The wild plants know spring is coming to the coast. The toothwort is blooming pink below the redwoods, and in the meadows, the wild strawberries are unfurling their tiny leaves. Their arrival means it’s time to start planning your summer garden. Many people here in Mendocino already grow their own food and flowers, seasonally or year-round, but 2021 is a great year to start a garden or expand your existing one, especially if you find yourself spending more time at home due to Covid-19. As my friend Spirit wrote on the Cosmos seed packet she gave me last month, “Gardens of hope 2021!”

This is a short guide on (some of) the best and easiest veggies and flowers to plant right now in the Mendocino area. Most of them will be ready in early summer for your salads and in time for the bees’ enjoyment.

Vegetables

The first thing to consider when looking at where to plant in your area is the predicted last frost date. Our last frost is predicted in the Fort Bragg area on March 19th. This means that, for the most part, you won’t have to wait to plant your veggies outside.

I recommend planting staples like lettuce, radishes, snap peas, scallions (or green onions), carrots, and cucumbers this spring. These are relatively low management, but you will have to water often as the weather warms. You should plant lettuce, radishes, snap peas, and scallions 4-6 weeks before our last frost, in late February, early March. Carrots should be planted two to three weeks before, in early March.  

Cucumbers should be planted at least two weeks afterward. You can start these seeds indoors if you have space; just be aware of planting times so your plants don’t get too big for their containers before you can transplant them outside.   Because our coastal summers are fairly mild, you can plant multiple crops of radishes, lettuce, carrots, and green onion throughout the summer. All these plants are great for fresh salads, and excess cucumbers, carrots, and radishes can be easily quick-pickled to last longer.

Flowers

As for flowers, start things like calendula, borage, cosmos, and sunflowers in the spring. You can start them from seed indoors four-to-six weeks before the last frost, or wait until after the last frost to plant outside. 

Sunflowers do best if started from seed in a warm place before being transplanted outside, and calendula and borage will continue to re-seed themselves year after year once established. Borage should be seeded directly into your garden, as it will not do well if transplanted. 

These flowers are great for pollinators like bees and butterflies, and you can even use calendula and borage flowers in your salads. While I’ve never harvested sunflower seeds, you can do so for eating or replanting, and a great article on how to harvest them and all their different uses can be found here.

Additional Resources

In general, The Old Farmer’s Almanac is a fantastic resource if you want to know when to plant in your area. They give a full month ahead of their planting guide for free. 

Additionally, it’s helpful to know your climate hardiness zone when researching the best times to plant in your area. Mendocino is located in the USDA’s 9b, 25 to 30F climate hardiness zone, which is the Department of Agriculture’s “standard by which gardeners and growers can determine which plants are most likely to thrive at a location.” Hardiness zones are “based on the average annual minimum winter temperature, divided into 10-degree F zones.” Based on our zone, this is a very useful chart from the Urban Farmer, which shows when you can plant most of your veggies.

Spring is a time of new beginnings, and how better to celebrate that than by setting up your garden to be bountiful and beautiful in a few months’ time. I find gardening to be a meditative and rewarding endeavor, and this spring is feeling especially hopeful, so capitalize on that hope, sow it into your garden beds, and harvest happy flowers and veggies.