News / Life / Clark County Life

Gardening with Allen: Hardy flowers, veggies to plant now

By Allen Wilson

Published: March 20, 2021, 6:05am

Evening primroses (Allen Wilson)

The warm, sunny weather stimulated me to visit a garden store to look for flowers. It was so busy that I had to wait to find a parking space. Yet the weatherman says it is too early to plant flowers because we had a low of 28 degrees. Are there flowers or vegetables that are safe to plant now?

Yes, there are both flowers and vegetables that are hardy down to 26 degrees that can be safely planted now. Vegetables are much easier to categorize so we will do those first.

If you eat the leaves, roots or flower buds (lettuce, carrots, broccoli) it is a hardy vegetable. There are two exceptions to this rule. Potatoes are not hardy. However, they are often planted at the same time as hardy vegetables because seed potatoes that are planted in the ground don’t come up for about three weeks when temperature is warmer. The second exception is peas and fava beans, which are very hardy. With the exception of peas, if you eat the fruit of a vegetable it is tender and susceptible to frost.

I like to plant vegetables like peas, lettuce, spinach, radish and carrots from seed because they have plenty of time to mature when planted early.

I usually plant my onions, cabbage, broccoli and Brussels sprouts from transplants. Although you won’t find transplants of most root vegetables in stores, you will find transplants of peas, lettuce, spinach and all the cabbage family of vegetables now.

You have to learn the hardy flowers one at a time or look them up in a book. The pansies and primrose that are for sale in bloom right now are two of the hardiest. In fact, pansies are normally planted in the fall so you can enjoy some winter and early spring bloom.

Primrose is a perennial that will live through the winter and sometimes come up the next year. All perennial flowers can also be planted early. Common perennials include delphinium, black-eyed Susan, coneflower, daylily, lavender, hellebore, Shasta daisy, coreopsis and lupine.

Other favorite annual hardy flowers are snapdragon, petunia, alyssum, carnation, dianthus, dusty miller, verbena and sweet pea.

Tender annual flowers include ageratum, begonia, celosia, cosmos, geranium, impatiens, marigold, sunflower and zinnia. Even though you may find them in stores already, I strongly advise against planting any of these unless you can protect them from frost. Even if protected, these tender flowers do not make much growth until weather warms in May.

The average last frost date in Vancouver is mid-April, which means frost can occur a few days after that, especially in slightly higher elevations. So I seldom plant any tender flowers or vegetables until May.

Related Stories