A little early spring gardening

Every year I say I'm going to get the cold weather seeds in early and every year I'm trying to grow things like spinach and snap peas in weather that is a lot too warm. But not this year! We're having a quasi spring break this week, just doing lighter work, so I have a bit more time. This happened to correspond to a pretty decent day and I took advantage of it. 

It helped that I had lettuce seedlings that really needed to be set out. (I had been hardening them off hoping the weather would cooperate.) 

I'm happy to report that all the seeds are planted!  I'm trusting all the gardening books that "plant as early as soil can be worked" is really what they meant.

I also wanted to give a brief update on how my new soil blocker is working. As of right now, the little soil blocks are working very well.

A few days ago I transplanted all the pepper seedlings that I had started before I bought the soil blocker. When I transplanted them it was into the soil blocks. Look at these seedlings!

This is between 12 and 24 hours after transplanting. Usually I see a lot of drooping at this stage, but none of these ever drooped. They always looked as if this is where they had sprouted. 

While this is great, I'm really hoping that I don't have to transplant anything else at all. That would be a huge bonus because it takes a lot of time.

The other nice thing about the soil blocks is that I really can just pick them up and move them around if necessary. I was afraid that they would be too fragile and fall apart, but this really hasn't been the case. 

Today when I set out the lettuce seedlings, I just picked up each block and set it in the hope I had made. 

This was far easier than the few lettuce seedlings that I had left in the small plastic cells. I don't know about you, but I really dislike taking plants out of them. It is never easy and I always end up ripping some of the roots. I much prefer being able to pick up the block without wrestling with plastic. 

The verdict so far is that the soil blocks are working well. If the tomatoes can stay in their blocks until May, I will be one hundred percent sold.

The three beds I planted today.

To get them ready, I did spend some time weeding and mixing in some composted horse manure. (If anyone wants some well composted horse manure, I'm giving it away. I really need this current batch of compost gone because it's time to rotate the dump pile.)

I also discovered when I was working in the garden that the green onions I planted two years ago are officially a perennial now. If I'd realized this I wouldn't have bought that last package in the store.