Can I plant outside now? - Cool Season Crops for April & Frost Dates

Hello kitchen gardeners,

The days are getting warmer! Isn't it exciting? We measured temperatures around 15 degrees C already before the middle of April. It's a gardener's dream and everybody gets happier with so much warm sunshine. Compared to two years ago, we can start gardening up to 2 weeks earlier this year, because the soil has already thawed in most places. We remember that we had a snowy patch in the darkest corner of our garden until the end of May in 2020. But there is no more snow this year already!

Transplanting times for cool season crops for Ottawa/Montreal and Hawkesbury

This beautiful early spring makes us gardeners really excited and very optimistic. But we need to watch out, that we don't overdo it and plant our little seed babies outside way too early. There is one thing we always have to keep in mind: our last frost dates

• Montreal: April 21st-30th

• Ottawa: May 1st-10th

• Hawkesbury area: May 20th-24th

Except our friends in Montreal, who are so lucky with their special location and warmer climate, we need to wait patiently for a little longer with planting tender seedlings.

But that doesn't mean that we can't do anything yet. You can direct sow a lot already! All hardy cool season crops love to go into the ground now. It's actually their perfect time to be direct sown. These plants include radishes, snow peas (mind the name!), lettuces, corn salad, frisee lettuce, carrots and spinach. During the days to come I will sow spinach, corn salad, arugula and frisee lettuce into our cold frame as well as spinach, carrots, mustards, pac choi and snow peas into our raised beds.

We also saw our strawberry plants coming back to life. Strawberries are actually pretty hardy. If you did not manage to plant them in fall, do it now as soon as possible so your plants have time to adjust to their new place and can focus on producing flowers and strawberries when it warms up. If you want to know exactly the right time in April and early May for your location to start growing outside, please have a look at the charts in this post.

Now let's go and get our hands dirty!

Happy Gardening!

Ines & Eric