Sow what?

Beautiful spring-like weather has finally arrived in Fayetteville!

Three days of sun and temperatures in the seventies have banished my cold weather procrastination and replaced it with sowing vegetable seeds.

Looking at the tray in the image above isn’t very inspiring, I agree.  But that is one of the great things about agriculture: a quiet sense of accomplishment. For example, a stalk of celery begins life with a seed the size of a pinhead. Other’s like Swiss chard start life from what looks like a solitary grape nut.

This year I made an executive decision and used a compartment planter instead of seeding directly in the raised bed. The growing medium is a pellet that once wet expands in the cell. The seedlings will grow to yield celery, epinard, cucumber, lettuce and pissenlit. The spinach and dandelions are French, and the others are American. Vive la difference.

Mid-March should be a safe time to make the transfer to the caged bed.

Constructing the formidable enclosure might seem like overkill. But my neighbor reported that two young rabbits he just captured – and released elsewhere – already had an early season greens feast on him. The cottontails had visited my side of the fence as Ernie can attest to. The cage served its purpose and kept them out.

The soil was tested last fall and the regimen for fertilizing will be followed. Happily, the store-bought red lettuce seedlings I planted last October are still alive. The successful defense against the frosty nights we have had was a propped-up heavy blanket and one of those ubiquitous blue tarps.

If this experiment succeeds it will go a long way to trying to market specialty greens.

And of course, there is nothing like walking a few feet to the garden and including your fresh vegetables with meals.

[The other solitary but prodigious green in the picture is spearmint. That fresh herb – I am told – can be used for mojitos.]