It was so nice today!! I almost planted a few things but got busy refinishing an old desk and forgot. I'm sure lettuce and peas and brassicas will be fine at this point. I've had volunteer peas come up in March and they didn't mind hard frost.

I planted early last year too, but it didn't help. We had a cool May and it all did nothing, really. But it was exciting to be able to plant in April so i can certainly understand that! Dh hasn't tilled our garden yet, so there's no chance of me planting anything this year. :)

I don't think you're crazy. I have raised garden beds too, and I'm putting in spinach and Swiss chard tomorrow. C

Good for you!..Where do you live...in the tropics? LOL
My veggie garden is covered with snow.

I went to check tonight and it seems about another 2 weeks when snow
is gone..got a picture for future records.

I'd love to plant now, but with the year we had last year and the winter we had, I don't think I could stand the disappointment if everything died. I'm also still trying to plan my new garden so that I know what part of the lawn to dig up.

Does floating row cover really work as well as they say?

Konrad - Is that massive area your vegetable garden? That's sure a lot of snow left for the end of April !

So far, so good but there's some nasty weather and maybe snow :( planned for Saturday and cold (-7) for Saturday night. If that should actually happen, my plan is to fill a few milk jugs with hot water and tuck them under the row cover between the plants, then cover with another heavy blanket for the night.

That's a lot of snow, Konrad! We still have a small amount of snow on the north side of the house. The majority of our snow has only disappeared within the last few days - we've been skirting around +20 for a few days now so that has certainly helped. But there was still a snowbank next to the raised bed I was planting in.

I've been using floating row cover and a slightly heavier Agribon frost cover for a few years and have not yet been disappointed in the results. I love that I can put in on, secure it in place and then not have to lift it off every day. I've also used it to cover the soil over just-seeded corn and sunflowers to speed up germination which worked really good.

Yea...all veggie,...it's the low spot of property, since I can't water much
I figured this is the spot to put it, nice soil but it has it's drawback ....got to be a zone 0! LOL

Pudge I think it's Agribon that I bought from Vesey's. I'll have to look. If it is, then I may plant a few things earlier to see what happens.

BTW Someone like me would Never be able to call you crazy....

Konrad be sure to post a picture of that vegetable garden when it's growing.

That's not crazy at all. Some of those cool-season crops are best planted now to avoid heat stress in the summer (that is, assuming we get a summer!). It's amazing what they can tolerate if direct seeded outside. Transplants need quite a bit of hardening-off.

Since I live in S'toon city limits, my garden dried out in early April. I transplanted most of the spring crop (spinach, swiss chard and peas) at that time, underneath Agribon light row cover. I didn't find much of a difference between light and medium weights of row cover. I also direct-seeded radishes in mid-April. I basically have three types of plantings : unheated greenhouse with double row cover over in-ground beds; double row cover outside; single row cover outside. I took night temperature measurements as well. The GH with row covers is about 5-6 degrees warmer tham ambient; 2-4 degrees for double row cover without a GH; and about 1-2 degrees for single row cover. The limit for frost damage was about -6 C at the plant level, so some of the plantings underneath single layers of row cover were damaged and set back quite a bit. On the flip side, the spinach in the greenhouse is already bolting, so I harvested some of it and seeded more swiss chard.

Some seed packages often have misleading advice...a lot of them advise waiting until the last frost date to plant spinach and brassicas, which is really unnecessary and further shortens the already short season.

If you have a patio, garage or sunroom that gets to just around zero at night, that's excellent for hardening off cool-season crops to frost.

Well, how's things with those of you who have planted?

Can you believe that a large section of #1 highway is still closed because of the blizzard yesterday?

None of the seeds I sowed have germinated yet. I know they need a sprinkling of water but the (going on 48 hours) wind has kept me from doing that.

The transplants appear to be doing well. They also need watering...darn wind. Last night was supposed to go to -5 so I anchored down some blankets over the structure. Probably wasn't necessary as my thermometer registered a low of -2. I was sort of expecting those blankets to have blown away over night but I guess enough bricks and lengths of rebar will win over the prairie breeze.

I'm hoping tomorrow to finally plant out the lettuce that is getting too big for their 6-cells, some onion sets, and seed rutabaga and kohlrabi.

