Early to mid April happens to be the best time to start transplanting cool weather plants into the garden. If you are using cold frames or placing row covers over your plants you can even start transplanting much sooner. This is also a great way to extend the garden season especially in areas that are much cooler such as in northern states. I like to do the first tiling sometime in April and do enough for adding all my springtime crops.
This year I have decided on growing spinach, lettuce, potatoes, onions, and sun king broccoli which should be able to withstand the hot months and produce a decent crop. I am still working on whether I should grow peas and or radishes. Most likely I will plant pea because I bought a whole packet of seeds in the beginning of the year and would be a waste not to use them.
Even though these are normally springtime plants I can still plant them later and use them for a fall time crop instead. Normally I plant kale and broccoli for a fall crop, but I decided that I would use them for a springtime crop instead. I want to see if I can get a much better crop during the spring or if the fall is where I should keep my kale and broccoli plants.
This week was the perfect time to get my spinach and kale into the garden and the weather is still cool enough that they should be able to provide some great leaves for consumption. I still have my lettuce and broccoli growing in pots outside, but they are not quite ready for planting. I still have some time before the hot weather comes around and ends the spring season. I would say in less than a month I will be putting my lettuce into the garden.
I still have seeds that need to be planted indoors including many flowers that include cosmos, statice, calendula, amaranthus, queen annes lace, and some more wildflowers. I already have six containers of both dill and alyssum at the moment, but I need to start growing many of the other flowers that I need to support my garden and plants. I will hopefully start getting them planted indoors and placing them under lights this week.
