Better Late than Never: How planting in the Yukon can be a challenge.

The peas were up before we finished planting the garden this year.

We like to plant most of our seeds as soon as we can work our soil. Because we have a sandy loam it tends to dry out and warm up quickly. This allows us to plant earlier as well.

When I first started to garden in the Yukon I waited until the May long weekend to plant — same as I did while living on the prairies. But I noticed some years the garden could be worked as early as the last week of April.

I started to plant seeds earlier whose packages said “plant as soon as the soil can be worked.” This wasn’t just root crops like carrots and beets, but also spinach, lettuce and Swiss chard.

It made sense to let the garden use all the time it could to produce crops; our season is short enough as it is and we can have frost any month of the year and often do.

If a plant can handle the early frosts why not let it, especially if it means the difference between having a harvest and losing the crop to a late frost. Here are some tips for gardening in the winter Here

Peas are a seed that like to germinate somewhere close to 0°C, but a late frost will turn their pods to mush. 

So these are the first to go into our garden.

This spring has been the coldest I have seen since moving North. So as soon as possible, the pea seeds were planted; we even got the beets and Swiss chard in. But then the weather turned cold again and when I wanted to plant the lettuce and carrots, the wind gusts were so high I would have been sending the seeds to my neighbors yard.

This was followed by more snow.

When the weather finally warmed up and the wind died down it was much later in the season than usual for planting. But out we went anyways – the seeds won’t grow in the packages.

With the sun out and very little wind it feels almost like summer, almost.

The soil was still very cold and I like to garden barefoot.

But by dressing for the weather and working together, Allan and I were able to get a lot done.

Hopefully the rest of the garden will soon be growing along side the peas.


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