You often read that peas, radishes and lettuce can be planted as soon as the soil can be worked. Worked? Yes. That means that the soil has dried out enough that when you start mucking around out there you don't leave huge (or even small) clumps of dirt. Those clumps will stay just as they are all season long, haunting you.

The soil is ready to be worked when you make a ball of it in your fist and it falls apart when you let go. If it stays in the ball, it is too wet to be worked.

I really like to plant just a few heads (four to be exact) of lettuce every 10 days as the season progresses. I plant the seeds into four pack cells. This gives me a nice seedling to set out into the raised bed. Makes everything nice and neat. This way I will know for sure that there will be four heads of lettuce ready and waiting for us. There is also a bed where I just seed in lettuce. Not much.

Keep in mind that you are not planting for a Third World country. You are making a vegetable garden to feed yourself or your family. Think through just how much of anything your family is going to eat. And, more important, what they want to eat. I have given up arugula. Yes, indeed. Sounds rather boring I know, but neither of us really care for it well enough to grow it. I would rather devote the space to, well, anything at all but arugula. There you have it, the bald truth.

Also keep in mind just exactly where you are going to put the rewards of your efforts. Do you intend on growing enough to freeze? Enough to see you through the winter? Do you have a place to store root crops? Potatoes may be easy to grow but what good are they really if you do not have a perfect place to store them? Same with onions, carrots, winter squash (if you get enough to make a harvest). Get the picture? You need to be thinking about all of this before you plant one single seed.

But, of course, you will over plant. It seems to be a fact and force of nature. In that case, you will take your extra produce to the basement of the Methodist Church on Mondays to help supply the Food Pantry.

Isn't this great? I have your garden all planted and harvested and it is still March. Not only is it still March, but some truly bitter cold is in our future. It never fails and it looks like this is going to be yet another spring that brings us the temperatures that we expected in January. Forbear.

I would like to slap everyone's hands who have uncovered their perennial beds already. What are you thinking? You loved that warm weather and your inner clock was speaking to you I know. But this is the Far North not the Pacific Northwest. Latitude 59 degrees. It is the sub-Arctic. We are planting things that do not really want to be here. We have to be careful. Leaving the dead foliage covering the root crowns of perennials is part of the deal. If you used mulch (and I would love to know what you used), leave it in place until we are good and finished with the freeze and thaw that graces our gardens all spring. You must be patient.

I know you need to get out there and feel like you are doing something. Walk your property and make plans for where you intend on putting new plants. This will make you feel better. Then you can make a list of just what those new plants are going to be. As you know by now, I am a believer in planting things that are really and truly going to work here. You can experiment later, when you have the basic structure of your garden secured. I don't seem to know when that is because I have been on working this latest garden for seven years. There you have it. The gardening season is upon us. I am so excited I can hardly stand it. It may be bitter cold but this too shall pass. If your ornamental trees are budding out, the bulbs are peeking through and the primulas are showing signs of life, have no fear, they will survive just fine.

Rosemary Fitzpatrick has been gardening with gusto in Homer for 26 years.