- Source: My backyard
- My first prepared bed of the season, ready for planting.
Weather and soil permitting, Presidents Day Weekend is when the gardening season begins for me, with last year’s tomato beds turned over, amended, and strewn with a little bone meal in preparation for my first planting of snow and snap peas. And this dry, sunny weekend was no disappointment.
If that seems like a little early to be direct sowing seeds in the garden (in addition to peas, I also sowed a few feet of lettuce), well, some years it is, but the seeds are cheap, the sowing easy, and the rewards of an early crop uniquely gratifying. There’s simply nothing quite like eating out of your own garden after another dull, gray Seattle winter.
Up next: arugula, mustard greens, broccoli raab, and of course radishes, the ultimate crop for the impatient.
Yep! Planted peas and greens. About froze to death, but it will be worth it. Those first peas are magical…
I’m so fucking jealous.
I salute you.
How can you be planting? It isn’t July yet…
Cool Beans.
This guarantees snow.
Which peas are the fat crunchy ones that are so sweet and full of air and water that you just can’t be bothered bringing them in the house before you eat them? Snow or Sugar or something else?
jnonymous @7,
If you’re talking about eating the whole pod, the fat crunchy ones are snap peas. The flat pods are snow peas.
If you’re talking about eating just the peas, and discarding the fibrous pod, those are shelling (or English) peas.
Give peas a chance.
It’s a bit early for most things. I would put a plastic tarp structure resembling a greenhouse over that.
Goldy, if fast-growing crops are your thing, try baby bok-choy. That stuff grows like weeds- you can scatter a batch every two weeks as long as there isn’t a hard frost expected. I grew 6 whole rounds last year, planting about every 5 weeks starting in december! Super yummy too.
If I ever own/rent a place with a yard, vegetable gardening is number one on my list of things I want to learn.
I’m going to try planting a row a week of peas until I run out of seeds. If this week’s seeds don’t make it, so be it, I’ll have next week’s and the week after’s, and….
Mechthild @10,
I have a plastic cloche over the snap peas, and a floating row cover over the snow peas, with metal tomato cages lying on their side over that. Good thing too, because twenty minutes after I sowed my seeds, every inch of my prepared beds that wasn’t covered was dug up by some animal.
Snow peas my ass, you’re growing pot, aren’t you?
Broccoli raab tastes like something god sent to earth to punish sinners. Why do you eat it?
tacomagirl @16,
Sautéed in olive oil with red pepper flakes and garlic, tossed with pasta, and then topped with a good parmesan cheese. Mmmm.
@15 Well, that’s pretty much a Stranger job requirement, isn’t it?
Baby Bok Choy, omg, like a little orgasm in your mouth, sauteed with olive oil and chick peas…mmmm.
Alderman shelling peas, only way to go. You do have to plant them early though to avoid the enation. I planted last year in February and they still weren’t ready until June! It was a shitty spring.
Here’s a good planting chart for the PNW (PDF):
http://cdn.territorialseed.com/downloads…
I’ve slept for the past two days.
ejamadoodle @20,
The Alderman are GREAT… if the weather cooperates. So I’ve stopped growing them, and stick to enation resistant varieties.
@18 Canuck, try saute in sesame oil, garlic and fresh grated ginger. Sprinkle with soy sauce!
@20 thank you for that Planting Chart!!
I am thinking of trying to plant something small and indoors. I do not have a green thumb and have a hard time even keeping those popular vine-ish “house plants” alive. I checked out a Seattle Tilth meeting last year but only learned how much the organizer hates those tiny house flies.
So jealous. I start seedlings in my house during March break, but they can’t go outside in Toronto for several weeks now.
Ooo, Vince, that sounds great! Sesame oil has such a unique taste (and every time I pull out my most recent bottle of it, I get a little smile, as I think about the young man who recommended a certain brand at the health food store, who was so completely gorgeous it hurt to look at him…)
Seattle Tilth offers a ton of great classes:
http://seattletilth.org/learn/classes-an…
And their Maritime Northwest Garden Guide has month-by-month advice and plant lists.
Can you tell me about you set-up? I’m thinking of trying to get a garden going this year and was thinking of building a box like the one in your photo. Is there a plan for what you are doing this year and when?
Yet another reason to be grateful for Goldy@Slog …
sugarbear @28,
Plan to do some more extensive posts on gardening, but am in the middle of writing a feature, so don’t have time to get into details. But two words for those new to NW gardening: RAISED BEDS.
And as others have said, Seattle Tilthe is a great resource.
Or, you could be in Minnesota where we just got another 15 inches of snow on Sunday.
Um. Temperatures are predicted to be down in the teens later this week. This might be just a tad premature.
@32, maybe, yeah. But, note that while seeds need warmth to germinate, a lot of plants don’t really like it warm. They just need sun, and of course other (more easily provided) things like good soil and water.
This is why winter gardening is so awesome, because the problems associated with summer gardening (heat causing bolting, water bills) are not happening. Just germinate indoors!
I’m at the point where I do all of my veggies from december to june, then it’s just tomatoes, pumpkins, and flowers. I’ve really cut my water bill way down.