With the cool, wet weather recently, the cabbage/mustard family plants, peas and leafy greens are thriving. I still haven’t planted out my melons or some cucumber seedlings (the ones I planted out a couple of week ago are barely hanging in there). Sweet basil is another fragile crop that can’t handle cool weather so hold off on planting them out if you can. If basil, cucumbers or melons were set out earlier and are now turning yellow and failing, there is still time to harvest a good crop if you have to start over with new plants or from seed (sow now, indoors). For most gardens in the region, the soil is probably too cool to plant corn or even bean seeds directly in the garden so continue to start seeds indoors so they can germinate in warm conditions. Most squash and tomatoes outdoors should get through this cool weather OK as they are the most robust of the warmth loving crops, but if tomato leaves are looking purplish colour or squash have yellowing lower leaves, those are …

The cold nights over the last month certainly slowed down the arrival of planting weather, but it is time to get onion sets, shallots, onion and leek seedlings into the garden if you haven’t already done so. To grow good-sized onions, they need to be planted as early as possible to have time to develop a good root system before the long days/short nights in June stimulate the plants to make bulbs. If planted too late (after mid-May) onions often don’t make bulbs at all. Which reminds me, if you want to try growing your own onion sets, sow seeds of a good storage variety the first week of May, directly in the garden. Plant densely (3-5 seeds per square inch) and don’t amend the soil with compost or fertilizer before planting because you want to these onions to stay as small as possible. As long as they are sown before mid-May they produce tiny bulbs that will be cured and stored same way as onions for eating. You should be able to harvest over a hund…

With the season coming along early this year, everyone wants to get gardening. While sandy and well-drained soil can be handled sooner than clay soils, after all the recent rain all soil is still much too wet to be dug or handled. So for now, stick to weeding, cleaning up debris and raking mulch back to allow the soil to warm up on the first beds you intend to plant; some seeds can be sown on the soil surface (see below). Weeding: Weeds to watch for include the winter annuals, such as that small mustard family plant, hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta). They have been germinating since mid-winter and are well on their way to making seeds that pop from the tiny seed pods all over the garden (the leaves make a tasty peppery addition to a salad). It is especially important to remove weeds, especially grasses, from vegetable beds to avoid attracting wireworm adults (called click beetles) to lay their eggs in the garden. The beetles lay eggs on plants, preferring grasses, in ea…