April 15 is not just Tax Day, it’s the first planting date for our cool season veggies.

Love lettuce? Ready for radishes? If you want to get your hands dirty, now is the perfect time to sow your greens, snap peas, onions and more. Many root veggies can also be planted outdoors. Carrots and beets actually grow best in the spring and the fall. For a complete listing of cool season veggies, check out this handy chart from the University of Minnesota Extension Service.

Not ready to work in your garden? Now is the perfect time to clean your containers and refill them with new potting soil. Many cool season veggies love life in a container. If you plant now, you’ll have a great harvest of baby field greens before it’s time to plant your peppers in the ground. If you need a little instant gratification, pansies also like the cold and can add a pop of spring color to your patio.

Snap peas are my favorite cool season veggie. I can never eat enough of these sweet treats. Luckily, it is super easy to grow snap peas in a container. As you can see from the photo, an unused tomato cage and twine make a great impromptu trellis. Buried in the bottom of the pot, the stake adds a little vertical lift.

What cool season veggies are a must-have in your garden? Do you plant slowly over the growing season or do you wait until June 1 to get all your veggies in the ground at once?

Do you have strong feelings about onions?

Pity the onion, I say. They have to be one of the unsexiest vegetables ever to grace the garden. Tomatoes get gobs of accolades. Sweet corn is sublime. We ooh and ahh over the juicy flesh of vipe-ripened melons. But poor onions do their thing without any acclaim.  Forget the fact that they are used in so many culinary dishes I can’t even begin to list them, and they keep for months despite abject neglect.

I root for the underdog, so I am an onion fan. Yes, they make me cry, and no, I won’t wear those silly-looking goggles you see in gourmet catalogs. I just wipe the tears and try not to cut my finger off as I slice and dice. I like to grow my onions from sets, which are partially started onion bulbs you just have to plunk in the ground and water.

This year I got wondering how I could grow those cute little cippolinis, the small, flat onions that all the restaurants suddenly serve. Despite the fact that I’d failed repeated at growing onions from seed in past years, I ordered some. And I ordered sets, too, because I knew I would fail again.

Well, I was wrong. Absolutely everything onionesque grew like mad. I planted eight long rows of onions and still had some left. I have huge sweet white onions, little purple onions, cippolinis, and some I haven’t even pulled yet. Visitors to the house must walk a promenade of drying onions to reach the front door. And though I generously offer, I can’t give them away.

Which, come to think of it, suits me fine. Viva la onion! More for me!

Every spring, I curse my back yard neighbor’s scrubby trees for their unwelcome shade and shower of seeds. But Saturday night, I was grateful for their protection. After the high winds and hail, I thought I’d have a garden full of goners. Instead, I had a garden full of leaves and a yard full of hail. The offending Chinese Elm trees were a ratty mess, but my seedlings were mostly intact.

Weird.

Weeding around the garden, I started to see red. My French Breakfast radishes leafed about two weeks ago, but according to the seed packet, I still had another two weeks to wait for actual radishes.

This little beauty (right) obviously didn’t read the seed packet. Between the dirt and leaves, it was hard to miss the telltale scarlet shoulders.

On Sunday night, I was lucky enough to eat the very first radish grown in my garden (Ha ha! I beat you to the punch squirrels!). Sliced and served on a bed of mixed greens, it was deeee-licious.

Have you eaten anything out of your garden yet? If not, what are you dying to see on your dinner plate?

Meet my only beet.

In early May, after I planted my snap peas and carrots, I decided to sow alternating rows of argula and beets in the back of the Bummer Bed.

The arugula sprouted first. It thrived in the spring sunshine. Soon the boyfriend and I were eating the peppery leaves in a simple basalmic viniagrette.

I searched the bed daily for the teeny red and green beet seedlings promised by my Seed Savers packet, but all I found was a black ant or two.

After three weeks, I noticed a few brave beet pioneers poking out of the soil. Though the rows were sparse, I now knew the seed was good.

However, when I checked on the bed a day later, only the arugula remained.

No tiny beet stems, no tiny beet leaves, no half open tiny beet seeds — The rows were empty as if each seedling had been expertly and systematically plucked from the ground.

Weird.

More black ants scurried between the rows carrying bits of compost and mulch. I stood up frustrated, then I noticed the gigantic new ant hill at the foot of the Bummer Bed.

Could these ants be smart enough to unplant my beet seeds? Maybe… But who or what was eating the seedlings? Rabbits? Squirrels? Birds?

Only one beet survived and it wasn’t spilling any secrets.

After the arugula bolted, I dug up the bed and planted three more rows of beets. Since the end of May, seedlings appear then quickly disappear. A few survivors hide in the straw, but I have a feeling their days are also numbered.

Anyone have a clue to solving this mystery?

Right now, this whole Bummer Bed “beets” the heck outta me.

Meet my only beet.

In early May, after I planted my snap peas and carrots, I decided to sow alternating rows of argula and beets in the back of the Bummer Bed.

The arugula sprouted first. It thrived in the spring sunshine. Soon the boyfriend and I were eating the peppery leaves in a simple basalmic viniagrette.

I searched the bed daily for the teeny red and green beet seedlings promised by my Seed Savers packet, but all I found was a black ant or two.

After three weeks, I noticed a few brave beet pioneers poking out of the soil. Though the rows were sparse, I now knew the seed was good.

However, when I checked on the bed a day later, only the arugula remained.

No tiny beet stems, no tiny beet leaves, no half open tiny beet seeds — The rows were empty as if each seedling had been expertly and systematically plucked from the ground.

Weird.

More black ants scurried between the rows carrying bits of compost and mulch. I stood up frustrated, then I noticed the gigantic new ant hill at the foot of the Bummer Bed.

Could these ants be smart enough to unplant my beet seeds? Maybe… But who or what was eating the seedlings? Rabbits? Squirrels? Birds?

Only one beet survived and it wasn’t spilling any secrets.

After the arugula bolted, I dug up the bed and planted three more rows of beets. Since the end of May, seedlings appear then quickly disappear. A few survivors hide in the straw, but I have a feeling their days are also numbered.

Anyone have a clue to solving this mystery?

Right now, this whole Bummer Bed “beets” the heck outta me.