I have a lot of information stored on my cranial hard drive that can be, at times, hard to retrieve. It is for that reason I thrive on tip sheets and post-it-notes in notebooks. Sometimes I can even remember where I put the book that has my notes. I have gone as far as writing fertilizer spreader settings on the wall of my garage. A while back, I stumbled across the Ten Commandment of Fall Gardening. This list is what has to be the closest to the end all of all the fall gardening lists. Especially #1, Thou shalt not read gardening books and magazines published north of a line running from Dallas to Charleston, or West of San Antonio.
I believe, is the most important gardening commandment is #3, Prepareth the soil well before thou planteth thy crop. Gardening is like almost everything else in life. It’s about the preparation. I am a huge fan of fertilizing before you plant. If you are using all-natural fertilizer you need to start two weeks earlier than if you are using the synthetics.
Number 6 Choose ye adapted vegetable species and varieties is another one that sticks out to me. Yes I have had success with head lettuce but my failures tend to overshadow them. On the other side of this, one of our former employees planted an artichoke starter plant. Not even on the second page of the list for our area of the world and a large number of people told her not to waist her time. She babied it through the winter and harvested around a dozen artichokes. Her success is the exception rather than the rule but remember that gardening rules are rarely carved in stone.
Click here to The 10 Commandments of Fall Gardening in it’s entirety!