First Plantings of the Year!

So, every year, I start to gardening too late. It seems like every year we start gardening too late. The last frost of the winter comes and goes without any advanced planning, and certainty without seedlings. Maybe I'll get inspired and throw a few peas in the ground in early March, but usually leave them to fend for themselves. Last year, sometime in February I insisted we start RIGHT NOW and build new raised beds. I wanted a french-style kitchen garden in my sunny, postage-stamp-sized front yard. It involved about a week of mid-winter transplanting and scavenging of appropriately sized lumber. I was so ready for the spring! But before we knew it summer had crept up and we found ourselves once again shameful in the isles of home depot's clearance racks, buying $2 big boy tomato plants the last week of June.

This year - we've managed to start off the year right by starting winter crops indoors. Maybe a little too right - I'm a few weeks ahead of seed starting for any reasonable estimate for last frost, but I'm hoping that our cold frames (which will be added to the aforementioned raised beds sometime in February) will help me out and start the season early. For those of you at home, don't try this. If you start your seeds too early, and they will be weak and leggy. Seedlings that are leggy are long and thin and weak, stretched way out because they are reaching for the light. I'm hopeful that I'll have somewhere bright enough to put them when they are ready.
More, after the jump