LEBANON, Tenn. (WZTV) — Spring is officially here which means some folks are itching to get their home gardens up and running.
FOX 17 News spoke with one local farmer about what produce you can safely plant right now, and others you might want to wait a little longer on.
What started as a small roadside stand selling extra produce out of the family garden has now turned into the 65 acre Lester Farms in Lebanon.
This year, they’re growing seven acres of strawberries that will be hand picked each morning and sold each day.
“This time of year, strawberries is all the talk,” Owner of Lester Farms, Mitchell Lester said. “That’s kind of what kicks off Middle Tennessee’s fresh fruit and vegetable season every year.”
They’ve still got a few weeks or so, around April 15, until they start harvesting these berries.
And as for how long into the season they’ll be able to pick for, well it really just all depends on the weather. In the meantime, they’ve recently had to deal with some freezing nights.
The average frost free date for Middle Tennessee is typically April 13 to April 20. That’s when, historically, we’ll see our last frost, but strawberry plants begin blooming out much earlier than that.
This year, they started blooming around the first of March. That leaves about two months they have to be ready to frost protect.
Before the temperatures dropped into the 20s earlier this week, Lester Farms was covering all seven acres of strawberries with two layers of the floating row cover to keep them safe.
If you’re growing a garden at your home, and you’re trying to catch the season a little early and already have some vegetable plants put out, Mitchell says floating row covers are a great thing to have on hand incase we have anymore of these cold nights.
You might want to hold off on putting all your vegetable plants in the ground right now if you don’t have anyway to protect them, but Mitchell says there definitely are some plants that are safe to plant right now.
“Right now would be an appropriate time to begin planting your earlier season crops, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce and any of your cold season crops,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell says anything like tomatoes, summer squash, sweet corn, watermelons, any of the more summer crops, you’re going to want to wait until those frost free dates after April 13 to 20 if you’re not prepared to protect them.
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