By Matthew Brooke Spring is here and your garden is finally shedding its white blanket from winter, so get out the gloves and trowel and think of all the luscious plants that will be filling your beds in the coming months. It is never too early to start germinating your seeds and getting them re...

By Matthew Brooke

Spring is here and your garden is finally shedding its white blanket from winter, so get out the gloves and trowel and think of all the luscious plants that will be filling your beds in the coming months. It is never too early to start germinating your seeds and getting them ready to be planted once the temperature starts to rise. Depending on the produce it could be planted now at the start of spring, somewhere in the middle, or even late spring and early summer.

One of my favorite parts of planning out my gardening beds each year is taking on new fruits and vegetables that I haven’t grown before. It not only will expand your diet of fresh foods but it makes you proud to be able to check off another plant off of the “grown successfully” list. Last year I dedicated a whole garden bed to varieties of peppers. Bell peppers still have my heart after the season was completed as it was a challenge to get some of the hotter peppers to grow in the colder climate of Western New York.

Some of the new plants that I plan on filling my beds with this year are yellow wax beans, sweet and snow peas (yes, there is a difference!) and Brussel sprouts, even though I really don’t like them. I think that growing Brussel sprouts rather than buying them from a farmers market or grocery store will give me more appreciation for this variety of cabbage than I had before and hopefully I just might enjoy eating them.

With most gardens, as fellow gardeners know, you produce far more than you can enjoy just by yourself. I like to gather up my extra produce and divvy it up for my close neighbors. I have a good understanding for what they like to enjoy the most and try to tailor it to them while including a few that I think they should try again. All are greatly appreciative of the produce I bring them and are usually surprised by the bounty and variety of produce that is grown right in their own neighborhood.