Cool Weather Gardens - Start Your Peas, Lettuce and Tomatoes?

Author:

Jon Ruppel
Cool weather gardening is a great way to start the spring gardening push. For the earliest garden, or in extremely cold climates, cold weather crops give us a great way to get started in the garden even before the last chance of frost has faded away. And most of these favorites will thrive in containers, so you can start them inside if you like.



One of the easiest and earliest to produce are radishes. Simple to sow and grow, they can often be harvested in only about 30 days, so these are a must for anyone trying to start an early garden. And they are great for a salad.



Speaking of salads, no salad is complete without lettuce or spinach. Leave lettuce is easy to grow almost anywhere. It germinates well, will tolerate some light frost, and is quick to mature. It can be planted from seed, or transplants. Start with the leaf or buttercrunch lettuce, they\'re easier to grow than head lettuce, mature more quickly, and the harvest time is longer as well. Spinach has a growth pattern much like leaf lettuce. However, it\'s a little hard to germinate, so you may want to start it in a peat pot before setting it out in the garden.



Another cold weather garden standby is peas. In some parts of the country you can plant peas in the ground as soon as the ground thaws enough to stick your finger in to push the seed down. A light feeder, this one actually improves the soil as it grows by fixing nitrogen. And for a variation on the pea theme, there are few crops that are as mouthwatering straight out of the garden as sugar snap peas, which can also make a great addition to that salad.



One other crop that is not normally thought of as cold weather crop are tomatoes. These favorites are not frost hardy, and prefer warmer temperatures to thrive. But that\'s not to say that with a little help we can push mother nature to let us gain a few weeks on starting those tomatoes. By using container or hanging planters, or water teepees in the garden, you can get the jump on your neighbors on getting those tomatoes going in your garden.



Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/cool-weather-gardens-start-your-peas-lettuce-and-tomatoes-843328.html


About the Author
If you want to learn more about cold weather favorites like growing sugar snap peas, growing lettuce, or getting the jump on growing growing early spring tomatoes then head on over to howtogardenguide.com