We started spinach, lettuce and beets from seed about five weeks go. We bought a bag of sterilized potting soil on our neighbor’s recommendation and put that in some shallow plastic trays. Other years we’d just get some dirt out of the yard but our neighbor said this is much better for some reason. In fact he said we could sterilize our dirt by putting it in the oven. He grew up on a farm and he was a chemist at Kodak so he knows these things.
Each year he tells us how his grandmother would just scatter spinach seed on the snow in early March. Even when we think we are getting the jump on things, Jared is one step ahead of us. He has some spinach up that wintered over and he has started seeds in their glass porch.
They were headed out of town for a few weeks so they asked if we’d do the usual, take in their paper (so he can catch up when he gets home), feed the cat and water his plants. We brought our trays of sprouts down to their solerium and they loved it. Every seed sprouted and the lettuce was three inches high by the time they got back in town.
We turned over the garden and put the plants in the ground. If the groundhogs don’t get it we’ll be swimming in greens in the next month.
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