Cool Weather Crops, Soil & Seeding for Ottawa Weather

Early Spring Planting & Growing from Seed

If this is your first season growing your own garden, welcome! This is the first edition of our Victory Garden 2.0 series, and we’re glad you’re here! 

Here's everything you need to know about planting your garden, but if you need more info come by Gemmell's Garden Center, we have a location in Smiths Falls and Brockville and we'd be happy to help you out! 

Soil

Once the ground is unfrozen and workable, you can turn your garden and topdress with composted manure and sea compost to amend the soil. Healthy soil is the key to successful vegetable gardening, really, any type of gardening. It’s honestly the best investment you can make in your garden.

If you’re building a new garden, be sure to remove all existing grass. Don’t turn it under, or you’ll be battling grass seedlings for years to come. If you need to build up your soil, always choose triple mix, garden soil, manure, or compost. Never use black earth. It may be inexpensive, but it contains very few nutrients and is a dense soil that compacts easily, which can suffocate plant roots.

Liz also recommends adding lime to your garden. Lime helps “sweeten” the soil and allows nutrients to become more readily available to plant roots. You can take a look at our Fertilizers online HERE. 

Indoor Crops

Many gardeners are trying their hand at starting vegetables indoors this season. The simplest recommendations we can make are:

Try not to start seeds too early. Always read the back of your seed packets. If it says to start seeds a certain number of days before the last frost, count back from May 24th and start them then.

Tip: Many old-timers don’t plant their vegetable starts outdoors until after the last full moon in late spring, which this year falls on June 5th. While it may seem like planting earlier leads to earlier harvests, waiting often results in warmer soil, no risk of frost, and surprisingly similar, or even better, results in the end.

Always start seeds in a lightweight seed-starting mix. Never use topsoil or black earth to start seeds. No explanation needed, just trust us!

If you haven’t started vegetables indoors, or if your seedlings aren’t thriving, rest easy. We’ve doubled our vegetable starter production this season, so there will still be plenty of time to purchase starts in May. A full list will be available online by May 1.

Cool Weather Crops

While many vegetables need warmth to germinate and are best started indoors, several crops can be direct seeded into the garden in early spring, typically from late April to mid-May. Some vegetable starts can also be planted outdoors in May, even before the last risk of frost (May 24th in this area). Refer to the chart below for a quick guide.

Liz Gemmell has already seeded radishes and planted onion sets, along with spinach, peas, and kale.

Patio Plantings

If you don’t have space for a traditional garden, container gardening on a patio or deck is a great option. This style of gardening will be covered in more detail in future blogs and emails, especially since it’s how I garden myself with a mostly shady yard and a sunny deck.

For now, a simple place to start is a window box or pot of mesclun mix or lettuce, which I planted this weekend. Lettuce prefers cooler weather, so I typically grow it in May and June, then again in September.

Note: If this is your first time growing a garden, embrace both your successes and your failures, and don’t get discouraged. Even the most seasoned gardeners experience crop losses and setbacks. Every year and every season brings its own challenges. It’s the journey that makes gardening so rewarding. This year, more than ever, is a perfect opportunity to learn something new that may stay with you for a lifetime. When you taste your first homegrown tomato, I promise it will be worth it.

Keep growing… keep going!

Kelly