Mid TO LATE April
In April, when the soil is workable and there is no snow in your garden, you can sow peas outdoors. If your garden isn’t ready yet, seed them indoors in a tray of soil and eat the shoots once they’re a few inches tall. You can even try transplanting them outdoors once your garden beds are prepared. Peas, like all legumes, don’t like their roots disturbed, so don’t try to separate them out individually but instead plant them as a mat and harvest them for shoots. Some people successfully start their snow, snap and shelling peas indoors in fiber pots and transplant them outside when they’re a couple inches tall without taking them out of the pot. We recommend you put up a trellis for the peas right away before the garden tempo picks up and you are too busy to do it.
Hardy mustard greens such as the Zesty Mix we grow in little pots are a great way to get a jump on the season. They can be planted in little clumps in garden soil that is dry and thawed (a raised bed for example) and protected with row cover. They can be eaten small as leaves in a salad, or they can be planted in separate clumps that get large for steaming or braising. Those little pots of Zesty Mix are the best value because they are so versatile and mulit-purpose.
Onions and leeks don’t mind the cold, and it is important to get them in as early as possible. We have a whole blog post dedicated to growing onions, take a look at it here.
While you’re waiting for the temperatures to warm up, a good way to satisfy our gardening itch - instead of planting out tender crops too early and watching them perish in a late frost - is to set up our garden instead: Pull out any overwintered weeds, clean up last season’s debris, build a raised bed, put up a trellis, spread a layer of compost, make a succession planting plan, or start some seeds indoors.
May
This is the time to plant all cold season crops: radicchio, lettuce, broccoli, cabbages, beets, fennel, lettuce, kohlrabi, chard…
Potatoes can be planted 2-4 weeks before the last expected frost, when the soil has warmed up to at least 50F. Here in the Northeast this is typically in the month of May. Find our varieties for 2025 here.
late may / early june
After the last chance of a frost has passed (in Vermont, traditionally this is around Memorial Day), it is safe to plant all heat loving vegetables, what we call hot crops: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, tomatillos, husk cherries. Cucumbers, zucchini, and all types of squashes can be planted as well.
Make sure you harden them off properly before putting them in the ground. Especially if you kept starts under grow lights, they will need to adjust to the outdoor world over the course of several days. Place them outdoors in the shade, protected from wind, during the day time and take them back inside for the night. Repeat this for several days, gradually increasing their exposure to sunlight and the elements, before planting them in the ground.