Vegetable Gardening: Ready, Set, Go!
You can have both annual and perennial cool season crops in your vegetable garden. If you are interested in annual crops, radishes are the first root crops to harvest. Then comes beets, carrots, turnips, and rutabagas. Parsnips are also a great crop to have. But they will not be ready until right before the ground freezes. The perennial cool season crops are rhubarb, asparagus, chives, and horseradish. They still need proper watering, fertilization and weed control to keep providing each year.
Besides annual and perennial cool season crops, pay attention to the families they are grouped into because planting the same crops in the same family’s year-after-year causes the same diseases. Beets are in the same family as spinach and Swiss chard. If you planted beets this season in the same place you planted Swiss chard last season, then your crop might attract the same diseases and insects. Here is a link to help you start.
The next thing to consider is making sure you start off by cleaning out any debris from the vegetable garden if you did not do that in the fall. Insects and diseases overwinter under leaves and other debris. Adult and nymph squash bugs will overwinter under leaves. Here are some resistant varieties Lemon Squash, Butternut Squash, and Zucchino Rampicante Squash. Other squash varieties include ‘Early Summer Crookneck,’ ‘Royal Acorn,’ ‘Butternut 23,’ and ‘Improved Green Hubbard’ according to leafyplace.com. If you do not plant a resistant variety for summer squash, you could start your squash and cucumbers later in the season. Squash bugs are not as prevalent in the late summer and fall. Smooth criminal, Superpik take 45 and 55 days, respectively. Black beauty zucchini takes 60 days and if you plant it in mid to late June, you have plenty of time to harvest.
Soil temperature is another thing to consider. Having a soil thermometer is helpful. But if you do not, rhubarb will start poking its stems out of the ground at 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool season grasses start growing around 50 degrees. Does that mean it is time to start planting the tomatoes? Wait until the nighttime temperatures reach a dependable 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If you can not wait, even with a protective cover you can still set their growth back. There is no substitution for the proper temperature. The ideal size of tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants are about eight inches tall. Their roots have just the right development in balance with top growth. Happy gardening!
Linda Langelo, CSU Horticulture Specialist
March 10, 2023
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