Hopefully, you’ve already planted your seeds or are about to plant your seeds in the next few days. However, no worries if you haven’t gotten this far yet. Consider whether you will be planting frost-tolerant seeds or not. This will determine when the best time to plant them is.

For fragile seeds, you could plant them roughly four weeks before the last projected frost, which generally happens in high elevations about one to two weeks before the official start of summer. Though sometimes, the last frost occurs early to mid-July.

For vegetable gardens, here’s a list of frost-tolerant seeds:

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage

Collards

English Peas

Kale

Kohlrabi

Leeks

Mustard Greens

Parsley

Radishes

Spinach

Turnips

Many flower seeds can handle light frost but don’t do so well in freezing temperatures. Best to wait a few more weeks to plant these. Here’s a list of seeds you can plant in a few weeks. Or keep an eye out for when they go on sale at the end of May and early June:

Snapdragons

Pansies

Violas

Flowering cabbage/kale

Alyssum

Lobelia

Petunia

Dusty miller

Centaurea

If you need seeds, visit your friendly, local Indian Peaks Ace Hardware store, where you purchase an array of seeds and all the necessities to help you get started. Other places you can connect with are the Nederland Food Pantry Community Garden and the Gilpin County Community Garden. Applications and fees are necessary for garden plots.

Be on the lookout for Sugarloaf’s Fire Department May annual garage sale, where you can purchase plants and garden supplies and other goodies such as furniture, clothing, books, toys, sporting/camping goods, and more!

As we get closer to spring, we’ll continue to dig deeper into the dos and don’ts of gardening, including homemade, eco-friendly rodent repellents and starting a garden foundation from scratch.