Bring It On, Spring!

Early in the week, I got the news. Friday's forecast called for 65 degree temperatures, followed by a weekend of rain. You know what that means? It means that I plant seeds Friday and walk away smiling, and mother nature is stuck theoretically dragging 50 feet of hose all around the yard doing the watering. Sweet! Let's go zone 6, time to mobilize!

Laura's Comprehensive and Probably Still Too Ambitious Spring Garden Plan

Peas: Apparently, the specific date peas should be planted depends on your religious affiliation. If you are extremely religious, peas are planted on St. Joseph's day. If you are only moderately religious, but have a solid appreciation for holidays that allow for excessive alcohol consumption, then St. Patrick's day is your pea planting time. If you are a secular granola crunchy hippie, then March 15th is your day. Regardless, all these bits of advice seem to be different ways to say the same thing: plant your peas in mid-March, as soon as the ground can be worked.

When did I plant peas? I threw seeds down on March 21st, in between grocery shopping and picking Sophia up from school, because that's when I finally got around to it. Make your own assumptions. And of course, I planted two different varieties but didn't keep track of which went where, and accidentally dug them up a week later when fertilizing the beds. Let the games begin!

Garlic, Onions, Shallots: These bulbs got planted in the fall and are coming up nicely! Three 4x4 beds of garlic gave us enough harvest that we finally ran out only last week. All these can be planted now for fall harvest as well, and you can get onion sets and shallot bulbs at most big box home stores. You might have to head to Agway for the garlic though. You can try planting store garlic if you like, but those are generally sprayed with a chemical that prevents them from sprouting, so it's a bit risky.

Root Vegetables - Radishes, Turnips, Beets & Carrots: Except for the carrots, I always have easy success with this cool weather crop group. Carrot seeds don't seem to like the fact that I'm going to forget to water them regularly while they are germinating, while the others seem to be more flexible about this. That's why I like planting seeds right before the rain is due! The other seeds I pretty much just broadcast around the plot, rake or poke them into the ground and then thin as necessary.

Lettuces & Greens: My favorite thing to do is to buy a mesclun salad seed mix and lightly cover the seeds in the ground in a 2x4 foot patch. In a few weeks, you have a colorful mix of salad greens that will grow back if you cut them an inch or two above the soil line when harvesting. Easy & fresh salad all spring and early summer! If you want to be really particular ( I won't mention any names, but someone in this house meets that description), you can buy the greens separately and make your own mix. Mesclun mix usually has endive, mustard, radicchio, lettuces and a variety of other random colorful greens. This is a great beginner gardener crop, and it can really save you some money when you compare the price of seeds to bagged grocery store salads. My other favorite spring planted greens are spinach, arugula, swiss chard and bok choy, which I usually plant separately instead of mixed together.

I thought I would take it easy this spring, and not start too many summer vegetables under lights in my basement. However, the above scheme does not sound much like taking it easy. Check back for further status reports!