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Vegetables: When Is It Time to Plant?



I know some gardeners that plant their potatoes or tomatoes in the garden on the same day every year. Not me. I think planting time is best based not only on the last frost date in your garden, but also the soil temperature and up-to-date weather predictions. And of course, late frosts do occur unexpectedly and can wipe out your tomato or pepper seedlings. So don’t jump the gun.

 

These raised beds are draining nicely but are still too cold and wet to plant

The internet has many guides and suggestions for when you should plant, but I think an experienced next door neighbor probably has a better sense of when to plant. So, for example, one internet source says the last frost for Cornish Flat, NH is May 15, while another internet sources says June 11 to 20. That’s over a month of difference! But perhaps an old timer in your town can advise you, depending on your exact location.

 
My vegetable garden is in a low spot, with hills on either side. Cold air slides downhill, so I am cautious about planting too early. Often there is a late frost in my garden, but not around my house which is 15 or 20 feet uphill. Rivers, lakes and the ocean can have a warming effect, too. The closer you are to the Connecticut River or the Atlantic Ocean, the sooner you can plant.
 
It is often thought that a full moon will cause late frosts. But a friend of mine used the frost data his mother had collected over decades and compared it to the phases of the moon. He observed that the moon does not seem to affect frost dates.
 

Soil thermometers are useful tools for deciding when to plant

Soil temperature is important, too. Seeds are genetically programmed not to germinate if the soil is too cold. That makes sense: seedlings are tender and many can be damaged by frost. So you can plant spinach or peas seeds “as early as you can work the soil”, according the package, but they may not germinate for weeks if the soil is cold – and they may rot.

 
Seeds can rot in cold, wet soil. Corn seeds are particularly susceptible to rot, and many are treated with fungicides to prevent rotting. But as organic gardeners, we should avoid treated seeds.
 
If you are in a hurry, can warm up the soil. First, rake off any fall leaves or other mulch from you garden beds. That will allow the sun to warm the soil, and air to evaporate some of the melted snow and spring rains that make the soil soggy.
 
Raised beds help with drainage. My vegetable garden is near a stream and the water table is high, especially in spring when it is occasionally flooded. Each fall I shape my beds for spring, raking soil into the beds before covering them with leaves. In the spring I rake the leaves into the walkways, but after the soil has warmed up in mid-June I will put down hay and newspapers around my plants.
 
I you want to warm the soil and kill any annual weeds that start growing early in the season, you can cover the soil with clear plastic. If you get what is called “4-mil” plastic, you can re-use it. Flimsy stuff sold to painters is not usually reusable. Be sure to pin down the edges, or better yet, put soil or boards over the edges to keep wind from lifting the plastic and cooling the soil.
 
On a sunny day the temperature under the plastic can exceed 100 degrees, “solarizing” weeds and killing them. Perennial weeds and grasses will have their tops browned, but it will not kill the roots unless you do this for a long time.
 
So what seeds can you plant early? Spinach, peas, lettuce can be planted 3 to 6 weeks before last frost. In the fall I let a few lettuce plants flower and go to seed. Those seeds fall on the soil and start up much earlier than I plant any lettuce. But I also start lettuce indoors to get nice sized plants in the ground in May for early eating. Carrots, beets, onion sets and radishes can go in the ground a week or two before last frost.
 
Tomato, pepper and squash family seedlings I plant in mid-June, well after last frost because I want the soil to reach at least 60 degrees before planting. Because I am bothered by a beetle that eats my cukes and squash I start those indoors instead of by seed outdoors. When the vines are about 6 inches long I plant them outdoors. By then they will survive any beetle munching.
 
Before planting any seedling outdoors, be sure to harden off the plants. That means to start putting the seedlings outdoors a few hours a day and increasing their exposure over the period of a week or so. You should do this for store-bought seedlings, too, as they have probably been protected from sunburn and windburn inside a greenhouse. But ask at the nursery if they are hardened off.
 

Row cover with hoops helps to keep insects off and keep plants warm

You can protect seedlings from light frost by covering them with something called row cover, Reemay, or Agribon. These are spun agricultural fabrics that come in 5 foot wide swaths that you can cut to fit your rows. Unlike plastic sheeting, this stuff breathes and allows moisture to pass through it. Buy the wires sold to support it and form hoops over your plants. It will also keep bugs off your plants, but you need to remove it when vine crops start to bloom – they are insect pollinated.

 
The more you garden, the more you know. But we never know exactly when a late killing frost will come. So I am always the last on the block to get my garden planted – but my plants catch up.
 
