First direct seedings!

We began our spring garden preparations in mid-April, and I expected to begin our first plantings of spinach, carrots, onions, and potatoes soon after. But I decided to strictly follow the soil temperature suggestions on the back of the seed packets, and use soil temperature maps (greencastonline.com/SoilTempMaps.aspx) to guide my planting timings. We had an unusually cool spring, so I did not plant my first seeds until early May! I sowed Olympia spinach from Territorial in one of the raised lasagna beds. A week later, I could see evidence of a very successful germination!!

I'm not sure how well that will show up for you, but I can see the line of embryonic spinach:) Here in the picture below, you should be able to see it better - about a week later, you can see several sets of true leaves!


Much like the celery, I enjoy thinning out the spinach because I like to eat the little baby spinach that I pull:) Both types of spinach I selected are hybrids, rather than open-pollinated. Although there were some open-pollinated varieties available, they were savoy types. I have only tried savoy spinach once, and I didn't like it at all. But I may be willing to give it another shot next year...

I have to be honest at this point and admit that I didn't do a good job keeping track of dates at all. At some point I planted the seed potatoes I bought from seeds of change. I chose two varieties: cranberry red (with pink flesh!) and german butterball. Again, because of the cold spring I did not end up planting the seeds potatoes until I'd had them for about a month. When I pulled them out of the box, I was disappointed to see that they looked wilted, wrinkly, soft, and were growing several eyes. I went ahead and planted them because they were expensive (seed potatoes were by far the highest priced items - from this company, I think I spent about 20 dollars for two varieties!) and I figured, you never know. Well, they are doing amazingly well! It turns out you are supposed to let them sprout before planting, and though I'm still not sure they were supposed to look so wrinkly and soft, I don't see any problems with the potatoes right now. Here is a photo of the potato plants after they'd been in the ground a few weeks. The ones on the left have a purple cast to the leaves - those are the cranberry red potatoes:)


For the potato bed, we tilled it, broke up deep sod with a pick-ax, then tilled it again. The soil was nice and soft when I went to plant the potatoes.

I guess the seed potatoes I got were excellent ones. They were about the size of golf balls, maybe a little larger, and because they were so small I didn't have to cut them before planting them. This is better because when you plant pieces, the exposed flesh is more prone to disease and insects.