The Garden Springs to Life–time to get our hands–and seeds–in the dirt!

My kitchen table has become pregnant with potent life forms. All those seed packets I bought over the winter, the leftover ones from recent years and all the packets of my own saved seeds are piled, stacked, organized, disorganized, reorganized, moved, returned, and generally in an active state of flux there.

It’s that time of year when, walking through the garden, you just feel like it’s all about to explode into blossom, like you can feel the energy building—the sap rising. And my gardener’s bones can’t sit still until the seeds of veggies, herbs and flowers are planted in flats for their indoor birthing.

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Celebrating Beginning Gardeners

But before I dive into the great whirlwind of spring seeding, I want to give a shout out to those newbie gardeners that I’ve happened to meet lately. It’s so fun for me to meet gardeners, especially those who have started gardening within the last few years! I just want to wish you a great gardening year and, if it’s helpful (and based on questions I’ve been asked), point you to a few resources that you might like if you didn’t know about them already.

Resources for Newish Gardeners in Sonoma County, and perhaps beyond

Sonoma County Master Gardeners. Local gardeners can find a treasure trove of information on the Sonoma County Master Gardener’s website. Unlike advice from general gardening books, this site is specific to our Mediterranean-type climate zone with its wet winters and dry summers. For answers to questions like, “What can I plant now?” see the Vegetable Planting Summary, and the Year-round Food Gardening chart. I appreciate that they also just included Climate Forward Trees, because our climate zones are shifting due to climate change. I also find terrific information in many of the other Master Gardener sites in other counties.

Books. There are gazillions of gardening books of course, and any number can be helpful, but a good start for beginning gardeners of vegetable growing might be Rodale’s Basic Organic Gardening–A beginner’s Guide, by Deborah L. Martin.

Other Resources. In the Resources page of my website, I’m adding, as I’m able, local nurseries, books, heirloom seed companies, community resources and more, in hopes that they may be useful. I am not receiving any compensation for those suggestions. They are honestly what I find useful myself.

About Gardening Methods and Finding What Works for You. Perusing in bookstores and online, new gardeners may find that there are many gardening techniques and methodologies. I’ve dabbled in a great many, like edible landscaping, straw-bale gardening, French Intensive Method, permaculture, lasagna gardening, and others.

Over the years, some ideas worked well for us and were assimilated into how we garden, others didn’t and were dropped. Things are always changing.

As an example, I just unearthed an old photo of an herb spiral I once made. It was great fun, but these days, I just companion plant (inter-crop) herbs such as parsley, basil, chamomile, arugula, cilantro, or chives in with vegetables in raised beds. It’s easier on my back and gives me room to grow enough of them. I tuck those that like drier conditions–like oregano, thyme and rosemary–in between landscaping plants. The culinary bay tree stands on its own of course. (If you plant a bay tree, be cautious with wildfire safety. They are very flammable.)

Sometimes a pretty herb like purple sage or lemon thyme will get its own glazed ceramic planter, and be the foliage background for tulips or other seasonal bulbs. And just for the smell, I love having a pineapple sage in a corner of a raised veggie bed.

Another time we constructed a Hügelkultur mound from fallen tree limbs. It was admittedly a badly constructed one. I ripped it out later with great effort because it just wasn’t working for us and I needed to mow easily for wildfire safety. These days we inoculate any large fallen trees/logs with mushroom spores, or use as firewood or chipped mulch.

In the early days, we also made luscious sheet-mulched beds for our veggies. At first it was very successful, but after a year or two, the gophers took note and a whole metropolis of them moved in under those beds and ate us out of house and home. So, now we grow our veggies in gopher-protected raised beds. And those are easier on my knees and back now anyway.

Some techniques require huge amounts of inputs like straw or compost. And those also have created problems for us at times: contaminants like aminopyralid or clopyralid can be in them and damage your plants. In our dry-summer area, large piles of straw seem to attract yellow jacket nests, not to mention being fire hazards in ever-increasing wildfire danger area.

So, at this point, I just follow my own star and do what works for us at our location and with our aging bodies — and what we enjoy.

I say all this in case any new gardeners feel like there is a “right” way that they are searching for and feeling confused about it. Explore. Experiment. Observe. Find your own way. Have fun.

