Plant a dozen of these cool-season crops and enjoy vegetables from your organic garden before the farmer's markets even open.

While you’re waiting for warm temperatures to start gardening, you could be missing out on pre-season delicacies from your organic garden. Cool season vegetables require temperatures in the 40s or 50s to germinate, and they thrive in the moist soil that spring rains deliver.

Beets

Fast-maturing varieties for the early spring garden are sweeter than summer varieties; plant ‘Early Wonder’ as soon as you can work the soil. Each seed capsule can produce multiple plants, so thin them as soon as the plants are several inches tall.

Broccoli

Practice good crop rotation practices by moving broccoli to a different part of the garden each year, and don’t follow with a planting of cabbage. Foil the caterpillars of the cabbage butterfly with floating row covers.

Cabbage

Moisture is paramount to a successful crop; mulch heavily to increase yields. Control club root disease by practicing crop rotation and adding lime to the soil.

Carrots

Mix the tiny seeds with sand for even dispersion into the soil. If your soil is rocky, plant the dwarf ‘Thumbelina’ variety. Sprinkle ashes around the soil to deter wireworms.

Lettuce

Slugs are notorious pests, deter them with diatomaceous earth or beer traps. Provide consistent moisture and ample compost.

Onions

Choose transplants instead of seeds and sets for the widest selection and fastest maturing plants. Plant onions in the early spring when the ground is 45 degrees. Water and fertilize heavily with fish emulsion after planting; harvest in summer when the tops turn brown.

Peas

A must-grow crop for home gardeners, as the sugars begin to convert to starch upon harvest. Soak seeds in water overnight to hasten germination. Treat seeds with bacterial inoculants to help them fix nitrogen from the air.

Potatoes

Buy seed potatoes certified to be disease-free. Don’t follow a planting of tomatoes with potatoes in the same area of the garden, as they share the some diseases. Acidic soils discourage scab; ‘Cherokee’ is a scab-resistant variety.

Radishes

This fast and easy crop is fun for children to grow, even if the grownups do all the eating. Harvest them within the month to avoid pithy roots.

Spinach

You can plant successive crops of spinach every two weeks to ensure tender young leaves for salads. Fertilize this heavy feeder with manure tea.

Turnips

Although this fast-maturing crop can produce giant globes in the presence of soil enriched with compost, young turnips are sweeter and more tender than large ones. Sweeten your soil with an application of lime if the pH is below 5.5.

Footnote: Cool-Season Flowers

Add some pansies or snapdragons to your early spring organic garden. These ornamentals provide more than fragrance and beauty to the garden: they offer a source of nectar to pollinators just emerging from hibernation, when blossoms are scarce.

Sources:

Reader’s Digest 1001 Hints & Tips for your Garden. (1996). The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc: Pleasantville, NY.

Rodale, J.I. (1999). Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Rodale Books, Inc: Emmaus, PA.