grow up

Today I felt the wind, the rain, the snow, the hail, and the sun on my face. And I was only outside for 2 hours. I have said it before and I will say it again: not the biggest fan of spring. Whoa now, I like what it stands for (the gateway to summer) but I dislike how I am never the correct temperature. 

It's raining or freezing in the morning so I wear boots or something wool and still my toes are tiny ice blocks. Then something shifts mid-day and I am stripped down to my tank-top sweating bullets on a crowded bus. What is good about spring?


Plants, duh. 


If you want to start seedinglings indoors, now is the time to plant:

lettuce

spinach

swiss chard

kale (late crop)

onion (late crop)

And in just over a week (if it stops freak-snowing), it will be time to start any experiments you may have planned regarding:

beans

eggplant

melon

pepper

squash (summer and winter)

sweet potato

All of these plants like the sun (oh hello, stupid shady apartment) so keep that in mind when making the seeds a home for approximately a month before transplant to an outdoor garden - one month for the first list, six weeks for the second list (except the squash which can be planted directly outdoors).

No tomatoes yet, sorry about the misleading photo...

Information from Guide to Canadian Vegetable Gardening by Douglas Green (Cool Springs Press, 2009). Photo by Aubrie Chaylt.