Henry is a gardening consultant and the author of 4 gardening books. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a SASE if you wish a response by mail.

Is It Time to Plant Yet?



 
Some folks in my part of New England plant seeds in the ground on Mother’s Day and seedlings on Memorial Day weekend. Not me. Others use Mother Nature’s clues: plant spinach when the forsythia blooms, potatoes when the leaves of an oak are the size of a mouse’s ear. That sounds good, but who really knows how big a mouse’s ear is?
 
 
I start a lot of seedlings indoors, some as early as February, and (like any good mother) I am protective of my young. I only put out plants or plant seeds when I am sure that they will succeed. So I plant my tomatoes and other heat-loving plants in June, generally after the tenth of the month. Those heat lovers include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and all the vine crops – cukes, squash, pumpkins. Even broccoli, which is frost-hardy in the fall, does not go in early. It is much more sensitive now to frost.
 
 

A soil thermometer will tell you if it’s warm enough to plant

What I have found is that soil temperature is very important to success. Yes, you can plant peas or spinach “as soon as the soil can be worked” (as described on the packages), but those seeds won’t germinate and grow if the soil is in the forties. And the seeds can rot. Seeds have triggers that tell them when to grow. That’s why starting seedlings indoors on heat mats speeds things up. The seeds think it is summer when the soil is 72 degrees. Generally the soil must be 60 degrees to get a good quick germination.

 
 
So how do you determine the soil temperature? Buy a thermometer designed for it. Generally these thermometers look like a meat thermometer. The probe is 6 inches or so long. Push 3 inches into the soil and wait for a reading. I gather digital ones now exist, too.  
 
 
What can you do to warm your soil up? If you’re in hurry, rake off winter mulch and expose the soil to the sun. Do that now. Then you can cover the soil with a plastic sheet, either clear or black. I’ve found clear plastic is best. Sun heats the soil directly and the plastic holds in the heat (but be sure to seal the edges of the sheet with soil to keep the heat in). On a sunny afternoon in the sixties, the temperature under the plastic can exceed 100 degrees.
 
 

Raised beds warm up quicker than flat beds in spring

Another advantage of warming the soil with plastic for a few days is this: you can cook and kill annual weeds. They are sensitive to high temperatures when they first come up. Dandelions or witch grass, which are perennial, have root systems you know and hate. A few hot days under plastic will only make them giggle.

 
 
I’m not keen on rototilling. Yes, it will make your garden look very pretty, not a weed in sight. But for some weeds, each scrap of weed will produce a new plant. Chop up some witch grass and watch it take off! And if you get the top six inches of your garden warmed up, and then rototill, all that cold soil below will cool down the rest.
 
 
I like to think of the all the living things in the soil as my friends. Earthworms, beneficial fungi and bacteria, little arthropods? All of these help to break down organic matter and make it available in a form useable by my plants. And I think of the layers of soil as the floors of an apartment building. Some people like the penthouse, others want a ground floor room. When you rototill, you jumble up the order of things and put the penthouse in the basement. 
 
 

Hoe, garden fork, and potato fork are 3 useful tools for making garden beds

So how do I prepare my garden? I create wide, raised beds using only hand tools. I have a 5-tined potato fork or hoe that has been in my family for 50 years or more. I use it to loosen the soil and shape the beds. But you can use an ordinary garden fork and a hoe to accomplish the same. I pull up soil from the walkways to raise the level of the beds and shape them. I try to disturb the soil as little as possible.

 
 

Most of my raised beds are between 24 and 36 inches wide and are 6 to 8 inches above the walkways, which I keep narrow, so as to not waste space. Generally they have no wood sides, though I do use planks to contain the soil in a few. I like a wood-sided raised bed for growing carrots, as they need fluffy soil with no rocks in order to get to be 12 inches long, my goal each year. With wood-sided beds you can build whatever soil you want by mixing in the ingredients.

 
 
Before putting your plants in the ground, harden them off. Whether you bought your tomatoes or started them indoors yourself, they can get sunburned or wind-burned if they go outside to a full day’s sun without some preparation. Start with 3 hours of morning sun, then add some afternoon sun. Watch for signs of stress. After 5 to 7 days of protection from too much wind and sun, they will be ready for planting
 
 
I like to do some cold season plantings, and have a cold frame to get a few things growing in April. But I also know that my tomatoes planted in mid-June will catch up with any planted on Memorial Day weekend. Each of us has to figure out what works best.
 
 
Henry is the author of 4 gardening books. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com. Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.
 

