Early Season Planting

Searching the internet for good advice on what vegetables are good for early planting is like rolling the dice at a game of craps. Some of the advice is so bad I’d have to think it was written by a complete novice, or by A.I. based on some synthesis of all the good and bad information available on the interwebs . Thankfully, you have a real life human - with real world gardening experience, and actual research skills - to sift though the noise and provide some clarity.

The challenge with an ambiguous term like “early” is that it can mean many things. For the sake of this article - I am using the term to refer to the part of the season when the soil temperatures are very low - such that only a handful of things will grow. Rather than referring to a specific soil temperature - since they are highly variable both in terms of location and time of day - I will instead refer to a soil temperature indicator - the dandelion. I have mentioned this before, so will not go into the details, but I consider “early season” when you start seeing dandelion greens begin to grow. For me this is usually at the beginning of April. Dandelion roots are about a foot deep - so if they are growing it means that the soil has gotten warm enough for them to break dormancy. They are one of the earliest tings to grow (but not “THE” earliest) - so I consider them a reasonably good indicator of the accumulated heat in soils.

Every seed has a minimum soil temperature that it needs to begin germination. Some seeds can get things started when it is barely above freezing - whereas others need much more heat.

Scanning the chart above, we can identify three crops as having the lowest minimum germination temperatures (35F): lettuce, onion, parsnips and spinach. For early season gardeners - those plants are the only game in town when it comes to germination from direct seeding1. These are what I plant when I see dandelion greens emerging on various parts of my property. There are also a handful of other weeds growing at this time, and some of my garlic have usually just started poking their heads out of the ground.

Next up are all the vegetables that have a minimum germination temperature of 40F. According to the table above - we are talking about beets, cabbages, carrots, cauliflower, chard, parsley, peas, radish and turnip. These are what I plant when I see yellow dandelion flowers, BUT, any of these can be started a little earlier so long as they are under a microclimate of some kind. They can also be started outdoors in transplanting trays, under plastic or glass, so long as they are not peas, beets, carrots, or turnip - which do not generally transplant well2. I currently have half a dozen tiny greens started in my driveway in this manner.

Many people get overwhelmed by the time they finally get around to putting in a garden, and that makes sense if that means trying to plant everything all at once. It’s like trying to eat an elephant - but as that old saying goes - it’s best done one bite at a a time. By getting a few things started early in the season - all the tasks become much more spaced out, allowing them to be handled in little dribs and drabs.

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