You guys keep pushing the season for summer vegetables. Why are you not thinking spring?
Brassicas ( Cabbage, Cauliflower, Broccoli) ready to leave the cold frame and take on the cold cruel world.
Spring Vegetables
I've got my broccoli, cauliflower, and kolirabi under lights. I just got done transferring my lettuce seedlings into 4 packs and placed those back under the lights as well. Lettuce & radishes (which I'll sow directly into the garden) will let me enjoy my garden very early in the season before some things like tomatoes and peppers go into the garden.
Now if only the garden would dry out!
Those plants are looking good Dill, I'm sure you'll have them set out by the end of the week.
Mine are coming along but much smaller and need a thorough thinning.
Radishes are emerging, carrots, beets, spinach, Irish potatoes, and kohlrabi are in the ground. English peas are trucking along as are the onions.
I am behind schedule - as usual!
I'm right on schedule. Yesterday I put 6 sweet potatoes in glass jars in water. I supplement that with a couple dozen plants of varieties I don't now have and I put a couple more sweetpotatoes under plastic cloches in April in case I want more plants.
I haven't started any seeds yet but plan to start broccoli, a few cauliflower, and some lettuce indoors in 4 or 5 days........ Sugar Snap peas anytime the soil and weather are good.
I just taught spring vegetable gardening classes the last two weeks. We did focus a lot on spring veg, but also planted some good veg for late spring to early summer.
We were working on introducing ourselves to new and exciting herbs and vegetables so we planted some italian leaf chicory, wild arrugula, several asia brassicas...
Plus at home I have a large amount of spring garden sprouts! There is a checkerboard of lettuces in green, red and gold, a plethora of stem vegetables (this is my new obsession - both Italian and asian), about 6 types of radishes, some good old swiss chard for the pretty stems, and I'm getting out there now to start more seeds in the cold frame. I am afraid I started kohlrabi late. I've not grown them in this climate before.
When do you plant yours?
GGG
Same as the beets and carrots, when the first dandelion blossum appears. In my case around the first of March.
Good work everyone. Dill, you're right on schedule. My peas haven't erupted yet, it has been so dry I had to drag out my sprinkler, hard to believe. My onions have suffered terribly and look just like they did a month ago when I set them out, thanks to the dry wheat straw residue I planted them in. (When will I ever learn?)I'm hoping they will catch on now that we had one decent rain and several good soakings with the sprinkler. No sign of the radishes or beets yet either, any day now!
Farmerdill.......whoa. I just saw my first dandelion blossom today...and I know that I am more than 16 days behind you ..LOL
I once heard that every 15 miles further south means about a day's difference in the start up time of crops. You would be about 40 days ahead of me I would guess off the top of my head.
We had the coldest February in 85 years & quite a lot of snow that has just melted, so I'll be starting kind of late this year.
Wednesday it was 70 degrees out and I set up my container garden and placed my 4x4 square foot beds. I planned to get my radishes is so they could get started whenever they wanted to. Then this happened...
Did you take that pic from a treehouse? =)
Sequee - I feel your pain but the snow looks so pretty :-)
My potatoes have just started coming up, peas are growing nicely, picked two cabbages today and the spinach and mesculun are ready for harvesting. Lettuces go in tomorrow and the tomato and basil seeds are growing under lights in the garage. I really want to grow carrots but might have missed the boat this year.
My pototoes are still chitting out on the window sill. They'll be planted late again this year. I need to remove some of the cabbages to have room to plant the potatoes. They'll go in a trench in the next couple of days. The sugar snap peas and favas are blooming and making pods. They were planted under row cover in December and then really took off when the weather warmed up over the past two weeks. We've been unseasonably warm here. I expected another month of spring veggies, but with the 80F temps, my cabbages are not too happy. The collards bolted. I discovered that the collard blossom floret was quite tasty and a good substitute for rapini though. I planted one Stupice tomato seedling a week ago to see how it would fair. It was under a milk jug cloche until today. I had to remove the jug before the plant grew through the top. If it gets cold again in the next few weeks the Wall O'Waters will be going up.
Beans, squash, peppers, eggplant, escarole, carrots and basil seeds have been planted in the seed starters. Savoy cabbage, brussel sprouts, collards, cauliflower, parsnips, beets, chard and leeks filling up the bed right now, along with the sugar snaps and favas mentioned. The borage has gone bonkers with extra blossoms. I'm thankful to see the number of bees that we have. I was worrried about them.
So good to see someone else who is concerned about the bee population, without them it will be bad,
I have been lurking here and am very far behind on my spring planting, Hopefully I can make some amends this week.
I'm also worried about the bees; I usually have so, so many.
Glad I didn't plant peas when I was going to: just had 2 inches of rain and a freeze.
Yesterday I started my tomato seeds, late for me but last year I started them in late January, way too early. My coles are struggling slowly outdoors but I cheated and have supplemented with a few six packs of Bonnie's Best. As far as bees go, I asked a local beekeeper if he wants to use my place as a bee yard. I only wanted one or two hives but it may be 25 or nothing. Still haven't decided. The point in question is my place is small and the claimed necessity of using round up in front of each bee hive, since bees get very upset when a mower passes their front door. Still haven't decided yet.
Rosemary, maybe you could put down a nursery weed barrier, or old carpet scraps to kill the weeds and avoid the Roundup.
Hi daruis, yes I could but it would have to be something the beekeeper would agree too. Now back to Spring veggies, don't want to hijack the thread.
Do the bees get upset with a reel mower? What about heavy mulch for a hive doorstep?
Bees don't like anything that vibrates a lot or is noisy, and lots of other things too, like humans in dark clothing or wearing perfume. Fortunately, there are lots of other things they do like, such as nectar gathering, working hard and being left alone.
I would like to close the bee discussion please. I've about decided against having them here. There are many things that could be used to keep down grass but I'm not the one that's going to be doing it. It is up to the beekeeper and I'm pretty sure he's a Round Up man.
Well my English peas aren't that big yet, but they're alive which I'm thankful for...
Mine are much smaller, just coming out of the ground.
One of my best looking spring plants right now oddly enough is brussel sprouts... hopefully I get some before the heat hits...
Garden_mermaid - is Borage a spring blooming plant? I have some seeds that I wanted to sow this year but haven't gotten around to it yet. If I sow them now will it die off in the heat of summer?
My borage blooms all year unless we get a hard freeze.