Get the Cold Weather Plants Outside

Hear ye, Hear ye!

If you haven't already planted your cold weather plants outside and it's starting to get warmer outside where you live then it's definitely time to do so.  Depending on where you live your spring growing season may have come and gone (I'm looking at your Floridians), it may not be here yet (Northern Minnesotans), or it may just be coming into full swing (such as us Coloradans).

The broccoli in the urban farm war zone after being transplanted among marigolds and dill

Here's what I just moved outside (after hardening off):

-23 Cabbages

-24 Broccolis

-Potatoes planted in above ground containers (not using my wood potato towers this year, trying something new to see if I can get a better yield)

-Celery

-Asparagus

-4 Blueberry Bushes

-4 BlackBerry Bushes

-4 Raspberry Bushes

I've been wanting to get these plants outside for quite a few weeks now but we had a very cold and snowy April and it just kept snowing and being cold so I wasn't able to until this last weekend.  Even now it's still a gamble for where I live, the weather is so unpredictable it's not uncommon for us to get a big snow or deep freeze in May, even at the end of May.

These cold weather plants can handle a little bit of snow and frost but a lot of it might kill them which would make me a sad panda bear.

I did plant a whole bunch of marigolds and dill along with the cabbages and broccoli to try and help keep some pests away.  Some of the marigolds I started from seed inside and in a few places I planted marigold seeds so I'll have a variety of ages of marigolds.  For the dill, I have a royal crap ton of volunteer dill growing all over the urban farm (which is 200% fine by me).  So I dug some of it up and moved it over to the cabbages and broccolis.  I normally get some slugs on the cabbages and some aphids on the broccoli so these scented plants will hopefully help keep them away!

The cabbages and broccoli weren't too happy about the move, they were pretty droopy and pissed off after the transplant.  It probably didn't help that it was pushing 90 F (32 C) on that day.  It's been raining and much cooler ever since and they are looking like much happier plants (or is it my singing to them that's helping them?  Nope, definitely not).  

The bushes are along the back perimeter of the urban farm which I'm very excited for, hopefully they stay alive.  I tried planting some berry bushes on my first year of the urban farm and they promptly died very fast but now I'm more confident in my farming skills and I think they'll be just fine this time around.

Now that the cold weather plants are all outside it's time to get all of the warm weather plants hardened off if they're not already there and get them ready to be planted.  Once you've made an educated determination that there likely won't be more snow or a freeze then it's time to get the warmer weather plants in the ground outside!

In the comments below:  How are your spring plants coming along?