Okay, so we had a light frost last night and we could see our breath this morning when I took Thumper to school, but we got some of the spring seeds into the garden this weekend so doesn’t that kind of make it spring? A little bit?

I love sowing the spring garden. It’s the most hopeful act, poking those little seeds into the cold, wet dirt, trusting the ground will warm up soon enough that the seeds don’t just rot. I’ve been dreaming of snow peas and radishes since I planned the spring garden in January.

There was the usual child labor involved.

One raked:

The other supervised the sowing:

And Billy got more work handed to him than he bargained for. I kind of forgot that he couldn’t read my mind–or files on my computer that I didn’t show him–when I did that garden planning. We got out into the yard on Saturday and set to work and…oh…whoops! “Honey, didn’t I mention that I need you to rig up a new cloche to cover the big L-shaped back bed? It means carrots, beets, arugula, pac choi, and lettuces a full month earlier! Don’t you want that? You can’t tell me you don’t want that! How much work could it be?”

Yeah. So he had his hands full. He got it done, though, and with materials at hand. It wouldn’t be enough protection in the winter, but it will definitely fit the bill for the month or so we need it for spring plants.

Ladybug was happy to supervise for a while, but not for as long as it took to get all the seeds sown. (Billy’s the garden engineer and the soil-turner-overer, cover-crop-turner-underer. I’m the designated sower.) I managed to get all the carrots and beets in and half the arugula in under that cloched back L. I also got all the broccoli raab and the snow peas done, which is what I was sowing in those pictures. That bed is now cloched, for the benefit of the raab. That one already had the cloche structure, so no extra work there. The back bed closest to the house was sown with radishes–Cherry Belle and daikon. I left the middle third empty to do succession sowings of the Cherry Belles. They don’t need any protection.

I still need to get the rest of the arugula in, and the pac choi and the lettuces, all under that back cloche. Then I need to get spinach and more arugula sown, uncloched. And the snap peas.

The overwintered purple sprouting broccoli should start to crop soon, and the winter kale and collards plants are growing again. We ate the last of the cabbage last night. (It must be spring if we’ve finished all the cabbage, right?!) Looking forward to buying much less of our produce very soon.

I’m doing something different this season, which I wish I’d thought to do sooner. Rather than plant just for us and give some veggies away to neighbors when we’ve got way more than we need, I’ve planted extra rows of carrots and beets specifically to give away either to a food bank or to a person or family who needs it. I’m going to plant extra pac choi, lettuces, and peas as well. I’ll plant extra rows of several crops each season going forward to give away. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to do so before.