MSU Extension Tribal Extension

My name is Vicky and I'm Hannibal Indian community member. My dad used to grow potatoes and my dad had a whole garden pool of potatoes. Even my daughter has a lot of garden, has tomatoes at pumpkin, has squash in it. That's the thing about having to have your own is to be a part of it every day, making sure it's water, making sure it's clean, keeping the animals out. She said, I make it with love. I go out there and she's out there gardening, watering it, making sure it's taking care, pulling the weeds out. I am glad and happy that she does that. She was taught something, that she is going to pass it on to her son, and making sure that that gives us nourishment, that gives us life. Hello, my name is Rebecca Kranz, and I work for Michigan State University Extension as a Consumer horticulture educator. And I'm going to tell you about your plants in your cold and hardy garden. This is one of my favorite gardens because I'm actually more in a zone three which sometimes can only have an 80 day growing season. And that might be the case for some of you. A neat thing about this garden is that you can actually sow it successfully every two weeks, then later in the summer to gain a fall harvest as well. All of these vegetables in here are what we call cool season vegetables. And they can germinate and grow in 45 degree soil temperatures. And they like those cool temperatures. Early spring is a good time to start. Those are different vegetables that we have are kale and spinach, and those have relatively smaller seed sizes, probably about a half inch. You'd want to bury those again. Whenever you're planting any of the seeds, make sure that they stay evenly moist. The seeds do not dry out because that will kill the seeds and make you be unsuccessful. Another vegetable is the radish. And the radish is going to be growing the ball beneath the soil. You can actually plant your radishes around and then you can mix actually the kale and the spinach together and just broadcast that around your radish. The other ones, broccoli and cabbage, you'll probably get as transplants. Again, planting those with the radish and then sprinkling the kale and spinach around. Those will be beneficial. As the kale and spinach are growing, you can be harvesting some of those while the broccoli and cabbage are growing to maturity, the broccoli and cabbage might take 50-80 days. Whereas your spinach kale, you might get a little as 30 days. Plant them outside when temperatures are 45 degrees. That's your plants as long as you've hardened them off. For example, your broccoli and your cabbage, They were in a greenhouse environment. You don't want to directly plant them outside without first hardening them off, making them acclimated or more adapted to the outdoor conditions. By hardening, you would place them outdoors maybe for 1 H in a part sunny area. And then slowly introduce them to more of the sun and weather conditions over time before you actually plant them. Otherwise, they're going to be stressed. If you directly plant them out there, please try the cold and hardy garden. I think you'll have great success with that.