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It’s 35 degrees out in the morning, bare twigs and mud highlight most of our backyards, and the ground is cold and damp but if you plant some vegetable seeds now, you could have salad by April.
Palo Alto master gardener Candace Simpson will teach a six-week adult school class starting Monday, Feb. 5, on how to take advantage of this “between” season to grow carrots, lettuce, scallions and other winter veggies.
“A lot of people know about planting in September,” Simpson said, “but you can also plant in February and March. The spring season is one people tend to ignore, but it’s a great time. The days are getting longer (which means more light for plants). It’s a short season, but you can still get a lot.”
The list of possibilities is long. There are root vegetables: carrots, beets, turnips, radishes and scallions. Then there are “leafy cooking greens,” as Simpson calls: lettuce, arugula, kale, collard greens, spinach, cilantro, parsley and chard. She warns that broccoli and cauliflower take too long to grow so these aren’t a good option now.
If you get seedlings, that gives you about a four-week head start over seeds. If you are planting seeds, Simpson advises adding compost and a fertilizer high in nitrogen to your soil, especially if it’s an area where you’ve never grown anything. Examples of such fertilizer are soy or cottonseed meal (7 to 8 percent nitrogen), or alfalfa meal.
Don’t try to plant everything. Pick several vegetables you know your household will eat.
“If your family likes kale, plant kale. There’s nothing like pulling carrots out of the ground for kids,” Simpson said. The tops should be about a foot tall, and “you can put your fingers in the soil to feel the ‘shoulders'” of the carrots to see if they’re big enough or just pick them as babies.
Follow packet directions but generally you want to dig down with your finger about three times’ the diameter of the seed. Pat soil over the top and lightly water.
Lettuce and carrot seeds are relatively small and get planted in shallow soil. Simpson suggests dragging your finger along the soil to create a “row” then placing seeds one by one, poking them down. Then put soil back over them. A pea seed should be poked down about two inches or so. There needs to be good contact with the seed coat and the soil to allow the seed coat to absorb water and soften. Mark rows with Popsicle sticks or old plant labels.
Many vegetables need to be thinned as they grow, and one way to save yourself time is to make sure to plant only one seed in each hole and follow the seed packet’s directions for spacing them.
Look out for weeds.
“A weed is a weed because it’s a highly successful plant in bad conditions,” Simpson said. At first, you may not be able to tell the difference between your sprouts and weeds. The row labels will help, as will the seed packets that should have pictures of the sprouts. Pull weeds as you see them, but know this: Radishes and turnips, as well as broccoli and cauliflower, are from the brassica family, which produces 50 percent of all weeds, she said.
Be patient. The soil is cold right now so sprouting may take longer than the packet said. If there are enough sunny days to warm your soil, you can be harvesting vegetables by mid-April.
If you choose to plant in a container, the rule of thumb is to change about 1/3 of the soil annually so that within three years the soil is fresh. If you are planting directly into the ground, invest in a digging fork, Simpson said, which is a tool with four fork-like prongs on the end of a shovel handle.
Dig down a foot or so. “You’re loosening, not rototilling,” Simpson said.
If you have clay soil and you can’t get the shovel in deeper than 6 inches, the ground might be too dry. If the shovel goes all the way in but the soil is heavy and sticky, then it is too wet.
If the top six inches breaks up nicely, you could just amend that much with a layer of compost (about 1- to 2-inches thick, mixed in) and plant. Try lettuce, chard, cilantro and radishes. If the next 6 inches of soil looks dry, you can water it yourself as it will take a while for rain to get down that far.
Dig after a rain. Be sure to clear the area of snails or use iron phosphate (a nontoxic organically acceptable substance) to repel them. The new vegetable sprouts, she points out, are “one bite” for a snail.
“I think going out and looking every day is a good thing,” she said. The soil needs to be damp and loose enough for a sprout to break through. When the sprouts come up, you’ll know the root has already gone down. Give the sprouts a light misting every day.
Her last bit of advice? “Take a chance.”
For more information from master gardeners, go to bit.ly/MasterGardenersTips.
To register for the adult school winter gardening class, go to bit.ly/AdultWinterGardeningClass.
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Many people who visited Stanford Theater when the were younger are taking their own children to watch old films. Photo courtesy Cynthia Mortensen-Colombetti. -
Stanford Theatre was recently renovated to keep the space looking exactly as it did in 1925. Photo courtesy Cynthia Mortensen-Colombetti. -
More than 1,000 seats at Stanford Theatre were taken to a Los Angeles to a company specializing in vintage-seat refurbishment. Photo courtesy Cynthia Mortensen-Colombetti.
