As the days slowly warm and the soil with them, many of us are out in the garden sowing seeds. The Seed Sowing chart in our lovely new shed shows the range of times various seeds can be sown. The chart is for the lower mainland so add on about 10 days for up here. Or take off the 10 days if it is a fall crop you are sowing. In this part of the world seed sowing is really from February to October depending on the variety. It is not all at once on Victoria Day. If your aim is to eat produce from your garden throughout the year there are one or two things to think about.

First, what vegetables do you like to eat and how much would you eat in a couple of weeks? If you like to eat lettuce and perhaps eat two a week, then sow lettuce seeds at two week intervals, and each time sow four or five seeds to be thinned out to two plants. Or if you like mixed greens, sow about two feet square of mesculin and cut the tops off with a scissors when they are about four inches high. You can get three cuttings like this by which time your next small square of Mesculin will be ready. Once the patch is finished, you can always let the kale grow larger or a couple of the lettuces mature. There is a different mesculin mix for each season. Lettuce does not like hot weather but there are some varieties that will survive a hot summer. Generally lettuce will bolt and go to seed. You can also do successive sowings of other rapidly maturing crops like radishes, beets, bok choi, etc.

Always sow seeds thinly, very thinly in the case of some seeds. Seeds are expensive and will store for a few years if they are kept in the freezer. Check the packet for directions re how close the plants should be. With larger seeds like beets, place the seeds individually in the shallow furrow you have made. Each seed is in fact a mature ovary and usually contains more than one seed so you do need to give them space. If spaced two inches apart, they can be thinned when the green leaves are large enough to eat. Again stagger the sowings so you get a longer harvest. Beets can be stored over the winter months for a long time if you leave a few to grow larger or do a final late sowing when space in the garden opens up.

For sowing small seeds like carrots, I pour a few into the palm of one hand and then take small pinches with the other hand and sprinkle them very thinly in the row. Small seeds benefit from having soil sieved over the top. Lightly pat down the soil with your hand so the soil is in contact with the seed. As carrots can be slow to germinate, you can mix in a few radish seeds with the carrots. The radishes will germinate rapidly and break up any crusting of the soil which benefits the carrots. Both benefit from being covered by remay.

Some plants like broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts are usually grown in a pot and then planted out. You can find many of these locally (On Root). With cauliflower, they will inevitably all come ready at the same time so plant just a few (two?) each two to three weeks. As they usually come in a six pack, share with another gardener. Don’t try and keep them in the pack as the secret to growing good cauliflower is not to stop their growth. If the leaves have started to yellow in the pack, pass them by. Be cautious about how many broccoli you plant as well. I find four plants will keep us in broccoli for about three months as they keep producing side shoots.

With bush beans stagger the planting as they tend to come all at once. Pole beans will produce for a long time so they can all be sown at once when the soil warms up, probably around the end of May the ways things are shaping up this year.

As a last point, it is the night temperature that is critical for plant growth and seed germination. Although we are all itching to get going, later planted plants often catch up with the early planted ones. Choose your varieties and when the early peas, spinach, etc are finished, have something ready to go into their space. Little and often is the way to go.