It is time to get cool-season vegetables planted. We can finally get out in the garden and start bringing it back to life. Cool-season vegetables include spinach, lettuce, peas, onions, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, collards, radish, turnip, kale and beets.
All of these crops can be planted as seed. However, most gardeners prefer to plant lettuce, broccoli and cabbage as transplants. The advantage of transplants is that the bigger plants take less time until they are ready for harvest and there is less weeding needed. Less weeding is good.
There are several important factors to consider this time of year that will help ensure a good harvest:
■ Make sure the soil has good fertility and a pH is the 6.4 to 6.8 range.
■ Choose a spot with exposure to lots of sunshine.
■ Avoid soil compaction. Be careful not to walk on or work in the garden when the soil is wet. If your garden soil is wet enough that you are leaving footprints, then you need to wait until it dries out a little more.
■ Cold spring wind is the enemy of early plantings. Cover or mulch around the plants to help protect them from the wind.
■ Control flea beetles when your plants are growing slowly due to cool weather or when you see a significant number of pin holes in leaves. Spinosad is an effective insecticide and many of its formulations are approved for organic production.
■ Since early spring planted crops are often harvested in the heat of early summer, they can often mature more quickly than they can be consumed. You may want to plant a few plants now and then a few more at the end of the month.
Many cool season crops, especially when transplants are used, will mature quickly enough that you can put another short season crop in the same area. Snap beans or summer squash work well as a second crop. You can plant one of the other cool season crops in the same area for a fall crop in the same area. Try to rotate the crop families. You can plant fall lettuce or turnips in an area where cabbage was grown in the spring, for example.
Reminder: It is now time to prune peach and nectarine trees.
JOHN ESSLINGER is an Extension educator for Penn State Cooperative Extension.