Many of the plants we use as cool season annuals require a longer time to full plant development compared to summer annuals. A small difference in climate can make a lot of difference in what culture will work for these plants. I live in central Arkansas with a similar climate to that of donnabaskets. Because of our hot summers, many perennials such as delphiniums and poppies, along with the cool annuals, need to be planted in fall. But there are also those that will not survive our winter. Of the three plants asked about, I have no experience with lobelia, and only limited experience with nasturtiums and calendulas. Nasturtiums don't survive our winter. And for me an early spring planting has not worked well either. The summer heat seems to sap the plants before they can get well established. I tend to avoid them as difficult for my climate. That said, I have to remark that as a teen some forty years ago, there was a man down the street from me that had beautiful nasturtiums every year that lasted though the hot summer. I should have asked him the particulars to his method, but at the time mostly what I had on my mind was ... girls. Best I can remember the nasturtiums were in a spot that had very little direct sun exposure, but a lot of open sky indirect light. I seem to remember seeing partly decomposed horse manure being used and the pants were watered daily. Calendulas have a lot in common with nasturtiums; don't survive winter and take too long to develop before the heat of summer. But about 10 years ago I had a very strange thing happen with some fall seeded calendulas. They were started in flats in September and planted to beds in October. They grew lush and were bitten by the first frost, killed by the first hard freeze. But I had started more plants than I had used for the bed. These were left in the small cellpacks, the old kind that had 72 to the flat. Left outside, by late November they were completely root bound and stunted as small plants with no active growth. These cellpacks stayed out all winter and the soil in them froze solid numerous times. At the end of Feb. I chanced to notice that the plants were not dead. I was amazed. So I planted them in a bed. They took off like a rocket in March. I have as yet not tried to duplicate this method, so it may have been a fluke. But for that one year I had some great looking calendulas. Here is a photo of them inter-planted with pansy and ranuncula.

My thoughts often turn to available Nitrate in the cool soil when planting those first crops including the ones you are thinking of. Broccoli, and cabbage benefit greatly from having plenty of it around to use and can actually sit there doing nothing if none is available; worse yet, they can be induced to bolt long before you can even see the change in the plants. Basically the plants says to itself, "AHHH, I'm starving, guess I'll just start to reproduce". the result is a scrawny plant with a scrawny head later in the season. In contrast, plenty of available nitrate leads to a big framed plant that waits to go into reproductive mode, that big plant can produce a big head. As far as how one ensures an ample supply of nitrate in the soil while gardening organically early in the season, I'll defer to others. Oh, one thing that will get the soil organisms going early in cold soils so they can begin creating nitrate form the organic sources is to warm the soil.

Carol, I bet it did grow well there in spite of the short growing season. I'm assuming they started their transplants indoors to get them large enough to plant out once the temps were in the appropriate range. And it is the exposure to sunlight that made the celery so green. Most commercially-raised celery is that whitish-green because the celery is blanched. I think the blanching is intended to keep the stalks tender as too much sunlight/heat gives you tougher stalks. Seedmama, Here's how Jeff Cox grows celery: GROWING CELERY: Several years ago I purchased a book by Jeff Cox called "Jeff Cox's 100 Greatest Garden Ideas". It is a terific book and I love it. One of his ideas is a way to grow celery even if you can't give it the marshy conditions it prefers. If I ever tried to grow celery here, I'd try Jeff's method. To start his seeds, he sows them 10 weeks before his last frost. He soaks his seed overnight before sowing them in peat pots and setting them on top of the fridge so the heat can help them sprout, which can take 2 weeks or longer. He digs a below-grade trench about a foot wide and 14" deep although he says you can do the same process with a raised bed if you'd rather build up than dig down. If growing in a raised bed, he recommends a minimum height of 6" and cautions anything raised any higher may get too hot for the celery. You still need 14" of depth, but with the 6" tall raised bed, you only have to dig down 8" instead of the whole 14". You remove the soil to a depth of 14" for the trench or 8" beneath the eventual raised bed and remove all the soil. Add compost and other organic amendments to create an enriched growing mix that will hold lots of moisure and refill the trench or, for the raised bed, refill the dug-out area and build the 6" tall raised bed above it. By the way, he recommends six celery plants per person. If you want, you can add tin cans with the tops and bottoms both removed or pieces of PVC pipe inserted vertically into the ground about to the same depth that your celery is planted, or a couple of inches deeper than that. To water, fill each can or piece of pipe with water and let the pipe carry the water down to the root level of the celery plants. In the illustration in the book, he has one vertical can or PVC pipe in between two celery plants in a sort of checkerboard pattern. (Texas tomato plant growers use this method to water tomatoes, only they use large flower pots or huge, instituitional-sized cans, to water the tomato plants...it is called the Texas Pot method.) After you harden off your seedlings, transplant them into the enriched soil which you've pre-moistened so it it nice and damp. He waters his transplants with an organic fertilizer consisting of 1 T. fish emulsion and 2 T. seaweed extract per one gallon of water. Mulch the top of the bed with leaves. As the plans grow keep adding leaves so the stalks are blanched. Blanching celery stalks (but not their topgrowth leaves which need sunlight to grow) helps improve their flavor and keep them tender. This is especially important in a hotter climate where heat stress can cause the stalks to get woody and tough. He recommends feeding monthly and watering as often as needed to keep the bed moist and damp but not soaking wet. His recommendation is that you harvest the plants roots and all before frost arrives in the fall. Store them in a box in a cool basement or similar area. If the storage area stays cool enough, celery will store for months. You also could store them in an extra fridge in your garage or laundry room or whatever. If you ever run across Jeff's book, it is a wonderful book with projects grouped by the season. Dawn

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