Gardening in the spring

Well it's already mid March. Hard to believe. We have our average last frost here in Southeast Missouri where we live about mid April or so. Basically, we are right at 5 to 6 weeks to our last average frost. Many garden plants can be planted six weeks before the average last frost, even if the temps outside are miserable.

One that can be planted any time is onions. You basically have two different ways of planting onions, with them being sets and plants. Onion sets are small onion bulbs about the size of quarters or so. You simply plant them say an inch under the soil surface with the top up and the roots down. I'd probably water them in. You can plant them a couple inches apart if you plan on pulling some for early green onions. Or you can plant them say four inches apart if you are going to let them grow into large onions. Most onion sets, when they grow larger, will be spicy and are mainly for cooking. You purchase these by the pound.

I like to plant onion plants. They are normally about 1/8- to 1/4-inch in diameter and about four inches long. Plant the rooted end down say one to two inches deep and from one to four inches apart. Water them in as well. The best part of planting onion plants is you can plant sweet onions or storage onions. There are numerous varieties to choose from. I like Candy and Copra and Texas 1015 Sweet Onions. Copra store well and are good cooking onions. The Texas 1015s are really mild and sweet. Candy is kind of between the other two. You purchase these by the bunch which contains approximately 50 to 75 onion plants. Check your favorite garden center for plants.

Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, Swiss chard, collards and other cold crops can be planted as well. Watch the 10-day forecast. If the weatherman is predicting temps that get down to the low teens or single digits, I'd wait. That's pretty cold. All of these can take a frost and a light freeze, but single digits will test them.

Everybody seems to want to plant their potatoes early. Potatoes, if they come up, won't take a heavy frost or a good freeze. You can figure say 10 days to two weeks for potatoes to come up, so you can figure this in on the planting schedule. We usually plant our potatoes about April 1 or so. They will come up mid April, and we normally don't have a heavy frost or freeze after that. Every few years it freezes and gets our potato plants.

We usually wait till the ground feels warm before we plant our sweet corn which is mid May, but you can also take the ground temperature. Corn really won't do anything till the soil temp gets to around 50 degrees or so. As a matter of fact, the seed may just lay there and rot. I used to keep track of the water temperature in the spring to target the crappie spawn. If I can find the temp probe, I'll have to check the soil temp. We normally wait till end of April to plant corn.

Lettuce can be planed any time. Radishes can as well. Spinach and carrots as well. Peas can too. Last year I planted a couple feet of radishes every two weeks or so and this worked really well. I could eat that amount of radishes before the next bunch was ready. Peas need to be planted as soon as possible. Peas take about 50 to 60 days so this puts them into mid May to June. Peas don't like the heat. We planted peas in a high tunnel last year, and it simply was too hot.

Peppers, tomatoes, squash, okra, green beans, cantaloupe and watermelon all need warm ground temps and warm nights. I'd wait a week or two after the last frost date to plant them. Most won't do anything till the nights are say 55 degrees or warmer.

So the goal this week is to get the ground ready and maybe plant some onions, peas, radishes and lettuce.