Looking forward to spring – garden plans

Is it spring yet?

I was wandering around this past weekend without a jacket, so it certainly seems like spring. We’ve started to order seeds – though I need to find a source for purple seed potatoes – so that makes it seem like spring. There’s only a tiny bit of snow anywhere, so that looks springlike, right?

But it’s not yet March, and I live in the northeast. It’s not spring until May, most years. You don’t plant without some sort of covering until Memorial Day weekend (May 30th, this year). And our last frost date is in mid-May.

Still, I can start planning. Planning is easy.

So what should I plant this year?

P.S. My kale lasted till mid-February again this year before it started to turn brown on the tops. Definitely planting kale again.

P.P.S. We still have a few apples from our biggest tree sitting on the kitchen counter.

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19 thoughts on “Looking forward to spring – garden plans

  1. One of those trees that money grows on? Or you could assist mint and is relatives in conquering the world (that stuff is a survivor, even Arizona summers couldn’t kill it off). I have ever so vague memories of corn and sunflowers being grown in a backyard garden in Ohio.

    • I have several kinds of mint already growing – in my invasive-plants garden, and then in the hedgerow, fighting the goldenrod for dominance. SUNFLOWERS! Yes yes I have seeds for those. Need to plant those in the meadow half!

    • Last year, it got buried in snow ’round about this time, and the snow didn’t melt for a good two months. I’m talking Canyon Driveway levels of snow. So who knows? This year it might be fine!

      • Yeah. My kale last year was large enough and healthy enough that even with stupid amounts of snow, it lasted the ridiculous snow. This year it was much less healthy and large (broccoli gets huge, did you know that? It shaded the kale out), so it’s probably not going to survive even with minimal snow.

        • Broccoli gets TERRIFYING and it KEEPS GOING until you’re like “no, please, no more broccoli!” Cauliflower, sadly, does not. This year was like all the brassicae all the time for us. and then some related things like horseradish.

    • Yeah, this year’s winter has been seriously weird, doubly so after the endless snow last year. <is reminded to look at our flist overlaps again> I still can’t decide if we just have similar tastes in reading, or if I’m likely to’ve met you …

        • I see very rarely, but yes, so possibly? At his last birthday party I arrived rather late and brought vegan chocolate cake. And and I were housemates for a while, but that was two moves ago.

  2. Are there any non-apple perennial crops of interest to you that grow in your area? Asparagus, rhubarb, blackberry&relatives, strawberries, other types of fruit or nut trees? IIRC bare root transplants go in the ground pretty early. Edible ferns, if you have the sort of cool damp spot they like that lots of other things don’t? Why does one need special seed potatoes? Won’t ~any healthy potato sprout if planted? Tangentially related, you might be amused by this writeup & charts on taxonomic information about food plants.

    • I’ve tried planting asparagus twice and I just … I’m not attentive enough for it 🙁 Strawberries we might do. There’s a lot of debate about seed potatoes vs. planting a sprouted grocery store potato.

      • Very sad about the asparagus! I hadn’t realized it was high-fuss. My memory of strawberry-growing is that they did fairly well with benign neglect in spots they liked in the house I lived in during college — but then someone got enthusiastic about pruning and cliped all the runners trying to bring neatness and order, and that pretty much did in the patch. Huh — things I did not know. If “proper” seed potatoes are hard to find, but you can get purple potatoes intended as food, why not give them a try?

        • They’re not so much high-fuss as they require a low but regular level of fuss for most of the first year and I am not good at remembering to do things. We had strawberries in an apt. in college once, until the landlady mowed ’em And I may! I’ve planted chinese-store garlic before.

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