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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >I need to do better in reseeding my veggies.  How do you remember to 
> reseed everything?  Is there a day of the month that you take inventory 
> or something?
> 

Of all the aspects of gardening that one has proven to be the most artful 
and illusive.

The first thing, of course, was many, many years ago breaking from the 
mindset of "putting out" a garden. I remember visiting a friend some time 
back 
who was entertaining his elderly MIL and he asked me what was shaking in the 
garden. It was early March and I told about transplanting onions and seeding 
beets and turnips.  MIL's eyes widened, "Oh, it's much too early to 'put 
out' a garden"  Here the magic date is May 10.  Very traditional gardeners on 
that day plant peas (much later than their prime time) and watermelons (much 
earlier than their prime).

Another garden epiphany came during erstwhile attempt at market gardening.  
Snap peas are very popular here abouts and I had the usual fence lined with 
them.  At that time early, primo snap peas fetched $3 a pound and bedazzled 
by how well we'd done, I put up 80' of trellises and replanted peas.  There 
was a huge crop of them but suddenly you couldn't give them away.   After 
the peas faded and I hadn't planted any more (since the freezer by now was 
full of them), everyone demanded to know why I had no peas for sale.  Thus it 
went.

It drew into stark relief the phenomenon of garden boom and bust ... knee 
deep in some vegetable one week and perishing for want of it a fortnight 
later.  So I began to pay close attention to it.

Foremost is the fact that for one's own direct use, even for a large family 
peopled primarily with teenagers, it is amazing how little planting it 
takes at any one time to have all the vegetables you want.  So we have 
adopted 
this as a general scheme:  Calculate how much of something you are likely to 
eat during its season of maturity and plant twice that much of it.  Doubling 
the amount is a hedge against poor performance -- poor germination, loss to 
pests, etc.  Most of the time the garden plot yields that double amount.  
The half not eaten is first subject to be preserved, as the old mountain 
saying goes:

"We eat what we can, and what we can't we can."

What isn't perserved for human food is converted into some other type of 
food by feeding it to the goats, pigs, rabbits, or chickens.  In fact it is a 
definate ploy to breed the rabbits  so that the maturing bunnies can be fed 
primarily with weeds and garden surplus.

Next the garden surplus is returned to the soil by composting it.

And last, definately last, we might sell some of it if it is convenient and 
profitable.  Any money so derived is view strictly as "trinkgelder" and not 
to be relied upon although some years it is a tidy sum.  We have always 
made more money selling vegetables casually and incidentally than when we did 
it as a planned enterprise.

Now, to comment on your actual question.  Replanting by dates never seemed 
to work out.  Rather we keep a weather eye out for the signs that it's time 
to replant. 

Some examples:

Green scallion arlic grown from the cheapie Chinese bulbs from the mart is 
best before the leaves harden off.  When one garlic plot is about 4" high 
and just begins to change from chartreuse to blue-green, it is time to plant 
the next one.

Loose leaf and semi-heading lettuce is invariably grown here by 
transplants.  When the seedlings are about 1 1/2" high, they are transplanted 
to the 
final bed and then another plot of seedlings is started.

When climbing peas set on their first blossom, more peas are planted 6" 
away so that as the first peas begin to fade, the next crop is climbing right 
over top of the old vines and blooming.

Almost all the tomatoes here are OP and indeterminate.  When the plant sets 
on suckers, those are snapped off and put into pots or else put right into 
the ground in a new tomato plot.  When the old vines show signs of 
exhaustion, they are grubbed up at about the time the new ones are fruiting.  
Sometimes I will be harvesting tomatoes from the fourth generation of suckers 
by 
late fall.

Cucumbers produce a good flush of high quality cukes and then go senile and 
the fruits become smaller, bitter, and oddly shaped.   We only keep 8 or so 
bush cucumber vines going at any one time.  The first are here in the 
window waiting a few more weeks until the ground warms more.  As soon as they 
are 
transplanted, more will be started.  As soon as the second are ready to 
transplant, the first will be fruiting and a third wave is seeded.  

While most of the potatoes are just eaten first as new potatoes, the mature 
potatoes, then cured and stored potatoes ... we also put out a few potatoes 
in June, July, and August so we can have the small, sweet new potatoes all 
along the summer.

For some crops there is no profit in managing them this way. Peppers and 
eggplants, for example, just keep producing until frost unabated so there's 
no 
point in planting them more than once.


James