Planning overlapping crops

 Hello garden-lovers,

 This week at the garden we are continuing to direct-seed and transplant spring veggies. Everything that was direct-seeded in early April has sprouted (yay!), but the low temperatures at night mean outdoor veggies are slower than those in the greenhouse. A few at a time the flower and vegetable transplants that can tolerate cool nights are being moved outside; lettuce mostly, of which there are many varieties. Jim had seeded quite a few new ones for the plant sale and gave us some of his transplants to try. Here's how it looks today (see map below). Even though it happens every year, it's still a thrill to see rows of radish and spinach about to burst into full adult-plants after a long winter.

Click on the map to enlarge it.

Creeping Shade: We have to face the fact that our community garden is surrounded by incredibly tall trees that simply block the sun. If you were to place a light meter in beds 1 to 5 at this time of year, you might find they only receive less than four hours of sun until July when the sun is higher. So this impacts us, and makes us a shorter season and ever more doubtful location for heat-loving plant like tomato and squash. So we'll have to keep an eye on this as we plan how to adapt over time. We obviously cannot produce in such abundance as Charles Dowding for example, whose farm is well out from under the influence of tree shade.

 But if you want to see some delicious looking examples of multi-cropping in a small allotment sized bed, these videos are GREAT examples, so I'll include them here for inspiration. Enjoy!

New Charles Dowding video on 

keeping your beds full of veg all season:

(video)

For allotment growers interest:

What can you plant in one small vegetable bed? (video)

Also good:

What does a fully planted garden look like mid-summer? (video)

Clearing and replanting in mid-summer (video)

Soil doesn't need to rest with "No Dig method" - keep growing food! (video)

Interesting fact:

We are in the same Plant Hardiness Zone as Charles Dowding, 8b but we have more surprise frosts, I believe, because of the geology of many river valleys carrying occasional arctic super-cooled cold air from the north down to us in our watery haven of warmth. You can look up zones for B.C. here. Dowding is in Somerset UK (zone 8).

Question of the Week: When should I plant tomatoes outdoors? 

A: Whenever there's a question about our zone the best gardening advice I'd probably turn to organic gardener Linda Gilkeson, from Victoria BC. She has a monthly newsletter which I've linked in the right hand column of this blog.

Her newsletter that speaks to the question about when to transplant tomato plants to the outdoors is this one: tomato & other heat-lovers pdf

Also, from what I gather from listening to local gardeners:

Yes, you can plant out early and cloche the plant as forecast requires, for sure.

And if you truly wait til May 24th (the safest possible date) some stores are sold out of all the good tomato plants. So you do have to go buy them by the 15th of May or so, and then keep moving them outdoors bit by bit. Very annoying.

 But everyone takes a little bit of a gamble, and sometimes it does pay off to try for the second week of May. But avoid weakening them or letting them get leggy, that's for sure. (And if they are leggy, bury the stem quite a bit).

Best, Jen