Cool Weather Crops, Soil & Seeding | Tips from Ottawa's Garden Centre

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.

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, and really any gardening for that matter. It is honestly the best investment you can make in your garden.

If you are building a new garden, be sure to remove all the grass. Do not turn it under or you will be fighting grass seedlings forever. 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 has no nutrients and is a dense soil that becomes easily compacted and can suffocate plant roots. Liz also recommends adding lime to your garden, as it sweetens the soil and allows other nutrients to be more readily available to your plant roots.

Indoor Crops

Many people are trying their hand at starting vegetables indoors. The simplest recommendations I can make are:

Try not to start seeding too early. Always read the back of your seed packages. If it says to start a certain number of days before the last frost, count back from May 24 and start them then. Tip: many old timers do not plant their vegetable plants outside until after the last full moon in late spring, which this year is June 5. Although it may seem like planting earlier will result in earlier crops, planting after the last full moon results in warmer soil, no risk of frost, and surprisingly the same or better results in the end.

Always start your seeds in a lightweight seed starter mix. Never use topsoil or black earth to start seeds. No explanation needed. Just trust us.

If you have not started indoor vegetables or are struggling with your seedlings, rest easy, as we have doubled our vegetable starter production this season. You still have time to purchase some in May, and the full list will be online by May 1.

Cool Weather Crops

While many vegetables need heat to germinate and are best started indoors, there are several crops that can be direct seeded into the garden in early spring, typically late April to mid May. Some vegetable starts are also happy to be planted out in May before the last risk of frost, which is May 24 in this area. See the chart below for a quick guide. Liz Gemmell has just seeded radish and planted her onion sets, along with spinach, peas, and kale.

Patio Plantings

Those of you who do not have space for a garden may want to try container gardening on your patio. I will address this style of gardening in more detail in future emails and blogs, especially since this is the way I have to garden, with a mostly shady yard and a sunny deck.

For now, one suggestion is starting a window box or pot of mesclun mix or lettuce, which I did this weekend. Lettuce prefers cool weather, so I try to grow it in May and June, then again in September.

Note

If this is your first time growing this year, please embrace both your successes and your failures, and do not ever get discouraged. Even the most seasoned gardeners experience crop failures and losses. Every year and every season has its challenges. It is the journey that makes gardening so much fun.

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 tomato, I promise it will be worth it.

Keep growing. Keep going.

Kelly