Ready to get growing? Sometimes it pays to wait

CORVALLIS – Spring is here and you’re raring to get your vegetable garden going. Well, hold on just a minute. Sowing seed or planting seedlings at the wrong time will bring nothing but heartache.

“One of the biggest mistakes people make is to plant too early,” said Weston Miller, a horticulturist with Oregon State University’s Extension Service. “They get excited when it’s sunny for a few days, put plants in the ground and think they will grow. But the seeds either rot from damping off fungus or germinate very slowly. Transplanted starts planted too early will be stressed for the rest of the season and likely won’t catch up.”

Right about now (early May) in the Portland area, you can plant cool-season vegetables such as carrots, beets, scallions, chives, parsley and cutting greens that are easy to grow from seed; or plant already-started transplants of kale, head lettuce, chard, leeks and onions.

An inexpensive soil thermometer helps keep planting time in perspective.

“Fifty degrees is a good benchmark for cool-season crops,” Weston said. “And the soil should be 60 degrees or more for warm-weather plants like tomatoes, peppers and basil. In fact, for tomatoes it should ideally be 65 to 70. The soil won’t warm up to 60 or more until mid to late May or even June.”

If you can’t resist the urge to plant warm-season vegetables, Miller recommended using some sort of protection from the chill like floating row cover, individual glass or plastic cloches or even milk jugs or soda bottles with the top cut out and turned upside down over plants. For directions on building a large, greenhouse-type cloche with PVC pipe and plastic, check out the OSU Extension guide on How to Build Your Own Raised Bed Cloche.

Whether the relatively warm winter will mean soil warms earlier this year is a matter of conjecture, Miller said. There still could be a cold snap in the coming weeks.

“Gardening depends on the weather, which is unpredictable,” he said. “But it pays to wait.”

You’ll find more information about vegetable gardening, including schedules for planting 45 vegetables in all regions of Oregon, in the comprehensive Extension publication called Growing Your Own. You’ll also find information on how far apart to space plants and how much to grow for a family of four.