Early Spring Chores



The snow is gone, and I am ready for gardening. And although I have been able to do a few things in the garden, the soil is wet and easily compacted, so I can’t do much until it dries out.

 

A plank can be used to distribute your weight on wet soil to minimize soil compaction

Many of my flower beds are six feet or more deep (from front to back). This means I can’t stand on the lawn and reach to the back to remove leaves or sticks. I don’t want to walk into the beds and risk compacting the soil. Plants get their oxygen through their roots, and compacted soil has little space for air. The solution? I place a plank on the soil and walk on that. It spreads out my weight.

 

I generally advise gardeners to wait until the lawn gets green before raking out the sand and dirt that was dumped by the snowplows. I say this because dormant grass is easily pulled up by vigorous raking. But this year I had a lot of sand, and I feared the mess would choke out large sections of lawn near the road. So I used a plastic rake, and raked gently, and I was able to clean up with very little damage to the lawn.

 

Other chores? If you have decorative grasses in your perennial border, it is important to cut back last year’s stems now, before new growth occurs. I don’t cut back decorative grasses in the fall: I like to see them standing up in the snow, waving in the winter wind.

 

Cut back decorative grasses now before growth starts

I have a big clump of tall maiden grass, Miscanthus sinensis, a variety called ‘Morning Light’. Last year it had started growing before I got around to cutting it back, and there was no way to remove the bottom 8 inches of dead grass, which was unsightly. This year I cut it back low to the ground early and won’t have that problem. Hand pruners work best for cutting back the stems.

 

The moles and voles always make a mess of the lawn, digging up soil and leaving lumps and squiggles of soil they displaced in winter. I’ve been cleaning that up now, too. I have an aluminum grain scoop/shovel that is 14 inches across and very lightweight. I use a short-tined rock rake to dislodge the lumps and get them onto my shovel. I consider this soil a gift from the rodents. It is good soil that I use to fill holes and top-up raised beds that need some added topsoil.

 

Although I know people have already started their peas and spinach, my soil is awfully cold for them. Yes, you can plant the seeds when the soil is 50 degrees F, but waiting until it is 60 degrees makes sense to me. Seeds germinate much more quickly in warmer soil, so there is less chance of the seeds rotting.

 

Soil thermometer

A soil thermometer is not an expensive item and will last a lifetime. I have a few, and they all have dials like old-fashioned oven thermometers. The sensor is right on the tip. Keep that in mind when checking soil temperatures. If you push the tip down 6 inches, the soil will be cold at this time of year – but you are not planting seeds that deep. Instead measure the soil temperature an inch down, which means holding the thermometer upright for a couple of minutes while it adjusts. Otherwise it will fall over – hence the impulse to push it down deep.

 

Near the end of April I moved my cold frame out of the barn and into the garden. This is a cedar box with polycarbonate lids that allow sunshine into the box, and hold heat in. The polycarbonate helps diffuse the light, reducing chances of cooking the plants. The lids are on a slant, and open on hinges.

 

After a couple of sunny days the soil inside the box had warmed up, and I planted seeds of lettuce, kale and carrots inside. Once they sprout, I’ll lift the lids a little each sunny day to allow air circulation and to moderate temperatures. The box itself is 8 feet long and 2 feet across. I got mine from Gardeners Supply (www.gardeners.com or 888-833-1412).

 

Meanwhile, indoors, I have 5 flats of seedlings growing under lights. These require daily attention, though not much. I water, and I pluck out or snip off extra seedlings that grow. I want just one tomato plant per cell, for example, though I always plant 2 per cell just to be sure that I get one to grow. It’s hard to kill a cute little tomato plant, but I know that the survivor will do better if it’s not competing for water and nutrients.

 

Other early plants I have started include lettuce, kale, purple cauliflower, 3 kinds of flowers and Happy Rich. Happy Rich is a non-heading broccoli I get from Johnny’s Seeds. It produces the equivalent of side shoots on regular broccoli, but it is quicker to produce, and keeps on cranking out its green blossoms well into the fall. The part we eat is really the buds of its flowers. I have never seen Happy Rich seedlings for sale in a nursery, so I start my own each year.

 

Another recent chore involved taking the straw mulch off my strawberry plants. Once the plants and the new plants started by runners are awake and growing, I’ll cut any runners connected to the mother plant.

 

There will still be frosty nights here, and raw rainy days. But I know the worst is over, and summer is just around the corner.

 

Read Henry’s blog posts at https://dailyuv.com/gardeningguy. Henry is the author of 4 gardening books, and is a Lifetime Master Gardener. E-mail him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net.