Getting Your Soil Ready and an Early Spring Crop

The ground can become leeched of nutrients after a long growing season so it is next-to-imperative that you get that soil ready before planting or else you risk sub-par results. If you can, add compost or "cured" manure to the soil before setting your seeds or plants out. You can also make a trough where your plants will be located and put in crushed eggshells, matchsticks, coffee grounds (for those coffee drinkers out there), etc. The point is to get nutrients back in the depleted soil which in turn helps your plants fend off diseases, combat pest attacks, and generally have a more robust health record.

If compost is not feasible for you because of budget restraints, you might want to check out the book Lasagna Gardening for Small Spaces: A Layering System for Big Results in Small Gardens and Containers by Patricia Lanza. (There is a version for larger gardens as well.) It has a lot of great ideas about getting those amazing nutrients back in the soil without too much mess or hassle.


Once you're happy with your newly nutritioned (can I make that up?) soil, you are ready to plant. A great early crop can be found in leafy salad greens such as mesclun, romaine, and spinach. Generally, these types of plants thrive with the cooler temperatures of spring and fall but will bolt (get gangly and go to seed) if planted too late in the summer when temperatures soar. It's even been told that lettuce seed will germinate on snow, although I've never felt the desire to give that one a try. I do have lettuce that has been outside all winter; and while it has not gotten very big, they certainly have grown.

My advice: do not wait too long to get them out there.

Growing lettuce is one of the easiest gardening tasks you will have. To begin, I simply prepare the soil by dampening it and tilling a bit to provide a place for the seeds to "stick". I then scatter the lettuce seeds over the soil without covering them. (This advice would be the same for in-ground as well as container gardens.) There are two schools of thought about how thickly to sow as well as thinning; seed packets generally say to thin the seedlings after a period of growth, but many humans (I'm one of them) say to let them be. Allowing them to be slightly crowded encourages the plants to stay smaller, ensuring that you will have an abundance of tender "baby" greens (which are more delicious, anyway, in my opinion!).

A few other early spring plants are peas (I prefer Sugar Snap), sweet peas (a flower), carrots, onion, garlic, and broccoli. You may be surprised by the variety of things you can start planting now. Planting dates vary across the country so make sure you check accordingly before getting your seeds in the soil. A county extension can help with this and is a great resource for gardeners. Keep that one bookmarked in your browser!

Happy Gardening!