by Lisa Mulder
By this time of year, we are anxious to get our gardens started. But living and working in Calgary, we know that spring can be unpredictable, and summers are short. Early frosts, late frosts, heavy spring rains, heavy late spring snowfalls, even hail tends to thwart our most earnest spring efforts. Here are some of the strategies that we can employ to get an early start to gardening and avoid some traps.
First, as soon as the ground begins to defrost, you can start preparing your garden beds. This is a great time to clean up the dead stuff from last summer, supplement with compost, and turn your soils. Although methods differ, I like to top with compost and then turn the soil with a large spade shovel without overly disrupting the soil structure. Then I smooth the surface with a metal rake. My garden is ready to go!
Then there are seeds that you can sow as soon as the ice is out of the soil, even in March. These guys don’t care about spring frost or snow: radishes, spinach, and lettuce. In fact, these vegetables thrive in cold weather, and you’ll find that as soon as the weather warms up, they are finished. The trick to getting lovely, plump, red radishes is to harvest them in June!
A few weeks later when the temperatures are more consistently above 0°C, you can plant your hardier vegetables: Swiss chard, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, collards, English peas, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, mustard greens, parsley, turnips, and onions. Some of our community gardeners love to plant carrot and potato seeds at about this time. They are planted and covered (covered by some soil and even a cloth or burlap), which helps to insulate them from unexpected frosts.
Finally, save your hot weather vegetables for planting in mid-May; by this time, the risk of frost is almost completely over. These include tomatoes, eggplant, beans, cucumbers, peppers, squash (including zucchini and pumpkin), and melons. Most need longer growing seasons than our summers can provide, so either start them indoors in March or buy them ready to go at your local greenhouse in May.
Despite our best efforts, we can’t predict the weather. In one recent year, the spring rains were so overwhelming that it washed away my lettuce seeds several times. Now I buy up to four packets of lettuce seeds just in case I have to replant. Some of our community gardeners subscribe to the idea that it is easier to cover small seedlings early in the spring to protect against late spring frosts than it is to cover large plants in the fall to protect against early autumn frosts! In the year that I put in my garden, we didn’t finish the bed until June 7, and everything was planted after that. Nevertheless, we had a great harvest! So don’t overly stress out about getting everything in ASAP; regardless of how early or late you start, you’ll have an amazing summer of gardening!
There are some amazing articles and information about spring gardening online. And don’t forget to check out the Renfrew Community Garden at https://renfrewcommunitygarden.wordpress.com/.
