Hot weather crops (tomatoes, squash, cucumber, peppers, eggplant, corn, etc.) cannot tolerate any frost at all. However, there are a lot of cold weather crops, and a lot of them can take a little bit of frost. Some can even take a bit of snow.
At this point, I have already planted all my peas. They're even starting to sprout. (I put them in on the last day of February.) I have also planted collard greens, which are interplanted with radishes (both went in on March 7th). Today, I put out my onion sets and I interplanted them with salad greens.
What's In?
In all, this means I currently have the following in the vegetable garden:
- Chicory - looks a bit like a dandelion lettuce leaf (aster family)
- Collard - (brassica family)
- Mache - also called corn salad or lamb lettuce. It's super-cold hardy. I could have planted it a month ago. (valerian family)
- Onions - "Red Baron" (lily family)
- Radish - cherry radish (brassica family)
- Shell Peas - these need to be removed from their shell. Bush variety. (legume family)
- Snap Peas - you can eat the whole pod. Vine variety. (legume family)
- Spinach - also very cold hardy and could have gone in sooner. (amaranth family)
When I say I've 'interplanted' something, it means that I have planted both of them together in the same bed. For both radish/greens and onion/greens, you have one plant with a large, solid root or bulb under the ground but relatively few leaves living right next to a plant with a shallow, spreading, fibrous root system and lots of full, bushy leaves. The above- and belowground parts fit together like puzzle pieces. Onions and the green leaf crops are also from different botanical families, so it helps each plant avoid disease. Onions also repel small herbivores (rabbits, deer, mice), which helps to protect my succulent leaves from a being eaten. The radishes and the collards are both in the brassica family, so I don't get the disease resistance bonus with them, but radishes mature so quickly that they will be out of the bed before the collards are fully grown.
What's Next?
Some of these will need to wait until next week to ensure they're not out too early, but these are more cold weather crops that I will be adding to the garden soon.
- Beets
- Broccoli (transplant)
- Brussel Sprout (transplant)
- Cabbage (transplant)
- Carrots
- Cress
- Kale
- Kohlrabi
- Pak Choi
- Radicchio
- Swiss Chard
- Turnip
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