- Mizuna
- Arugula
- Mustard Greens
- Chicory
- Chard
- Peas
- Chives
Watch the weather forecast, and try to seize a good day when it comes. Light showers are okay, but heavy rain will usually make the soil too muddy for planting for a day or two afterward. A string of warm, sunny days after you plant helps speed up germination and reduce the chances of the seeds rotting instead of growing.
Temperatures might still be especially cool for planting peas right now. Check the weather forecast, and if you see a few days in a row with temperatures well above 10 celsius, that's the best time to plant. If you plant peas in cold weather (like the forecast for the next week), you will probably have fewer seeds successfully grow into full plants.
If you're not ready to plant yet, don't fret, just go step by step through the previous posts. The next month or so is prime time for planting these. And after that, they will still grow, but some of these will typically finish their life cycle very quickly and not produce as much. (Chard, chicory, and chives are exceptions: they will last all summer, and chives will last for years!)
On the other hand, if you're only planting late-spring things this year, you have to wait. The late spring vegetables (tomatoes, beans, etc.) will all die if you plant them outside now!
If you haven't already bought your supplies, including seeds, obviously you need to do that now.
When it's time to plant, you should also get your drawing of your layout, which you stored somewhere safe after making it a few weeks ago.
One more thing: this is another very detailed post, trying to help out people who are really unsure how to plant things. I am happy to say that after this, the posts will generally get much shorter, since much less detail will be needed. (I like to write, but trying to say everything has been a bit grueling! And I'm sure I've forgotten things, at that. Please let me know in the comments about things you find unclear or confusing.)
Soak peas overnight before you plant them.
If you are growing peas, it's best to soak them in water at room temperature for about 24 hours beforehand. Before they start to grow, they need to soak up a lot of water. That happens only very slowly in the soil if you plant them dry, so it will take longer for them to sprout. The cool soil temperatures also make germination slow. If you forget to soak them the evening before you plant, soaking them for even a few hours before you plant them is better than nothing.
Now, even if you plant them dry, they will eventually sprout, so you could just ignore this advice. On the other hand, if you do soak them, you really need to plant them within about 24 hours, or they will start to sprout before you plant them and the sprouts will be very easily damaged when you handle them to plant them.
Also remember that your peas will be planted about 3 cm apart, in a row, or in a circle around some supporting structure, so try to only soak the amount you will need. Extra seeds can be kept until next year, as long as they stay very dry. Any peas that you soak will have to be planted or thrown away.
Preparing the Soil
Every time you plant in any area, dig in plenty of compost with your trowel, right where you are going plant the seeds. This is the only reason you can plant so intensively: because you are constantly adding rich organic matter back into the soil.
(Note: if you just filled new containers with compost and soil, or just prepared new ground by single- or double-digging in lots of compost, then just this one time, you don't have to dig in any more compost. But next time you plant there, you will have to add compost!)
To prepare to plant, first, spread an inch or so of compost over the area you are going to plant. Then, using your trowel, break up the earth where you are planting and mix it well with the compost. Mix as deep as you can with the trowel. The deeper the loose the soil is, the easier it will be for your plants to form healthy root systems. Try to break up most of the obvious lumps of soil, and generally remove stones that are bigger than 1 cm or so.
If I'm planting stuff that goes close together filling an area, like arugula, then I prepare the whole area all at once (as I described above). If I'm planting stuff that will go in a row, like peas along a fence, I prepare just the narrow row, still mixing in the compost as deep as I can go with the trowel. If I'm planting individual seedlings that I bought in pots, then I prepare just the hole where I'm going to plant the seedling. The idea here is to avoid cultivating too much area that you aren't planting anything in. If you do that, you will encourage weeds to grow. Disturbing the soil causes weed seeds to start growing, and putting in compost there will feed them. So you can be strategic when you prepare for planting, and try to cultivate and compost just where you need to.
Planting Tiny Seeds
Mizuna, arugula, and mustard greens all have extremely tiny seeds. Traditionally they are scattered ("broadcast"), but this makes them grow irregularly and too close to each other, so they have to be thinned later, which is quite laborious. It's also a waste of seed. And if you don't get around to thinning them, they will compete with each other and stay small and spindly. Furthermore, it's harder to weed them when they are irregularly spaced: for one thing, you can't see as clearly which ones are the weeds and which are the vegetable plants. That's even harder if you are planting something for the first time and you don't even know what its seedlings will look like!
So though it's tricky to plant them one at a time at a regular, optimal spacing, it is actually easier in the long run.
When planting very tiny small seeds, after the compost is dug in, I use the trowel to try to level out the soil a bit. Then I make shallow, narrow trenches in the soil - maybe about 1 or 2 cm deep. I make these parallel so the bottoms of the trenches are the recommended distance apart for the plants. (Say, 5 cm apart for arugula. See the table at the bottom of this post for other distances.) Then I take a small amount of seeds in the palm of my hand, and pick them up one at a time, and try to drop them in the trenches, again spaced out at the recommended distance. (I'm not terribly patient, so the actual spacing is definitely somewhat random. Often I drop more than one at a time just by accident.)
Last, I use the trowel to just slightly cover the seeds in the trenches. With very tiny seeds, you should not cover them deeply: no more than a millimetre or so of soil - just enough to keep some moisture around the seed. (Also this hides the seeds a bit from birds that might come poking around. The seed-eaters - sparrows, etc. - are looking for leftover weed seeds at this time of year.) Since you didn't really fill them in, the little trenches will still be present, and those will also help you to see where to water - which is the next step.
Ideally, you water very, very lightly, from very very low to the ground. If you water heavily onto the soil, you will really pack down the soil on your seeds, and as that dries it will become quite hard, making it harder for the seeds to grow. I put my hand close to the soil over the trench, and pour water from a container into the palm of my hand and let it drip through my fingers as I move along the trench.
Once the plants start to get a few inches tall, you can become gradually less careful - you can just pour water gently on the roots (avoiding dumping it on the plants themselves).
Larger Seeds; Rows and Groups
Larger seeds need to be buried deeper when you plant them. Seed packages will usually recommend a depth. But a simple rule of thumb is to plant seeds at about their own depth or a slightly more: for example, a pea is about 1/4 inch in diameter, so plant it about 1/4 inch under the surface, or slightly more. (In softer, looser soil, you can go slightly deeper, because the seed will be able to push up easily.)
The above section about small seeds assumes you are "area planting" - filling up an area with plants in a grid at the optimal spacing. On the other hand, if you are planting climbers like peas in a row along a fence, then you just make one trench, and then you leave some extra space between that trench and other plants.
The same goes for plants in a group, such as peas planted around a central climbing support (like a teepee of sticks). The peas in that case would be planted in a circular trench, and then you'd leave a little extra room around that circle before planting other things around it.
Spacings for Early Spring Vegetables
| Height | Planting Time | Spacing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peas | climber | early spring | close row or group (3cm) |
| Mustard Greens | tall (1m) | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Mizuna | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Arugula | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Chicory | low | early spring | close (5cm) |
| Chard | low | early spring | med (8cm) |
| Chives | low | early spring | close group (1cm) |
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