Spring is Here! Get Ready for Your Garden Adventures!

From The Desk Of Bill Caras

It’s all starting to happen. And very quickly, as we move from winter to spring. Sometimes we end up with a situation where March is more like an extension of winter, but this year it seems like we’re on our way to a nice spring season. But, don’t fool yourself. We’ll still have some winter that will be sneaking in on us. Maybe a bit of snow, periodic rain, and frosts possibly until the end of May, though frost danger will likely be over by mid-May.

Although March has been unseasonably warm, it still will be a while before the soil temperature is warm enough to plant crops such as potatoes. However, in about a month, it will be time to plant almost all root crops. Onions can go in earlier than anything else, and you can plant those from seed, plants, or sets. Potatoes can go in when soil temperatures are warm, probably mid-April and beyond. Other root crops, such as carrots and radishes, should be able to go in by mid-April easily. If it’s a fruiting crop, you may have to wait. When you’re talking about squash, cucumbers, eggplant, and other varieties that have seeds in them, for instance, they really can’t take any cold at all and shouldn’t be planted outside until the end of May. You can, however, start them indoors or buy starter plants.

For example, if you can start planting plants from Caras Nursery, they’ll be about eight weeks old and they’ll save you eight weeks on the other end for harvesting. In other words, something from seeds might not be ready for harvest until the 1st of September, but with eight-week-old starter plants, you could be harvesting as early as mid-July.

Planting can be done almost anytime from here on out, although there’s no big advantage to planting mid-March over mid-April, as soil temperatures are still pretty cool, which means things don’t germinate as quickly, nor do roots push into the surrounding soil as readily as when the soil temperatures are a little bit warmer.

It’s a good time to be thinking about all sorts of things you could be doing and being ready for this year’s garden adventures. Right now at the nursery, we are really building up our inventory of trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, annuals, and vegetables. I wish you a happy spring, even on those days that seem more like winter.