information on the seed packets our youth determined what and where to plant their items.  On the list of things that will be planted are cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, radishes, potatoes, and pop corn.   The youth then used yard sticks and a little adult help from Mr. Mack and Mr. Larry to section off their garden and figure out how it will be planted.  At the south end of the raised bed they will plant six cucumber plants that will grow up string trellises,  that way they have more planting room and their cucumbers should grow straighter.  Next they will plant between 6 and eight tomato plants.  They are still deciding if they will have small or large tomatoes or perhaps both.  Around the tomatoes they plan to plant radishes that can grow in the space between plants and will be harvested before the tomatoes get to big and need the extra room.  Next to that they will plant six to eight bell pepper plants.  Then the coup de gras will be four popcorn plants that they hope will be producing close to seven ears of popcorn per plant (that way they can enter it in the fair and try some right out of the garden).   Now if you are looking at the original list and thinking something might be missing, well you might be right.  It turns out there was not enough room left in the garden for the potatoes.  So they are going to use old tires and grow the potatoes in the tires and see how they do.

At this meeting the group also welcomed a new member Treyson Lowry to the club.  Treyson seemed to have a good time helping plan and decorate our two dimensional garden and we hope he will be back next month.
  March's meeting will be held at the Extension office on March 8 beginning at 5:30 pm.  The youth will have club elections, and work with the Master Gardeners building their raised bed garden.  This will also be when the group starts their seeds in the AeroGarden that will be transplanted into the raised bed sometime in April.  For more information about this or any 4-H club please contact Wendy Maynor at Wendy_Maynor@ncsu.edu or (910) 671-3276.