Already Late for Next Year’s Seeding, Dang.

KevinCold Frames, From the Garden, Gardening, Shoulder Season Gardening, Spring Veg, Vegetables3 Comments

This is a first for me. Normally this is a March/April job – prepping soil for the coming year’s planting. My recent adventure at my local organic veg grower reminded me I was a bit behind the ball, as they already had onions, spinach, etc coming up for wintering over. Their little cold-hardy plants will have roots prepped to send out new leaves when the weather breaks in the coming early spring, having a good jump on the days or weeks of germinating time seeds can take. So there I was, in October, realizing I was already late on getting my spring garden moving.

This fall I planted for a winter crop – I have a sparse group of carrots, some peas, and healthy crops of red russian kale and arugula ready to brave the first heavy snow fall tucked under a cold frame. You’re likely to hear about the harvests well into November, if all goes well, December. What I couldn’t anticipate was the ridiculously long fall. It was 17C today. We had our first kill-frost that toasted my tomatoes and beans on the 16th – a full month later than last year. I was wishing them a frosty death by the end, and happily ripping them out within hours of their doom. Apparently I was ready to move on.

So next up is seeding the cold frame – only partly. I’m going to seed some now, maybe half, and seed the rest in the spring as early as possible, and see which seeds win the race. R&D. A note on design tweak visible below. I lifted the frame up onto bricks on flat, just to get a couple more inches of height for the plants to have more room in there. They’re gonna need it.

Brussel Sprout plant – learned this year to top them to promote size. Looks like it didn’t work.

3 Comments on “Already Late for Next Year’s Seeding, Dang.”

  1. Deb Krause

    my mom grows brussel sprouts too, her’s get to a pretty good size. i’m pretty sure she doesn’t do anything to them… she’s a very laissez faire gardener sometimes lol she got her garlic in the ground a couple wks ago now. my spring garden is non-exsistant, mainly because i have to track down some partial-sun veggies to grow for next yr… this yrs crop wasn’t the greatest.

  2. Conrad

    “onions, spinach, etc”

    Can you be more specific? What type of onions? And what else can one plant in fall besides those two.

    Thanks,

    Conrad

  3. Susie

    I live in the NWT, and I just got my garlic in a couple of weeks ago too. I’m a little worried it won’t have a sufficient window of time before the ground freezes, but the sure tenacity of the plant should pull it through. I know that my Dad usually plants a variety of lettuce seeds and dill before the snow flys. There are already greens popping up while the snow melts slowly away in spring.

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