The books, blogs, and gardening experts are clear; you should have a dozen different vegetables in the ground by now, or at the very least rows of weeks-old seedlings ready for your local last frost date. Alas! All you have are some dusty egg cartons on the top of your refrigerator, and a mysterious heap of pine needles and weeds where your tomato patch should be…
Ok, maybe the pine needle thing is me. I admit it.
I am late, late, late. Haven’t done a thing and out local “safe to start planting” weekend is… this weekend. I have been sick and watching beautiful, mild sunny days pass by without the energy to do more than walk around my garden and feel the sun on my face. And you know what? It’s going to be ok.
There is plenty of springtime left. Why not start some cool weather seeds that are faster to grow? A lot of greens grow fairly quickly. Shuffle things around. Maybe you usually start things in a certain bed because it warms up first, but if you are running late that shadier corned will keep springtime temperatures for longer. Scout out the nurseries, maybe something that you planned to start yourself is sitting in a greenhouse somewhere. No one is keeping score. You don’t lose gardening points for not sprinkling the seeds yourself. If it really, truly is too late for something you love, take a moment to sigh about it and then make sure you stop by your local farmer’s market. There’s no reason to deny yourself a taste of the finished product!
What if it cannot, even optimistically, be called springtime anymore? Summer has arrived with a Capital “S”, and the garden is bare. Don’t panic fledgling gardener! The sales cycles in stores make it seem like evenly sized plants of all varieties go in the ground at the same time, which must be during The Spring. They are weeded and watered all Summer, and of course harvested in the Fall. In reality, there are crops you can plant at almost any time of year. What exactly that will be will depend on your climate, but farmer’s markets will give you a good starting point for what ripens when. Search online for things like “What to plant in zone __ in the (season you are in)”. Plenty of plants need soil temperatures that you won’t see until summer to thrive. If you’re pushing the length of time they will need a little, just think ahead to how you will keep them warm a bit longer in the Fall.
Sneak a little farther into Summer and suddenly you will find yourself, not with a bedraggled unplanted Spring garden, but with a bed you “let rest” to have ready for a Fall garden! (Aren’t you clever?) Greens, brassicas, and smaller root vegetables all have time to give you a crop before Winter.
Even Fall isn’t too late! (And here you are worrying your time is up in Spring or Summer…) Some hardy greens like kale can be started in the fall and harvested through early winter. Quick growing lettuces have time for one last crop. Root vegetables like carrots and turnips can stay in the ground past the first frost if they are protected. You can also get a head start on next year and plant things for the Spring! Garlic of course comes to mind, and anything with a bulb. Some varieties of lettuces, beans and carrots can be sown in the late fall to germinate in the early Spring. (Check your zone and the variety you have in mind, it may need to be covered for some extra protection.)
The amount of information out there can make gardening seem impossibly hard when you are first starting out. I really want you to feel comfortable to just start where you are and give it a try. Nothing more terrifying will happen than that some of the plants will die. Mine die too! Every single year I have plants that don’t germinate, that struggle or die or who knows what else. All I do is try to learn from what happened, and plant something else. If the carrots didn’t germinate, well there’s still time for some cucumbers. Nobody is going to grade me on how closely the plants I end up growing match the diagram I made up in the Spring. Relax, grab some seed packets, and spend more time enjoying your garden than worrying about doing it “right”.
