Waiting to garden

I'm waiting patiently for March to start seedlings for the garden. Last year I started them in April but I think they would do a little better if they were further along. The shorter growing season can be a challenge with the occasional cold snap and hail storms.

Last year I started way too many tomatoes, I think I managed to give away around 30-40 starts and still had tons left over. The root veggies need to be directly planted outside, so I'm limited to tomatoes, herbs and maybe melons inside. My previous melon transplants did not fare well, a couple of them took but mostly the direct plantings were more successful (until things froze). 

prepping the garden in April

I plan to start a lot more marigolds this year in hopes they will keep the critters away from the corn. Most of the corn last year was massacred by pocket gophers and ground squirrels.

We had good luck with the lettuce, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, peas, pumpkins and herbs. An early freeze doomed the cucumbers and left us with green tomatoes but they ripened up ok inside. The heartiest plants in the garden turned out to be the garlic and some snapdragons. 

Snapdragons and Tigerella tomatoes

Buttercrunch lettuce, Imperator and Cosmic Purple carrots

Green tomatoes, variety of potatoes

 

Parsnips and pumpkins