I have had cabbages, kale, collards and radiccio all winter, uncovered, and mixed lettuce, chard, and spinach under a frost blanket. The spinach is starting to go to seed. I planted them about October, but you can plant the kale and collards now. They will grow slowly until it warms up, then take off. Kale is biennial so you can keep it through summer. Check with your nursery what date to plant snow and English peas...its pretty quick. This is my first year doing a winter garden and I love it! No going out to water, and virtually no bugs. Also have sorrel, parsley, mustard and rosemary. Thyme,sage and oregano are alive, but look ratty. If you are doing just ornamentals a good nursery should have early flowers like poppy,snaps, dianthus,wallflower,bellis,diacia, arctotis, etc.

I cut down the pea foliage(mid July) and add compost, then transplant four week old broccoli and cauliflower. This gives me a second crop of broccoli+cauliflower which are harvested end of Sept. to first week of Oct. Summer lettuce transplants(slobolt) are interplanted among the four week old cole transplants. This gives me lettuce when tomatoes come in. June 1, I transplant squash or pepper plants in areas where I pick spinach. Spinach beds are done by mid-June and the other plants take over until frost. I've also used the old spinach space for a second fall cole crop...direct seeded. Pole beans can be planted June 1 on the outer edge of a pea bed where they will climb on bamboo poles. Beans come in about 60 days from germination and will go until frost. Bottom line, (but this is Z4) make sure you have transplants in by July 1 for fall, or at least seeded. Beets+carrots+lettuce. Light levels(the sun) start to get low here by mid-Aug. with shorter growing days.

Plant early, but it's a gamble: I was able to plant before Valentine's Day in 2010 because we made raised beds using Sq.Ft Gardening soil mix in 2009. The weather had been nice previously in January, so it was easy to prepare the beds & another days of good weather in early Feb, so I went ahead. Late Feb wasn't so nice, so some seeds rotted in cold soil, but others sprouted fine. Our daughter lives in the Kent Valley & plants much earlier than us in the foothills. She has large pots on a concrete patio that are warmer, so can plant peas around a tomato cage & have pods showing in late April. Amazing microclimate difference! Try multiple plantings 2 weeks apart. One of them surely will sprout & grow. Then use the other failed planting areas for other vegetables without turning the soil -- just poke or sprinkle & plant. Better yet... Check the soil temp 1st (see the link below) I use a digital therm inside a baggie. They're less than $10 at a business center Costco in the restaurant supply bins. Speed things up by presprouting peas: Use the top of your refrigerator as your warm spot. Marianne Binetti suggests inside a folded dishcloth, but we use a large square of old tshirt. Just be sure to not delay in getting them out when sprouted since they grow fast & tangle easily. When my kids were young they liked presprouting because they could see the sprouting tail. I had to encourage them once they see it to get it outside. When we waited we broke off a lot of the sprouts when attempting to separate. Prewarm planting area: Use your cold frame as long as you can remove it when the peas take off. They won't want the heat on warmer spring days. Other ideas would be covered PVC or bamboo hoops, old window supported on sides by bricks or blocks, or even easier upside down clear plastic tote propped up on one side with 2 sticks in the corners. Protect the area after planting Try laying out upturned plastic flats or plastic netting. Squirrels, crows, or even neighbor cats will disturb the freshly prepared soil.If you're preparing a large area & only planting part of it -- cover the entire thing with the flats or supported plastic netting. Ann Lovejoy suggested that in a book & it worked well with empty water bottles over sticks then the netting on top. She also suggested orange peels as a cat deterrent, so we decorated our soil so to speak because we had a neighbor cat that insisted on using my nice raised beds as a toilet especially after I turned over the mulch. When I stopped turning the soil the cat stopped digging, but still soiled right on top even on burlap bags as mulch. I like cats, so when it kept coming back even when I scared it off or sprayed it with a water bottle I was glad to discover the netting trick. Fortunately, they moved away. Hope that helps, Corrine Here is a link that might be useful: temp hits 40, plant peas

Sherry, Well, I think you can plant them and have limited success. Onions have to be in the ground and achieve a certain amount of growth before bulbing is induced. Since bulbing is induced by a combination of daylength and temperature, it is going to happen when the daylength-temperature combo is achieved, whether the onions have been in the ground for one week, one month, or whatever. So, that is why we have to plant onions so very early--to get maximum growth before initiation of the bulbing process begins. Most onions needs to be in the ground a minimum of 90 to 100 days before bulb initiation starts in order to size up fully, and some need 100 to 120 days. Short day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength (hours of sunlight) reaches about 10-12 hours in combination with the right temperature. Intermediate day-length onions need 12-14 hours days to bulb up. Long day-length onions will begin to bulb up once the daylength is 14-16 hours and the temperature is right, which is why the long daylength onions are not grown in our part of the county. (Our daylength here maxes out around 14 hours.) So, if the onions go into the ground late, they will grow and they still will bulb up once bulb initiation occurs. They'll just be smaller when bulb initiation occurs, thus, they will be smaller at maturity than onions that were planted earlier. One reason that short day-length and intermediate day-length onions planted in the southern third of the country get bigger than those EXACT same varieties grown in the upper 2/3s of the country is that our weather allows us to plant the onions up to 5 months prior to bulb initiation, and the northern states' colder weather does not allow them to plant until approx. 75 days before bulb initiation. So, if you plant late this year, you'll get onions that are "northern-sized" instead of "southern-sized", but you'll still get onions! If you don't mind knowing you'll get smaller onions, go ahead and go for it. It would be a good learning experience if you've never grown onions before. Some commonly-sold short day-length onions are TX 1015Y (aka Texas Sweet or Texas Supersweet), Yellow Granex, White Bermuda, Southern Belle Red and Contessa. Some commonly-sold intermediate day-length onions are Candy, Stockton Sweet Red and Superstar. Some commonly sold long day-length onions (and these should NOT be sold in our region) include Borrettana Cippolini, Red Torpedo Tropea, Ailsa Craig (there's also a tomato by this name), Copra, Big Daddy, Red Burgermaster, Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla, Yellow Sweet Spanish and Ringmaster. I've already planted my main crop of onions, but I do continue planting onions in various spots around the garden as companion plants, and I will, probably through mid-to-late April. Of course, I don't care if those companion-planted onions bulb up or not. Sometimes I leave the companion plant onions in the ground until the following year, and let them bloom in the spring. Their tiny flowers attract a TON of tiny pollinators and beneficial insects, and are quite attractive as well. Dawn