PORT TOWNSEND — It is a sunny day in early April, and Tinker Cavallero is on her knees, scooping out depressions in the dirt and inserting small, bi-leaved plants.
By summer, the dark green plants will produce heads of round, red cabbage and stalks of crunchy broccoli.
Cavallero grew the vegetable starts from seed in her greenhouse and is planting them in the RoseWind Cohousing community garden, where she is the garden coach.
This Saturday, she will be at the Port Townsend Garden Club’s annual spring sale to dispense advice to novice planters.
In a few words: Start small. Keep it real.
“I recommend the people start small and know how much time and energy they have to give to it,” Cavallero said.
“It’s better to start small and keep it well tended and be able to eat everything.”
Cavallero was formerly lead gardener for Abundant Life Seeds and Frog Hill Farm, where she oversaw large plots of land.
But for beginning gardeners, it’s best to start with a 10-by-20 or 25-foot plot.
Cool weather crops
Keeping it real means planting vegetables that are easy to grow in the Northwest — basically, anything in the mustard family. Forget the hot weather crops — peppers, eggplant, okra — and avoid cauliflower and brussels sprouts.
“Broccoli, cabbage, onions, peas and beans — they’re so easy to grow,” Cavallero said.
Swiss chard and zucchini are also simple, she said.
But she cautions: Don’t grow anything you aren’t willing to eat.
Cavallero said she never buys vegetables, eating what’s in season or canned or frozen from her garden.
But that’s a hard row for everyone to hoe.
“You have to be dedicated to do that,” she said, “or cheap.”
Right now, she’s picking leeks, kale blossoms and a little lettuce that over-wintered in her 10-by-17-foot greenhouse.
Outdoors, Cavellero’s garden covers most of three lots, so she has space for corn, which she starts in pots, not outdoors from seed.
She also grows cucumbers, using floating row cover to keep the heat in and the bugs out.
The fickle Northwest weather, with its penchant for late frosts and rainy, cold Junes, doesn’t worry her.
“I look at the weather for the coming week and start things when I think the soil temperature is right,” she said.
“It’s best to start things indoors and pray that it’s going to work out.”
Plant sales
Members of the Port Townsend Garden Club have been propagating varieties of vegetables and flowers from their gardens and potting up divisions to sell Saturday.
The club is giving out free vegetable starts as long as they last, sale co-chair Jean Harrington said.
Another reason to arrive early: The sale, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, is so popular that people line up at the door and sweep in like a horde of locusts when it opens, she said.
“It’s amazing how a huge room full of plants can disappear so fast,” Harrington said.
The Nordland Garden Club is holding its spring plant sale from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 25 at the clubhouse on Garden Club Road, Marrowstone Island.
But you might want to make a shopping list and not get carried away.
“Most people have a lot of energy in the beginning of the season when they set up the garden,” Cavallero said.
“It’s like keeping house. You have to give a garden regular attention.
“If it is successful, you can make it bigger next year.”
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
