And we are off to the races! Our 2025 garden has begun, 12 weeks to our average last frost date!
This begins the week-by-week countdown until our planting date of June 1st! Practically every weekend, for the next 3 months, we’ll be dropping new seeds into the soil. Though our growing space is hardly utilized right now, it’ll soon be teaming with diverse life and many hundreds of plants!
We’ve got four seeding trays going for our kickoff, largely bulked up by our allium crops. We simply grow a lot of onions, leeks and shallots, strongly preferring “from seed grown” over using sets. We’ll likely talk about this preference more, soon, but the gist is from seed grown onions simply tend to be bigger and better in our northern climate.
We also choose to sow our peppers this early in the season. Over many years of experience, we’ve played with lots of different timing between 6 to 12 weeks to last frost. Our preference to sow them this early does cause us a bit of trouble once they more fully mature, but it’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make for the added plant maturity in our cold climate.
Celery also gets the early treatment here and boy do we grow a lot of it! Exceptionally slow to germinate and slow to grow, celery and celeriac simply need a bit of time to get established. I’m certain we’ll be talking more about celery as it’s definitely a crop we are passionate about and encourage other growers to pursue!
We’ve also got a few flowers in the mix. We moved Hollyhock up to 12 weeks to last frost as we found it challenging to get proper blooms on our short growing season when sowing any later. Along side, we also throw down Vinca, which is also an exceptionally slow growing flower.
This is always a turning point for us, as far northerners. Though we’ve been embattled by winter for five months now, we now see a clear path to warmer temperatures, melted snow and the return of summer. It is coming, no matter what!
We’re so happy to be here, slinging dirt again! We’ll have much more to say in coming weeks and months, but we appreciate you all coming along with us for yet another season!