>Konrad be sure to post a picture of that vegetable garden when it's growing. OK...this from tonight
Picked first zucchini tonight, still have some asparagus.
I'm fighting the chickweed badly this year!

Eating zucchini already! Transplants? I wish. My transplants are behind the couple that I direct seeded. Bad wind here set them back.

Your tomatoes look great too. My outside one are just starting to do something. Greenhouse ones are much better.

I have been eating tons of lettuce, spinach and swiss chard. Peas (Alaska) are blooming like crazy, Green Arrow and Lincoln are slower.

Won't be long before I can check for some spuds. ( got them in early in a raised bed and covered with frost cloth)

I love summer. C

Hah! And here i was just bragging that i had my first garden salad yesterday. LOL Awesome garden, Konrad!

Very nice, Konrad. Are those sunflowers on either side of the tomatoes?

I'm excited today because my corn is starting to tassel. In an attempt to get some early corn, I started about 50 transplants in the greenhouse, then moved them out to a raised bed. That system seemed to work quite well, especially with the cool spring we had. I've got two more sowings of direct seeded corn in the garden as well which have been enjoying the recent heat.

There's some fruit on the tomatoes, too. My tomatoes took a beating in a hail storm about 2 weeks ago, as did the corn and cucumbers, so I'm happy to see they're bouncing back nicely. Cucumbers are blooming.

I tried a new lettuce this year called 'Pearl'. Small little heads about as big as the palm of your hand but very yummy. I'm having a heck of a time with slugs in the lettuce and cabbage beds this year. The chinese cabbage, especially the outer leaves, were a slug magnet with so many holes the leaves looked like lace. We've had a lot of rain, and of course I've given the slugs a great hiding place in the straw mulch. It appears the slugs don't care for the savoy cabbage, they're looking pretty good.

Beets and carrots had very poor germination - too dry, too windy and too shallow, so I had to reseed - the second seedings are coming along. I've also had a heck of a time with birds eating the kohlrabi and turnip seedlings - not sure if I'll see any of those veggies at all.

Finally - apparently I have a lot to learn about growing cauliflower and broccoli - 'nuf said.

This sounds good!
My kohlrabi, cucumbers and kale are just ahead of the zucchini, [first picture]. I bought a few little zucchini plants, there was about 3 or 4 in one little pot and separate them. The secrete is growing them under the frost blanket for several weeks. There is more tomato plants looking better ahead of the snow peas and climbing beans ahead to the left, total of about 40 plants, my wife grew them at home.
Potatoes and peas are to the right of the asparagus, [not shown].
The plants to the right and left in last picture are Windsor broad beans. I'm trying again some radishes after many years of quitting... got seed from somebody in Germany, but it looks like all goes to leafs again and nothing much under. Carrots are just coming out of the chickweed bed, last picture watered.

LOL @ chickweed bed! I have that too this year, lots of it. I clear it out until the plants are established and then am not so vigilant. It makes a great mulch, actually!

Argh I hate chickweed, I used to have it bad at the old house. Here, it's not a big problem. It's annual and if I keep on top of it it doesn't go to seed.

My little garden beds are doing well, I have a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes and the lettuce is withstanding the heat for now. I got Stokes' mesclun mix which is okay but not the best mix I've tried, but I also bought their expensive pelleted Red Skyphos and it's excellent. It grows in a loose head and it's very slow to bolt.

Konrad, what a great garden !

Pudge, I grew broccoli one year a long time ago and it was great. The biggest problem was, as the season progressed, so did the little green worms. For about the first month I used a butter knife to remove them and then soaked in water to drown the rest before we ate it. When it came to having as many green worms as florets, we gave up eating it as it gave me the heebie jeebies =:)

The tomatoes I grew from seed ( first time I've ever done that) are doing great. They were a little sad last week because of too much rain, but I knew they'd perk up when they dried out a bit. My little bucket of romaine lettuce is very cute. We've having sandwiches with bits of lettuce just long enough to cover the bread, LOL. I grew them in a pail so that I could move them out of the heat if we ever had any. The 4x4 strawberry bed is producing a bowl of perfect strawberries almost every day. I'm still holding out hope for the pole beans. They haven't been in the ground long enough to know if the season will be long enough to get beans.

Oh, and going out in the garden is more pleasant now. Swarms of dragon flies were in the yard the other day....take that mosquitoes !!