How To Plant 1-Month Early

By: Ron Cusano                 Apr. 1, 2009                             Vol. 2  Article 1007

     The conventional wisdom is to wait until after all chance of frost has past, before setting out most garden seedlings.  Actually, there are many vegetables that you can direct seed or set out seedlings long before your “last frost date”.
     Sweet peas are a good example.  I usually plant mine around mid-March and have good germination and growth by the first week in April. I have planted then as early as mid Feb. during a brief warming period and they survived very well under several show falls and deep freezes that followed.  Other cold tolerant crops are lettuce, romaine, spinach and cole crops such as cabbage and broccoli.
     Now here is a little trick that will allow you to set out cold sensitive seedlings a month or more before your “last frost date”. Save plastic 2 or 3 liter soda bottles, 1-gallon plastic bottles from Arizona Iced Tea, or anything similar. Cut out the bottoms and remove, but save the tops.|
     Set out tomato, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, even melons and zucchini a month or more before last frost, and cover each with one of these bottles. They act like, and I like to refer to them as “Mini-greenhouses.  Push them down into the soil an inch or so, and mound up some soil around the outside edge to keep them from blowing away with the early Spring wind.  If a really sever freeze is forecast for an evening or two, put the lids back on to hold in the heat, and keep out some of the cold.
     If you are really concerned and expect heavy frosts, here is another little trick.  Plan ahead and collect some “egg sized” stones and spray paint them flat black. When you set out your plants, put 2 or three along side the seedlings, under the plastic dome.  The black stones will store the radiant heat from the sun during the day, and release it at night when the temperature drops.  You can reuse these “mini-greenhouses” for several years, if you hose them off and store them in plastic garbage bags.
     This same effect can be achieved with commercial row covers, which can be expensive and cumbersome.  For the small home garden, this method works equally as well, costs nothing, and allows you to recycle plastic bottles.  Here on Long Island, I set out my tomatoes plants between April 10th and 15th and I have never lost a plant to frost using “mini-greenhouses”!
  

Blessings,

Ron
“The Garden Guy”