Be encouraged–even if your garden doesn’t look like glossy garden mags. There may be a whole maintenance crew keeping that pristine landscape looking so perfect. Some large gardens may have nonprofit status and may get support from donations or volunteer labor. They and working farms may get support from classes whereby the participants pay to be there and provide free labor to boot. They may have a full-time person or persons just managing (trapping) gophers.

The average gardener does not have those resources, so our gardens are bound to appear different than those.

Observation and experimentation takes you a long way. There is no failure, only learning. I find the continual learning process and dance with nature rewarding, humbling, therapeutic, fun and deeply fulfilling.

Tidbits. While I’m at it, I’d like to throw in another plea for peat-free gardening. See my post about that here. And, for the person with whom I was chatting about growing (indeterminate) tomatoes as cordons to save space, here are directions from Gardener’s World to do that, along with useful photos.

OK, now let’s jump into the swirl of spring seed planting!

Starting Seeds in Flats Indoors

Last Frost Date. Pertinent to starting seeds indoors is the very important question of: “When is the last frost date in your area?” As this Master Gardener page explains so well, first and last frost dates are highly variable by microclimate. You can check that link for the likely date in your area, but I recommend finding a long-term gardener in your immediate neighborhood and ask what their experience is.

Our garden is rural and in a low spot, so frost collects here. Though the weather is usually getting sunny and warmer in April and early May, we sometimes still get a frost as late as mid-May–often on a full moon. Plus, the soil isn’t quite warm enough to make the tomatoes and peppers and other summer crops happy until then anyway. Sometimes we hedge our bets and plant a few tomatoes out early, and just protect them with a frost cloth, but they tend to look stunted and cold until mid-May anyway, at which point they start to take off with vigor, weather permitting. I know many gardeners have larger tomato plants already, as they are probably in a warmer zone or will use a greenhouse.

The veggies I’ve just seeded indoors (so far) are tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, kale, okra, spinach, and eggplant.

The other seeded plants are herbs and flowers—the latter focused mainly on flowers that provide food for pollinators or butterflies. I’m also trying to grow some native plants like meadowfoam, in hopes of planting it out into the boggy areas we have.

Direct Sowing Seeds Outdoors

Other veggies just got seeded too, but were sown directly in the raised garden beds outdoors because they are hardier: carrots, beets, chard, parsley, arugula and possibly some others I’m forgetting. I re-sow those in small amounts year-round, usually intermixed with other crops. I also direct seed snow peas in early spring and any part of the year it feels like I can get away with it (they don’t like heat).

Lettuce is also grown nearly year-round, except for the middle of winter. (It can be done, but it’s usually too much fussing for all that I’ve got going on.) I’ve never had much luck with cabbage—too many pests—but we grow broccoli and sometimes cauliflower with moderate success.

I will wait a bit longer to sow seeds of cucumbers, zucchini and pumpkins in flats. They don’t like to get their roots disturbed with transplanting and so seed packets usually suggest direct planting after the last frost date. However, I’m careful when transplanting them and prefer to grow them on a bit before planting out. Beans and corn will be direct planted just after the last frost.

Perennial and Long-season Vegetables

Overwinter, we also grow garlic, onions, leeks and sometimes shallots. Those usually get planted in October and get harvested about June, opening space for a 2nd planting of a fast growing veg like zucchini.

Asparagus, tree collards and artichokes grow in their own spaces and live there full time. Potatoes–we’ve been trying to grow these in fabric grow bags lately with very modest yields. The gophers or other rodents will chew through the bag so I moved them closer to my cat’s territory in hopes of protection. We’ll see. Yacon and sunchokes are usually planted in wine barrel planters. I rarely eat those as they are not as delicious as other veg, but I like growing them anyway.

It’s not all as organized and ever-abundant as it sounds. For example, this last fall and winter, our attention was taken up with urgent matters, and we failed to get a winter garden established before the cold weather set in, and thus the veggie crop was thin. Sometimes we neglect something, or the weather is too hot or too cold, or other hungry creatures —deer, birds, snails, raccoons—wipe out a crop. (Or a gopher manages to break into a protected garden bed.) Such is gardening! We just try to roll with it.

Now I must get back to communing with my seed packets. For the holiday weekend, I leave you with a photo of some calla lilies in bloom right now.

Happy Seed Growing! -lisa

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