by Susan Klatz Beal

Created on: February 09, 2009

For those of us who live in climates where the winter is normally mild in comparison to the harsh winters of the Northeast and Midwest, planning for our gardens begins immediately after we put our gardens to bed for the winter.

As a gardener, I feel incredibly fortunate because I live in a climate that makes it possible to garden for at least seven months out of the year. Although our winters are normally quite mild, sometimes it is hard for us to know when the danger of frost will be gone, but I think it is safe to say that gardening begins in earnest for us at the beginning of March.

This is when the hummingbird migration begins, and sometime between the middle of the second and third weeks of March, the first of spring appearances will be recorded. For those of us who live in Texas, this is also the time at which wildflowers will begin to appear.

For early gardeners, cool weather crops usually be grown all winter long. There is no need to sow seeds indoors because they will do just fine outside. We can plant a crop of lettuce at the end of September. By staggering plantings, we can continue to have home grown lettuce until the weather starts to get hot in April.

When it comes to growing many other vegetables , it's necessary to start seeds for things that are going to go outside, whether in pots or in the ground, no later than January 1st. One important thing to consider when planting most vegetables is that some things need cooler night time temperatures to set fruits.

Tomatoes , for example, will not bear fruits if the night time temperatures never dip below 70 degrees. That's a common state of affairs when it comes to Texas heat. The only way to deal with this situation is to look for and plant varieties that have been hybridized to tolerate extreme heat.

For many vegetables, in a climate where gardening begins as early as ours does, it makes more sense to sow the seeds directly outdoors. The practice of winter sowing generally involves sowing the seeds in some sort of container, and then keeping it in some sort of protective house. It might be a greenhouse, a cloche, a cold frame, or under plastic sheeting.

As long as the vegetables can tolerate cool temperatures and an occasional night where the temperatures dip below freezing, sowing seeds like this will undoubtedly produce earlier crops. It's important to keep the seeds moist during this time. It is often thought that when the soil is moist, the moisture can provide a protective barrier against the cold.

Because

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