When do gardeners in the pacific northwest turn their gardens in the spring?

[LAS14]

We're sitting in Maine waiting for the ground to dry enough to turn it and it just rains and mists and rains and mists with a single sunny day here and there. Is there a trick to gardening in moist climes??

tia
las

[Eyeball_Kid]

1. How about "Make hay while the sun shines"?

In the PNW, right now, I'm hitting mud at around 3 inches deep when tilling. (We had heavy rains in March/April.) But each dry day at temps over 60F does wonders for the evaporation rate. Here, we just have to wait for awhile. My guess is that Mainers have a bigger problem with gardens because, in the PNW, we have late summers after early wet Springs. Corn is PLANTED in late June on many farms.

What helps is to cultivate soil with good drainage.

[LAS14]

2. Ah. Yeah, if you can wait till late June to plant that's a big deal. One year...

... in the 1800's it snowed EVERY MONTH in Maine. There was a lot of westward migration that year. Now that I think about it, it might have been the year Krakatoa erupted? Have I got that right?

[MissB]

3. Raised beds with tons of drainage

I actually do sunken hugelkultur beds. My beds are 18-24” above grade with another 2-3’ below. I don’t turn them- just add organic material each year.

I tidy up this time of year, picking up and chopping up bits of yard debris that’s fallen from somewhere through the winter - branches and late leaves and such. It all gets thrown back on my beds.