Black Horse Farms & Gourmet Market

10094 Route 9W

Athens, NY  12015

Phone:  (518)943-9324  Fax:  (518)943-7029

The size of a garden is determined by the size of the family.  Choose a sunny location for your garden. The most important step is to ready the soil.  Healthy fertile soil is a necessity for healthy plants.  You create healthy soil by adding organic matter.  Use aged manure, rotted leaves, peat moss, compost or packaged matter.  Adding these materials will benefit all soil types; sandy soil will hold more water and clay soil will be easier to use and less compacted.  Till the soil, adding fertilizer and lime.  Never work the soil if it is soggy. The test for this is to squeeze the soil, if it forms a ball it is too wet.  This will make the difference between high or low yields.

Now you must decide what you would like to grow in your garden and where they will go.   Do think of your garden in terms of early, main season and late. In reality, you can have a spring garden, a summer garden and a fall garden. Some vegetables may be started with seeds

A spring garden can grow spinach, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, beets and lettuces and turnip greens. I f you use transplants of broccoli, cauliflower or lettuces they should be planted 12 inches apart in a row and the rows should be 2 feet apart. These crops can withstand a frost and are harvested in spring or early summer.

A summer garden can be planted after the average last frost date.  We start planting the tender crops on our farm about May 12^th.  These crops include tomatoes, eggplant peppers, cucumbers, green and yellow squash, green beans and all the winter hard squashes.  To hasten maturity and to increase yields we use black plastic as a mulch.  This method works especially well for tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelons and cantaloupes.  The black plastic increases the temperature of the soil and helps keep weeds down.

In the summer garden you should always us two different planting dates for tomatoes.  If, for instance, you plant the variety Early Girl on May 20^th and planted Big Beef or Big Boy on June 20^th, you should have tomatoes for eating from July 15^th until frost.

You should feed your garden according to instructions of the bag of the

5-10-5 fertilizer.  If you use black plastic that is all the fertilizer that you will use.  If you do not use black plastic then you must top dress the plants by taking ½ handful of 5-10-5 fertilizer and make a ring around the plants.   

Green beans should be planted every 14 days to have a continual harvest.  Summer squash is a heavy yielder so do not over plant.

The fall garden would be the following crops such as brussel sprouts, carrots, collards, parsnips, broccoli, cabbage, beets, turnips, acorn squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins.  All of these crops are sown in May or June. With the exception of winter squash and pumpkins the above crops can be harvested until Thanksgiving.

Do not forget that most vegetables require sun.  Some vegetable such as lettuce will grow in light shade.  Corn should be planted on the edge of the garden so that it will not shade the other plants.

Please fill free to e-mail me at anything during the growing season with questions.
My e-mail address is Lloyd@blackhorsefarms.com 

A helpful link from Cornell University:

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/index.html