So, it’s officially 2025, which means, if you haven’t been thinking about your vegetable garden for this year, now is the time to start. With last year still fresh in our minds, it’s time to start making plans. Or maybe you have never grown any of your own vegetables and you are thinking 2025 will be the year you finally get started. Or maybe you’ve made a couple of attempts at growing your own tomatoes or possibly some herbs with limited success. Well, we have some good news for you. The sign-ups are available for our Spring class on growing vegetables.

Each year we teach our Urban Gardener - Growing Vegetables classes for those who want to get started growing their own vegetables or for those who just want to become a more successful gardener.

There are a variety of reasons people grow their own vegetables. Some people have come to realize that home grown vegetables just taste better than store bought and you can’t get much fresher produce than walking out to your back yard or balcony to pluck a fresh tomato for your sandwich or salad. Others begin growing their own vegetables as a way to offset some of the cost of food. Yes, you’ll have some startup costs, but after that your financial commitment is primarily seeds, water, nutrients, and your time. Either way, working out in the garden, growing your own produce, and then eating that produce is good for your soul.

In this class we cover a variety of topics on how to get started and be successful growing your own vegetables. We’ll talk about soil nutrient management and what you can do to boost both nutrients and organic matter in your soil in natural ways.

We all know that fertilizers can be confusing with all those numbers. We’ll decode those for you so you will know how much fertilizer you need and which particular fertilizers you need for you unique situation…and each situation is different.

We’ll talk about how to plan your garden, how to arrange your crops, and which vegetables grow best here in NE Oklahoma. From there we’ll move to seed selection and seed starting as compared to planting transplants. Some vegetables you can start from seed outdoors while others do best going in the ground as transplants.

In addition, we’ll cover different types of gardens. There are a variety of strategies you can use to grow your own vegetables - everything from in-ground gardens to growing vegetables on the balcony of your apartment. And we’ll talk about how to manage insects and disease in an environmentally friendly manner…basically, everything you need to know to go from seed to supper.

The class will be on February 1^st (which is a Saturday) at the Tulsa County OSU Extension Office (4116 E. 15^th). We will begin at 9:00 am and finish about 3:00 pm with a break for a provided pizza lunch. Attendees will also get a variety of handouts to take home. The cost is $30. You can sign up for this class on our website www.tulsamastergardeners.org. We hope to see you there!

You can get answers to all your gardening questions by calling the Tulsa Master Gardeners Help Line at 918-746-3701, dropping by our Diagnostic Center at 4116 E. 15th Street, or by emailing us at mg@tulsamastergardeners.org. Photo: Tom Ingram