Vegetable Garden Series: 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 gardening checklist was developed to help plan and keep track of an optimum planting schedule for the maritime Pacific Northwest, plus seeding and fertilizing information.

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 indoors, harden off, and plant
when to plant transplants (TP)
when to fertilize organically
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.

Use this list not only as a to-do list to remind you what you could be doing, but also as a journal, recording when and what you plant from year to year. Jot down notes on the left side to remember when the first tomato ripened, when there is late snow or frost and then keep your past lists in a binder for an easy and painless recording system.

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!