Early Spring Planting

On  Friday, I went to the local garden center and bought spinach and, yes, my favorite, arugula.  I also bought some beets on a whim.  I've grown beets from seed before in the fall.  It warms up here so fast, I thought they might do better if I got plants, so that they could mature before it got too hot.

Time to get the garden started after a winter that was colder and wetter than usual.  We don't get much snow here, and it's really not pleasant to be outdoors in a cold, muddy swamp, so I am thrilled that spring is slowly creeping in.

My garlic grew beautifully over the winter, and I expect to be able to harvest it in June.  I won't make the same mistake I made a couple of years ago, when I planted tomatoes amongst the garlic.  The tomatoes grew so fast that I never found most of my garlic!  Of course, I managed to kill one of my garlic plants while I was weeding, but those things happen.  I have many garlic plants, so I did not grieve too much.  

On Saturday, I had a swim meet and meant to at least water my seedlings but didn't.  Today (Sunday) I planted them.  Four of the arugula plants looked a little wilted, and so did a couple of the beets.  I am so mad that I didn't water them yesterday.  But I watered them as they went in.  I'm pretty sure the arugula will recover.  And I planted while it was drizzling.  Hopefully, we'll get plenty of rain this week so those roots can grow.

This week, I'd like to plant these seeds:

• garden pea
• radishes
• parsnips

And if I get to them

• carrots
• more radishes
• arugula
• lettuce

But the first ones are my priority.  I always plant radishes with carrots, and I think I'll do the same thing with the parsnips.

I love early spring crops.  I wasn't looking forward to planting today, as the temperature was in the 40's, and the sky was overcast, but it was a humid nice kind of cool outside, a lovely day.