Like some others have said, stick with cool weather crops in cool weather mostly. I grow these even in winter simply by covering the crops when it's going to freeze. They really have a head start in the spring so the growing season is longer. Varieties do matter. I've found the Black Seeded Simpson lettuce grows well. I've had tremendous luck growing Swiss Chard...almost year round...no problem. You also might try checking with some of the CSA's in your area because if it can be grown, they will grow it and know the varieties. Check out Barefoot Farmer. In one of his books he mentions varieties (his first one, I think).

You can plant your cool weather garden any time now. Well, as I recall from living in a hot-summer area, you may need to start a few things inside your nice air-conditioned house right now, but you should get the garden area ready as soon as possible. Start transplants now for kales, cabbages, brussels sprouts, spinach, lettuce, etc. The longer-maturing ones you can start a bunch of right away, they will hold in the garden once it cools down. For lettuce and spinach, start half a dozen this week, half a dozen next week, and so on until mid-September or so. Once you have them sprouted and up, put them outside in a sheltered place so you don't have to harden them off later. As soon as your garden is ready, start transplanting them in. They like rich soil, but stop fertilizing mid-September because as the sun heads south the plants don't grow as quickly and therefore don't use as much nitrogen. When the nights start getting cool you can cover with row cover, but support the row cover over the spinach rows as they don't like anything touching their leaves. Don't worry about light frosts, these are all cool-weather lovers. But do harvest your lettuce before any really hard freezes, it will be the least hardy, say by Thanksgiving or so. Carrots, beets, and winter radishes should be planted in place, watered, and a row cover put right on the soil to keep them damp and prevent them from being washed away if you get rain. Actually any radishes can be planted, but the winter varieties get nice and big, and keep well in "root cellar" conditions. Again, plant some this week, some next week, etc. I plant the whole bed with carrots at the same time, as we like to let the last ones get really big. If you only like the small ones, plant some this week, some next week, and so on like the others. Parsnips have a fairly long time to maturity, so it may be too late to plant them this year. Garlic is planted in the fall, but it is not harvested in the winter. You want a bed that can be devoted to garlic until next July, when it is harvested. It keeps well, though, so that is why you see it at the fair in the winter. The winter squashes also are not grown in the fall and winter, but store well and were once a winter staple in the kitchen for that reason. I have butternut squash ripening in the garden right now that we will be having in soups and pies this winter. I don't grow these in the garden itself, as they ramble all over the place. I put them on the terrace at the bottom of my front yard, partly to keep the neighborhood kids off the wall there. ;-) Plant pumpkins and other squash in the spring a couple of weeks after any chance of frost in rich soil, keep watered, and stand back! Just a point: having a 4-season harvest from the garden doesn't necessarily mean GARDENING all 4 seasons. For fall and winter harvesting you need your plants to be nearly full grown before the cold weather sets in and stops growth for the year. At that point you mulch thickly and cover with row covers and a low tunnel and just use the garden as your root cellar until things warm up a bit in the very early spring and you can start planting new starts of your cool-weather plants for the later spring eating season. Here is a link that might be useful: A good book

This is my first post. I've been growing orchids for 30 years under fluorescent and sodium lights. I've been using combinations of one 400 watt sodium and one 400 watt metal halide conversion bulb over the last 10 + years. I've been trying to find out without much luck if it is better to use two wide spectrum sodiums or one wide spectrum metal halide + one wide spectrum sodium. I get different recommendations from hydroponics shops saying 2 sodiums and continue with metal halide + sodium. I've been using Hortilux as the sodium is corrected for good spectrum, but one shop said I still need a metal halide as well for the vegetative stage of the orchids. Another shop said 2 sodiums will do a good job. Thanks, Rob

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