Growing new ones is the easiest way to quickly introduce fresh ones into your kitchen. Before nature wakes up for good after winter, you can already enjoy the first harvest of crunchy radishes or delicate lettuce leaves.
So don’t delay, prepare your first seedlings in February and start working. Just make a little effort and you will be able to quickly enjoy delicious harvests that your neighbors will only envy.
Nowalijki are the first vegetables that can be sown and harvested earlier than most crops in the garden (and up to a month earlier). They are usually ready for harvest in March, and some of them in February, when other plants are still dormant in winter.
It’s not a matter of magic tricks, but of well-planned sowing. If you want enjoy the news as early as possible, you should choose varieties that are cold-resistant and fast-growing.
The place of sowing is also important, because not all vegetables will do well directly in the ground at such low temperatures. Even if you protect them with agrotextile, the yields may be weaker. Therefore, some new plants are better grown on a windowsill or in a small greenhouse.
Do novellas, which are suitable for very early cultivationinclude:
- radish
- dill
- botwinka
- butter lettuce
- leaf lettuce
- arugula
- spinach
- spring onion
- young carrot
- sugar snap peas
Growing newas is not complicated, provided you provide them with appropriate conditions for growth. The good news is that some of the early vegetables can be grown on the windowsill, which makes the work much easier. Others will do better under cover or in flower beds.
Newcomers on the windowsill? This is above all cress, chives, arugula or dill. Some people are surprised to learn that this method of cultivation also works for leaf lettuce, as long as it has a shallow container, good access to light and constantly moist soil. If you sow these vegetables in February, you can expect a harvest after just two weeks.
At the turn of February and March it is still too early to sow in the ground without protection, but sowing under cover is a completely different story.. Minitunnels, agrotextiles and makeshift bottle covers effectively protect young plants against cold.
The following plants grow best under cover: radish, lettuce, spinach, dill and onion. Thanks to this, crops appear even 3-4 weeks earlier than with standard cultivation.
When the ground thaws in March, you can try sowing newas directly into the ground. To increase their chances, it is worth installing raised bedswhich heat up faster. The earliest to hit the ground are: radishes, carrots, spinach, lettuce and leaf beets, and harvesting is possible already in April or May.
