What to Plant in Early Spring: Vegetable Garden

What to plant in early spring depends on your gardening zone, but there are many great choices for vegetable gardening that can make your backyard garden productive early in the season.

Spring Vegetable Gardening

With careful planning, the average backyard gardener in most gardening zones in the United States can grow fresh, organic vegetables throughout the seasons. The early spring garden is similar to the fall garden, but with some key differences.

Like fall gardening, the early spring garden receives cool to warm daytime temperatures and cool to cold nighttime temperatures. But unlike the fall garden, the days grow warmer and the sunlight hours longer as the days progress.

Another key difference is that the ground is cold to start with when planting vegetable seeds or plants in the spring; in the fall, plants get a faster start because the ground is already warm from the summer sun.

Planning Your Spring Vegetable Garden

The first step to planning your spring vegetable garden is to determine which gardening zone you live in. The gardening zones in the United States help gardeners estimate the average frost date in the fall and the last frost date in the spring. Most spring garden vegetables can tolerate a light frost, but you may need to cover your plants with a cold frame, an old storm window or even newspapers (and uncover them the next day) if a deep cold spell threatens.

Vegetable Garden Basics (for New Gardeners)

Choose a Good Location with Plenty of Sunlight

If this is your first backyard garden, one of the most important decisions you will make is where to plant your vegetables.

Choose a location that receives full sunlight throughout the day. In gardening terms, full sun means the area should get at least six hours of direct sunlight daily, although more is often better for crops like tomatoes, peppers, and squash.

Sunlight is essential for photosynthesis, which fuels plant growth and helps produce healthy, flavorful vegetables. A lack of adequate light can result in leggy plants, poor yields, and increased vulnerability to pests and diseases.

Get Your Soil Checked

Before planting, it is also wise to assess the condition of your soil. Testing the soil’s pH level can provide valuable insight into its acidity or alkalinity, which directly affects nutrient availability for your plants. Most vegetables thrive in soil with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0.

If your soil falls outside this range, certain nutrients may become inaccessible to your crops, even if they are present in the soil. You can purchase a home testing kit or send a soil sample to a local extension service for more precise results.

In addition to testing, consider enriching your soil with compost. Compost improves soil structure, enhances moisture retention, and introduces beneficial microorganisms. It also acts as a natural buffer, helping to stabilize pH levels over time without the need for synthetic additives.

When to Plant a Spring Vegetable Garden

Timing is another critical factor when preparing your garden beds. Do not begin digging or planting until the soil is truly workable. To test whether the soil is ready, take a handful and squeeze it. If it forms a sticky, wet ball or water drips out, it is still too wet to work. Soil in this condition is not only difficult to handle due to its weight, but working it prematurely can lead to compaction and disruption of its natural structure.

Healthy soil contains a network of pores and spaces that allow air, water, and roots to move freely. Digging in soggy soil can collapse these spaces, making it harder for plants to establish themselves and absorb nutrients. Waiting for the soil to dry out adequately before tilling or planting will set the stage for a more successful and sustainable garden.

What to Plant in Early Spring: Vegetables

In most temperate gardening zones in the United States (zones 5, 6, 7, and 8), some cool-weather vegetables can be planted as soon as the soil can be worked. Be sure to wait until the soil has dried out enough so that it’s not soggy; digging soil when it’s too wet can compact it.

Easy to Grow Spring Vegetables

• Lettuce: Lettuces of all kinds love the cool spring weather. Plant early and plant often. It’s better to plant a few lettuce seeds (or plants) weekly over several weeks to ensure a continuous harvest rather than to plant a large patch all at once. Try many different types of lettuce, including gourmet salad mixes, red leaf, loose leaf, and Romaine.
• Radishes: Radishes, like lettuce, are best planted by seed and planted lightly and frequently. They take only three weeks to mature, and most people only eat a few at a time, so plant a few seeds weekly over the spring so you have a continuous harvest. There are many more varieties of radishes than the red, globe-like radishes you find at the supermarket. Try French breakfast radishes, long white, cylindrical (and sweet-fiery) radishes; and many, many other types.

