pm2,
You might still have time.
Give this a try, just plug in your frost dates:

Here is a link that might be useful: Grow Guide

thanks Sewobsessed! Nice tool.

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts might make it in time but I'd buy some transplants too. Just direct seed your lettuce too. Beets? Cabbage?

Dave

I don't start beets until April. Cabbage is almost ready to go outside. I start hardening off next week.

Thank you all. I think I will make it a learning experience and start the seeds, but buy some transplants as Dave suggested and see how they both do. So next year, I will know what is late and what isn't. I would like some cabbage. My local nursery won't have cool season starts available for a couple of weeks. I would have liked to get them in sooner than that, oh well. Guess I better start earlier next year.

Anyone direct sow peas this early? We are forecast for low 20s at night for the next 5 days, so I am holding off.

I start peas in cell packs. 3 seeds per cell and place under grow lights. When the seeds break through the grow medium, the flats go out on the patio. The ground is still frozen here, so it will be mid May before I can till the garden. I'll plant each cell 6" apart. I've been doing peas this way for years.
Prairiemoon2, I'm in zone 5 just south of Buffalo and started my Brussel sprouts 5 days ago and they are up.

I think two weeks from now is considerably too early to set out cole transplants in z6 mass, for what it's worth. I'm pretty much in z7 here and I don't set them out until early may. For quick-growing leafy coles then it's not too late at all to start from seed indoors.

Those cole crops you mention are typically grown as "fall" crops in the northeast, meaning they are generally started sometime in july. When started in spring those very long-season types get too much hot weather, and in many places too much exposure to the cabbage-moth. The weather-stressed plants then get totally hammered by the caterpillars.

Hi PC2, I don't knock myself out getting cole transplants out in my gardens early. It really depends on your climate. With cloudy, cool Springs - even cool-season crops won't grow much here until late May.

Leggy root-bound broccoli and such, isn't so great to set out. They grow quickly indoors so with an April 21st last frost date and not much sun and warmth for a month after that, I'm starting them today.

Something quick in the genre is dwarf bok choy. I've even moved transplants into the garden under plastic by now but that hasn't worked very well (plastic collapsed under snow and/or heavy frost damaged the plants thru the plastic). Bok choy will give us nice "cabbage" greens by the 1st of May with putting transplants under plastic in early April.

My garden soil is so wet right now, I can't cultivate for another couple of weeks. That will certainly be early enuf to plant some spinach & lettuce. I'll let my soil thermometer be my guide. Heck, it takes more than 3 weeks for spinach to germinate at 41°F and more than a week longer for them to emerge. I may as well wait 3 weeks when it will take them only a week to pop up.

Peas will go in about that time, or later. The seed from those nice sweet varieties I like to grow, has rotted in the ground rather than germinate with soil temps below 45°.

. . . . just depends on your Spring climate & soil temperatures.

Steve

Hmmmm....well, now I am wondering about whether the cool season crops will grow and be harvested before I need space for warm season veggies. I did know that the Brussel Sprouts usually mature in the Fall, but I wasn't sure when they went out. So I could hold off on those. Maybe I will give the others pots to grow in and leave my beds ready for tomatoes and peppers?

I never seem to get my act together to do succession planting.

pm2

Succession planting is tuff, Prairiemoon2.

I used to stand around during the Summer with my bag of magic beans like the village idiot. Wherever I could squeeze some bean seeds in, that's where they'd go - right thru July. However, my late July green bean crops failed too many times with the Fall frosts. So, I fell back to July 10th or 15th as the latest for sowing. Works. They were my only Summer succession crop . . . green beans.

Then I learned that if I squeezed hills of Summer squash in between the early cabbage, those plants could be pulled out after harvest and the squash would take off. Also, rather than planting green beans the last of July, I began planting snow peas . . . of all things.

There I am, the hottest week of the year, staggering around under the blazing sun planting, snow peas. Seems to work - I've harvested nice pea pods while they have been covered with frost in October. Maybe these plants are called snow peas because they can be picked during the 1st snowfall of Autumn.

Of course, there's still a chance of salad and Asian greens sown just as the Summer heat begins to abate in late August. That still counts as Summer and as Summer succession crops. But when they are harvested, it kind of feels like starting all over again in the Spring.

Steve

Steve...thanks very much for sharing your succession successes. [Say that 5 times real fast, lol] It is good to know I am not the only one who struggles with this. I think I would like to try putting in the summer squash next to maturing cabbage. Sounds like a plan. One DS really enjoys the summer squash and the other the string beans, so I usually plant beans as soon as I can get them in. I plant pole beans and just keep picking them until they stop producing well and then leave enough pods to ripen for seed for the next year.

I think summer into fall is the hardest crop to produce because I am usually hiding out in the air conditioning when it gets too hot. [g] I hope I will find an opportunity to do it this year.

pm2

Digit, do you use "early jersey wakefield" for your spring cabbage? I started those a few days ago and will try to get a decent cabbage-crop for once this year...

I agree about succession planting, it takes a lot of discipline and diligence. I've only lately been able to manage it hardly at all - must be sign of aging and correlated patience. Or I am finally the village idiot.

PNBrown, I've grown Early Round Dutch the last few years. Jersey Wakefield should be an excellent choice, however.

With such quick maturity, your Jersey Wakefield would probably be out of the way by the end of June. My "drop dead date" is July 4th for getting the late-planted Summer Squash seed in the ground. That may mean that I'm planting some of it between the maturing cabbage.

Steve