Vegetable Garden Series Part 5: Organic Vegetable Garden Checklist

The Organic Vegetable Gardening Checklist is available as a PDF file. Simply click on the picture above to open and then print it out.

This is a checklist I developed to help me keep track of our optimum planting schedule here in the Pacific Northwest, plus seeding and fertilizing information. I created this a few years ago and continue to refine it as needed.

While it is tailored to the Pacific Northwest (west of the Cascades), I think it could serve as an organizing tool for many areas by changing the dates to suit your planting schedule. Use this as a springboard and change it up based on your local newspaper and Extension Office’s “gardening to-do” lists that are published frequently.

It includes when to start seeds, when to plant transplants (TP), and when to fertilize organically, as well as a general fruit pruning schedule. It is set up as a year-long schedule in order to be able to plan an early spring and fall garden, as well as the typical summer garden.

I compiled this list after many years of cutting out different monthly “to-do” lists and putting them in a file that in the end I didn’t use because there were too many. They were from newspapers, the county extension office, and from some gardening books, especially “Growing Vegetables West of The Cascades” by Steve Solomon.

I’ve found it does double duty for me, acting as not only a to-do list to remind me what I could be doing, but also as a journal, recording when and what I planted from year to year. I will jot down notes on the left side of when the first tomato ripened, etc. or when we had a late snow or frost and then I keep past lists in a binder which makes for an easy and painless record.

The most important thing you need to know about this is: so far, I’ve NEVER done everything on the list! They are all things I’d like and hope to do, but life doesn’t always work like that- well, at least at my house.

For example, I don’t think I’ve ever started anything in January…I’d always like to, but I tend to be planning and dreaming about then, totally forgetting that I could actually be DOING something. And I’ve not really taken advantage of my cold frames in order to get some greens earlier than the 1st of May, but it’s a goal of mine, so it remains on the list.

I have found that the planning makes my vegetable gardening easier, and I hope this checklist will help you, too.

-Jami

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