When Is Soil Workable? Wait If It’s Soggy

Timing is another critical factor when preparing your garden beds. Do not begin digging or planting until the soil is truly workable. This means the soil should not be frozen or overly saturated with water.

To test whether the soil is ready, take a handful and squeeze it. If it forms a sticky, wet ball or water drips out, it is still too wet to work. Soil in this condition is not only difficult to handle due to its weight, but working it prematurely can lead to compaction and disruption of its natural structure.

Healthy soil contains a network of pores and spaces that allow air, water, and roots to move freely. Digging in soggy soil can collapse these spaces, making it harder for plants to establish themselves and absorb nutrients.

Great Greens to Try

• Kale: Kale is a reliable spring green that is as easy to grow as lettuce.
• Chard: Swiss chard is a green, leafy vegetable that’s super-easy to plant and cook. It is not as well known as its cousin, spinach. Swiss chard should be planted from seeds in long rows, like spinach or lettuce.
• Spinach: Plant your first crop of spinach in the spring. Spinach is one of those vegetables that is deceiving. While it may look like you have a huge garden of spinach, it cooks down to next to nothing, so plant more than you think you need. You can also blanch and freeze any excess.

Should You Buy Seeds or Plants for a Spring Vegetable Garden?

Should you plant vegetables from seeds or plants purchased at the garden center? Radishes should always be planted from seed. Lettuce may be planted from seed or from started plants purchased at the garden center. However, lettuce is so easy to grow and seeds are so inexpensive that it’s more economical to buy a 99-cent package of seeds than to spend $1.99 for a four-pack of plants.

Chard and spinach grow best from seeds.

Onions may be grown from seeds or something called an onion ‘set,’ which is either a small starter bulb or a long stem and bulb. Sets are more expensive, but you’ll be able to harvest sooner. They are also easier to grow.

Tips for a Beginner’s Organic Vegetable Garden

Organic Pest Control

One of the best aspects of spring gardening is that few insect pests are around to bother your newly planted vegetables. If slugs are a problem, use organic slug control methods such as a beer trap or dichotomous earth, a natural product.

Add Plenty of Compost

I always work in a good quantity of well-rotted manure and compost into the spring garden to feed my plants. If you don’t have a compost pile, you can purchase a bag of cow manure at the garden center and add it to your garden instead of compost.

Label Your Plants – It’s Easy to Forget What You Plant!

It’s also important to label your plants; it’s easy to forget what you planted and where once they’re in the ground!

Read the Seed Package and Follow the Planting Directions

Be sure to read the seed packages for the time to harvest. You can find a gardening zone map on the back of a seed package that indicates when to plant the seeds in your part of the United States. You will also find directions on how deep to plant the seeds and how far apart to plant them. Any special instructions will also be included on the seed package.

When Can I Harvest My Vegetables?

Lettuce, chard, and spinach are fairly easy to tell when they’re ready to be harvested; you can just look at them and snip off the parts you want to eat, leaving the rest of the plant in the ground to produce more. The plants will keep producing more and more until the hot weather sets in and they go to seed or ‘bolt’.

After lettuce bolts, it becomes too bitter to eat. Radishes take only a few weeks to mature. Dig down in the soil around the top of the radish and use your fingers to feel the size of the root. For regular red globe-shaped radishes, harvest when they’re slightly larger than marbles. Anything larger will taste hotter than a firecracker and probably bitter.

Have Fun Planning, Planting, and Harvesting Your Spring Garden!

Planning your spring garden gives you something to look forward to. Now’s the time to collect those seed catalogs, save the egg cartons and milk cartons for your seed starting projects, and build your seed starting light table. Before you know it, spring will be here, and with it, myriad gardening chores claiming your attention.