Spinach and pea seedlings

lettuce, mesclun mix, spinach, and pea seedlings

A blast of cold air is expected tonight in the Southeast, both in the mountains and piedmont.  My spinach, lettuce, mustard, and chard seedlings should be fine in their beds full of dark heat-trapping soil. 

mustard seedlings with overwintered mustards

 The tomato, pepper, and eggplants seedlings (transported up to the mountains for spring break) were subjected to toughening temperatures of about 50°F during the day with plenty of wind.  Not optimal, but that's what was available.  They're tucked into the 'mechanical room' tonight, which is toasty because of the Rennai instant hot water system that serves both our hot water and radiant heating system.

Isn't it (almost) time to plant warm-season vegetables?

I'm anxious to get going, but the weather is still unsettled. In the mountains of North Carolina (Zone 6), where my main summer garden will be this year, it's going to be close to freezing tonight.

NOT weather for tomatoes, peppers, or eggplant, nor time to plant beans, squash, or cucumbers.

In our main Piedmont vegetable garden (the satellite garden), I've put in asparagus crowns and artichokes (nice perennial vegetables) to accompany the onions, garlic, and leeks already planted.

But it should be excellent weather to finish the last two raised beds (in the mountains) and fill them with soil, and hopefully plant some hardy herbs in the corners of the beds above the house.

I'm also planning to sow beets, turnips, 'small' carrots, an Asian green mix, summer-mix lettuce, and late spinach, too, as an experiment -- you never know, it might be a long cool spring!

Overwintered vegetables

In normal years, I'd have kale of various sorts, spinach, and collards looking great after overwintering. Not this year. It was a hard winter (for us).

It's a pretty grim outlook in my own vegetable garden areas; the one exception is the protected (by a brick wall) kitchen garden next to the Visitor Center (at the botanical garden where I work). I take partial credit for encouraging a four-season garden there.

There, we have lovely nice lettuces, mustards ready to harvest, but a whole array of cole crops that are rapidly sending up flowering shoots (Tuscan kale and arugula among them) following a stressful winter.

In my home garden, they didn't survive winter frosts, so hooray for the protection of the brick wall.

But I have lettuce, and mesclun mix, and arugula coming up in flats, and in the garden, and the peas are FINALLY emerging. They'll probably be blasted by early summer heat, but we'll see!

Sowing lettuce, spinach, and mustards

I managed to do a first sowing of mixed mustards, lettuces, arugula, and spinach today. I even poked some nasturtium seeds around the beds, hoping to have a few flowers before frost.

Normally, I'd have started a bit earlier with my flats, but heat and dry weather (and recovery time) has kept me inside most of this month. We've had some rain and mild weather, though, the last few days, so it's a good time to make the effort.

There's plenty of time for fall greens, to be sure, and I'll be doing successive sowings in flats through late September.

I'm also planning to use my cold frame for season extension this year, too, and may even use a second makeshift coldframe with extra hay bales from my straw bale experiment. The straw bales have matured wonderfully well, and is a technique that I'll probably try again, although my experimental results were hindered by woodchuck foraging.

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to do the bed prep in time to plant many other fall crops, but I'm hoping to be able to pull the last early tomatoes next week, and sow some beets, chard, carrots, turnips, radishes, and transplant collards, broccoli, and brussel sprouts. I'm a bit reluctant to put them down in the satellite garden (a prime woodchuck foraging area) though -- I might as well just feed him/her directly! A fellow gardener suggested apples as a good bait -- it's worth a try.