Planting out the first seedling

The hardening off of the seedling did not go so well. It got into the low 30s while they were outside, and it looks like several of the bibb lettuce seedling died.

Today, we planted the seedlings from our paper pots. Peas, Leeks, Bibb, Mache, Mesclun mix and chard. Temperatures have been in the upper 50s during the day, but in the low 30s at night. Still, we have to get them planted out since we won't be around to water the seedlings for a week. Hopefully, some good April showers will take care of everything outside.

I also put in leek seeds. Not sure how this will go. The seed packet recommends starting them indoors 12 weeks before the last frost. Hmmmmm.....

Boston vegetable garden

Direct sowed the first seeds on April 5th:

Snap peas, Meslun, Bibb Lettuce, Mache

I planted TONS of seeds in several rows, rather than use the hyper dense, square foot method. I planted about 4 times as many seeds as I want plants, since many did not germinate in my indoor starts.

Covered the lettuces with plastic to keep the ground extra-warm for the first week - it's been cold at night again, with daytime temps only in the low 40s.

Erected a teepee structure for the peas using found wood from the back 40. Buried them about 6" deep and tied together at the top. We'll see if it survives the wind.

We also emptied the compost. All those leaves, and gallons of food scraps rots down to just one small pile of compost. Still, it looks good - rich and dark, but there are still lots of bits of undigested food and straw. We piled the mostly-done compost in the eastern bed which won't be planted for another month and covered it with black plastic. We plan to turn it every-other day to keep it well-aerated and moist. We hope that it will finish decomposing in the warm weather in the next month and we can screen it and use it.

Seedlings

Started seeds in newspaper pots March 15th. Keep on window sill in south facing window.Started: Snap peas, bibb lettuce, mache, mesclun mix, and swiss chard. I'm hoping to plant these out around April 5th.