The weather has been amazing here in central Utah, and according to the charts its time to plant the cold crops. There are cold crops, like onions, garlic, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, that cannot tolerate heat well, and need to be planted in the cool weather. Other crops like tomatoes, squash, and peppers are warm weather crops, and need to be planted once the danger of frost is over, which is around the middle or end of May here. So this weekend my friend and I planted an absurd amount of onions, both red and yellow, in her backyard, and I put the remaining onions, and some garlic, in my yard. I also planted green onions from seed, spinach, two kinds of radishes, and some lettuce. Now I am a little worried about the lettuce, since I might be a few weeks early on that, so I am going to have to keep my eye on that to make sure it doesn't freeze.
As a side note, when I planted the things from seed, I didnt plant rows, I planted whole 'squares' (rectangles really). Thats a tip from Mel the Square Foot Gardening guy. There is no room in a typical backyard garden for rows of veggies, and there is nothing wrong with seeding a 12"x12" area, or even bigger. Rows actually are a waste of space, and most plants adapt really well to the 'square foot' method. You should have seen how many tomatoes plants i crammed into a small area, and they grew enormous and produced a ton of fruit! Honestly, I put 1 beefsteak plant and 6 Romas in a 12" x 5' space! Sounds crazy but it works. More on that later.
Here is a link to a planting chart for Utah:
www.co.utah.ut.us/Dept/Exten/Data/vegetableutah.pdf
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