Early Spring: The Easiest Unwatered Garden

West of the Cascades, most crops started in February and March
require no special handling when irrigation is scarce. These include
peas, early lettuce, radishes, kohlrabi, early broccoli, and so
forth. However, some of these vegetables are harvested as late as
June, so to reduce their need for irrigation, space them wider than
usual. Spring vegetables also will exhaust most of the moisture from
the soil before maturing, making succession planting impossible
without first irrigating heavily. Early spring plantings are best
allocated one of two places in the garden plan: either in that part
of the garden that will be fully irrigated all summer or in a part
of a big garden that can affordably remain bare during the summer
and be used in October for receiving transplants of overwintering
crops. The garden plan and discussion in Chapter 6 illustrate these
ideas in detail.