Category Archives: Cold Season Vegetables

Vegetables you can plant as early as April here in the Front Range of Colorado (zone 4-5).

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Easy Beet Salad

The first time I ate a beet was 24 hours after I gave birth to my son Ryan by C-Section. It was my first meal. Beets were on the plate. Canned beets. And they were sooooooo good. About two weeks later I bought a can of sliced beets. And they were soooooo gross. I guess I was hungry that day in the hospital.

Fast forward to an evening in Vail, Colorado where my brother, my personal chef and my mother and I were on a get-away. My brother treated us to a fancy dinner and we ordered a roasted beet salad. “It tastes like the earth,” my brother remarked. This was a compliment of course because that salad was sooooooo good.

So I started to grow beets. And now I will never NOT grow them. Never ever.  Keep reading for an easy recipe below. 

Some pea plants grow 2 feet tall.  Others grow 7-8 feet tall.

This year I had to get up on my tip toes to pick the pods off these vines.  Crazy fun!  I can’t tell you how much my garden has given me joy and hope.  I remember when I used to have just 5-6 pots on my little deck in the city of Seattle.  That gave me joy too.  Watching something grow reminds us that we are meant for life, even when we are in the midst of experiencing death.

Growing Cool Season Vegetables In Colorado

Colorado State University Extention

image courtesy of weatherclipart.net

Here on the Colorado Front Range, you can have an early spring, a summer and a fall vegetable garden by planting cool and warm season vegetables. Cool season?  Yes, you CAN plant vegetables as early as April (sometimes as early as March) for an early summer harvest and again in mid-to-late July for a fall harvest.

Cool season veggies like cooler weather.  This is why they are labeled cool (or sometimes cold) season.

Go to the link above to read more about these vegetables who like to chill.

 

Vegetable Planting Guide for Colorado

June 15, 2014

Please, pretty please go to the link above for a chart that indicates WHEN you can plant your veggies.  Probably the biggest mistake a Colorado gardener makes is planting veggies at the wrong time.  For example, it took me years to learn that I can plant peas in early April for a June harvest (and again in mid/late July) for a fall harvest!