Originally Published on March 3, 2011   Written by Mineko Takada-Dill

If you like gardening, I think gardening is the one of the healthiest activities you can do. First, you can grow vegetables without chemicals so you know exactly what you are eating. Also, you are doing exercise while getting sunshine to produce Vitamin D in your body.

1. In the Pacific Northwest, you can grow vegetables which like cool weather from spring to early summer. Peas, Lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, mustard and radish are easiest to plant between March and June. See the chart Vegetable Garden in the Pacific Northwest. You can not grow those vegetables starting in Spring in some other places because  it gets too hot.

2.You can plant peas and spinach as early as March for an early summer crop. My chart indicates you could plant as early as February but some years you may lose crops to unexpected cold weather in February.

3. When you are growing heat loving vegetables, such as tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, you should transplant the small plants between the middle of May and June. Even then, you may still lose some of plants due to unexpected cool weather.

4. Summer/winter squash and pumpkins grow well by planting seeds directly between May and June.

5. Snap beans, summer squash and cherry tomatoes are probably the easiest to grow during the cool summer in Pacific North West.

6. My biggest enemies are slugs. You can grow over winter vegetables  such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and over winter cabbage  but I found it seems more like growing slug food during our rainy but mild winters.

7. Last year, I blogged about my garlic. The garlic plants need to overwinter, so wait till autumn to plant. If you have already planted garlic last fall, you should fertilize the plants in early spring.

Happy Gardening!