The Birth of a New Season

Even though we are in the early, frigid days of February, the first signs of a new growing season can already be seen in our hot houses.

Our spaces are filled with trays that have been seeded with our early Spring varieties of lettuces, onions, spinach and a number of other cold weather crops. I love seeing the varying shades of greens as the seedlings emerge from our special seed starting mix. From the moment that we seed our trays, I find myself looking at them on a daily basis, looking for the first signs of sprouting seedlings. Never mind that many of the trays we have seeded will require at least two weeks’ time for the seeds to begin to germinate, I begin looking for that first sprout immediately. I seeded my first garden 65 years ago and expected all of my seeded rows to be up the following day. It appears that that expectation hasn’t changed much.

Back in December, we seeded numerous trays with several onion varieties, and we are now in the process of pulling the seedlings, trimming the roots and tops, and setting the seedlings in cells.

By mid-March to early April, the young onion plants will be ready to be set out in rows in one of our fields.

Although it is too early to be thinking about directly seeding early varieties out in our gardens, it’s a good feeling knowing that a number of our 2018 crops are up and growing.

John Coykendall, Master Gardener