Plant spring vegetables to enjoy a productive harvest from your garden long before your main summer crops come in. Cool weather vegetables include perennials, over-wintering varieties and swift-growing spring-planted crops. No matter where you live, you can plant each of these kinds of spring vegetables and bring a delicious early harvest to your table.
Things You'll Need
Spading fork Aged compost, or composted cow manure Straw mulch Perennial spring vegetable bulbs or crowns, such as asparagus, rhubarb and walking onions Garlic bulbs Seed for overwintering vegetable varieties, such as parsnips, purple sprouting broccoli and chard Seed for early-spring-planted vegetable varieties, such as peas, radishes, spinach, lettuce and Asian greens
Instructions
1. Plan ahead to prepare a suitable planting location for your spring vegetable garden. Observe the sunlight in your yard in late winter and spring months. Select locations that are sunniest that time of year, even if they are shady later in the summer. Assess your spring soil conditions. Build raised beds or add sand or organic matter if necessary to improve drainage during spring rains.
2. Select a permanent location for planting perennial spring vegetable crops like asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, walking onions and multiplier onions. Prepare rich, fertile beds for perennial spring vegetables because they will be relying on the nutrients from those beds for many years. Turn in ample quantities of home compost or composted cow manure with a spading fork. Plant perennial spring vegetables in early September to allow them to establish a good root system before winter sets in. These vegetables start as corms or bulbs which you can plant them directly in place in your garden bed. Apply a thick, light layer of mulch over your spring perennial crops each winter to help protect them from the negative effects of freezing and thawing. Apply a top-dressing of compost each summer to help these crops grow strong again after spring harvest season is through.
3. Plant overwintering vegetable varieties during the summer before your desired spring harvest. Harvest these plants the following spring and early summer when their growth begins again after winter dormancy. Plant parsnip seeds as early as the ground can be worked in a location where they can remain all summer and overwinter for harvest the following spring. Plant garlic cloves directly in their place in your garden bed in early September. Start purple sprouting broccoli, chard and overwintering varieties of carrots and cauliflower in seed trays either indoors under lights or outside in cold frames or transplant beds around the first of July, and transplant them to their overwintering beds in early September. Mulch all overwintering crop beds with a light layer of well-aged compost topped with several inches of straw.
4. Plant early-spring-planted salad vegetables like peas, spinach, radishes and lettuce as soon as the ground has thawed. Don't wait wait until your last frost to plant these early cold-hardy green crops. Plant peas in a 2-inch-deep trench, about 2 inches apart. Cover them lightly with soil and then with straw mulch to keep them cool and moist. Spinach, radishes, and lettuce need only be scratched lightly into the soil, or broadcast on the surface then covered with a dusting of light potting soil. Plant a first succession of early root crops for spring harvest as well. Beets, turnips and early potato varieties all benefit from cool soil to sprout and form sweet, small tubers for harvest by mid- to late June. Beet and turnip greens from thinnings add to your early spring salads, and can be stir fried with cold-hardy Asian greens like baby pac choi and tatsoi.
5. For even earlier pickings, start Asian greens, lettuce and spinach indoors in seed trays and transplant 2-inch seedlings out as soon as the ground can be worked. Harvest all these vegetables by the end of June to make way for heat-tolerant summer varieties.
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