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!

Seed Swap

Last gardening season we grew a ridiculous amount of plants. I loved it, my husband loved it, neighbors loved it- but what we did NOT love was how much plants cost. Even seed is pricier than I expected. So my little head got to thinking that I could try a seed swap.



I'm not sure how many of you out there have seeds or collect them, but this might be a way to get your hands into gardening without much startup. Interested? It could go something like this:

Say you've got a packet of seeds, but you only need half. You've also got a plant that can be propogated (basically- regrown) by cuttings or division. You list whatever you've got to share. Pretty soon, there's a healthy little seed exchange list going. You take a look around, find some stuff you'd be interested in, and ask that person if they'd like to trade. Seeds can easily be mailed without much special consideration (mark "hand-stamp" on the envelope) and some cuttings are okay mailed as well.

I could get this set up pretty easily if there's interest.

I'm probably the only nerdy-enough person to want to swap seeds, though. ;)

Fall is Official

My plants are still doing their thing- just wondering how long they are gonna be able to do that. I haven't noticed much change. I did start using a lot more fertilizer (almost every watering and all natural). I have seen a marked improvement since I started doing that. I think I should have done that a long time ago, but I held off, always afraid of the stories people told of burning their plants. With how intense the garden is (so crowded) I think the plants needed more fertilizer. They really took off in the past few weeks since the change, however, the weather hasn't been AS conducive to their growth (but much more conducive to my happiness). I have a lot of unripe tomatoes and tomatillos, watermelons and lemon grass. We'll see what happens.

For now I need to decide what plants I am going to over-winter and which I am going to keep outside. Also, what I am going to do with all my pots for the plants that are not perennials (tried to buy mostly perennials, but who can do without cilantro?). The annuals will all be dead soon from frost (Oct 4?).

And how do I protect the perennials from the deep freeze they quite possibly might receive in containers? This will be a project, for sure. And an experiment. I know it has been done before, just gotta find the info for it. I've been to the library and looked online. Not much help.

Maybe the local county extension?

Anyway, I'm getting nervous about it. Of course, I can never wait for snow, but I've never had a reason for it to hold off. Now I am thinking of my poor little plants that I have raised up from seeds and taken care of and nursed back to life after droughts, etc. Poor little things.

Circle of life, I guess, esp. out here in a four-season climate!