Cool-weather vegetables include lettuce, Swiss chard, carrots, peas, parsnips, the brassica family, and others
These early-season vegetables are easy to grow. Start them in late April or early May, as soon as the soil is workable. While carrots, parsnips and peas need at least six hours of sunlight, lettuce, spinach, and Swiss chard do well on less. All need a soil amended with compost. To get a straight row, use a string line and create a uniform depth by pressing a dowel or old hoe handle along the string line to form a depression into which the seeds are set. After planting the seeds, cover with a quarter-inch of soil and gently compact the soil so it is pressed against the seeds. Keep the surface moist until the seeds germinate.
Carrots and parsnips need a deep, soft, fluffy, somewhat sandy soil, with added compost to grow without forks or other blemishes. The deeper the soft soil, the longer they become. Plant in rows six inches apart. Carrot seeds are small, while parsnip seeds are larger; take your time to ensure they are spread thinly. Try for an inch apart. Seeds germinate slowly and can take up to two weeks to germinate. When they do, thin to about three inches apart to get larger roots and fewer deformed ones. Once the plants are large enough, add mulch to reduce surface evaporation. Water weekly for the first month as they develop their root structure, but don’t overdo it. In the middle of the season, water every two weeks, depending on rainfall. As the plants mature, their rootlets can go down up to seven feet and therefore you can water them less than other vegetables.
I start the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and turnip or rutabaga) as seedlings. I then insert watering tins spaced 18 inches apart, and transplant one seedling by each can. The watering tins are the larger ones with the bottom and top removed. Ensure the plants are watered on a regular basis. Cabbage has a tendency to split when the soil fluctuates from dry to very wet.
Row covers over the brassica family protect the plants from root maggots and the cabbage butterfly. Check soil moisture frequently; rainfall tends to run off the row cover, leaving the soil too dry. Fill the watering cans as required. When the plants get too large for the row cover, remove it and apply Bt every four or five days in the evening.
The leafy cool-weather plants include lettuce, radishes, spinach, and bok choi. As they do not need as much sunlight, try to plant them in shadier parts of your garden.
The leafy lettuce varieties can be harvested as soon as the leaves are large enough. Head lettuce and romaine lettuce take longer to mature. Consider two four-foot rows, planted three weeks apart to get a longer harvesting time. Thin head lettuce to 12 inches, and leaf and romaine lettuce to six inches.
Plant spinach in two short six-foot rows, about three weeks apart and thin to six inches; this should provide two meals a week for a family of two.
After soaking pea seeds, plant them about three inches apart at about twice the depth of the seed peas. Pea seeds germinate in about seven to 10 days. Peas need vertical structures such as trellises, or lightweight reinforcing mesh to grow up on; plant one row on each side of the vertical support. The taller the trellis, the greater the number or pods you will harvest. Pick peas when the pods are firm and the peas are sweet and tasty.
Plant radishes as soon as the soil can be worked. Plant half an inch deep in rows four inches apart ,and thin to two inches apart. They germinate in as little as six days and mature between three to five weeks, depending on the variety. Plant rows no more than three feet long every two weeks for a continual supply of salads and other uses.
One 10-foot row of Swiss chard is enough to feed a family of four over the summer. Swiss chard continues to grow all summer; cut stalks off at the bottom and, like magic, new ones grow back.
