Spring is a busy season for planting and sowing, busy as in “buzzy” since bees and insects have joined the show in the vegetable patch!
You need to clean, sow, repot, transplant, and more if you want to harvest any vegetables during the high season.
The weather and your location both play a major part in timing the sowing for each variety. Luckily, there are a few basic guidelines that are common to almost every planting zone.
Here’s a calendar with the steps on what to plant when.
early spring is the best time to clean the vegetable patch up. Spade to break the soil up and eliminate weeds, add organic fertilizer to enrich the soil.
Now is also the time to hoe and run the cultivator along the growing beds. The goal is to upend the crust that might have formed over the winter. Prime vegetables can be sown under a cold frame, in a greenhouse, in plastic growing tunnels or other devices to ensure a decent amount of shelter. Carrot, radish, cabbage, onion, green pea, etc. will be ready for harvest as early as May!
In warmer indoor settings, like your kitchen windowsill or a heated greenhouse, you can start sowing summer vegetable seeds: eggplant, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, leek…
In mid-spring, the soil warms up and risks of freezing have subsided. You may sow directly in the ground your nasturtiums, ipomoea, lupines and nigella to decorate the vegetable patch and attract beneficial insects. These also serve as decoys that draw pests like large white away from your harvest crops.
Depending on the ground temperature, sow your vegetables.
In late spring, the ground is warm enough at 60 to 68°F (15 to 20°C) to welcome transplanted seedlings and nursery pot-bought celery, pickle, bean, tomato, cucumber, zucchini, bell pepper and melon.
The whole spring calendar comes down to two things: how much shelter you can give the seed, and how warm the ground is. Use this table to place each crop in the right slot.
| Crops | When to sow | Soil temperature | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carrot, radish, cabbage, onion, green pea | Early spring | — | Cold frame, greenhouse or plastic growing tunnel |
| Eggplant, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, leek | Early spring | — | Warm windowsill or heated greenhouse |
| Nasturtium, ipomoea, lupine, nigella | Mid-spring | — | Direct in the ground, among the vegetables |
| Spinach, onion, radish | Mid-spring | 45 to 50°F (8 to 10°C) | Direct in the ground |
| Carrot, chicory, cabbage, lettuce, pea | Mid-spring | 50 to 55°F (10 to 12°C) | Direct in the ground |
| Celery, bean, tomato, cucumber, courgette, bell pepper, melon | Late spring | 60 to 68°F (15 to 20°C) | Transplanted seedlings or nursery pots, outdoors |
Where the soil still lags behind these figures, the seed simply waits, so there is nothing to gain by sowing early.
When planning out your vegetable garden, don’t over-estimate yourself, especially if you haven’t got much time to dedicate to gardening. Adapt the size of your vegetable patch to the needs of your family.
Stage your sowing in time. Only plant a small number of seeds for any given species at two-week intervals. This is the best way to eat fresh vegetables, simply harvesting the mature fruits as they take turns ripening.
Also, in order to reduce the number of treatments you might need to apply, select varieties that are hybrid. These were bred to resist diseases (F1 class). Lastly, ensure that your planting rows are spacious enough for all your plants to thrive.
Laure Hamann
Those first harvests lend themselves particularly well to a spring detox course.
