The Final Indoor Sowed Seeds of 2023

It’s here! I’m sowing my last tray of the year. I started way back in early February and now over five months later, I’m going to be able to set all those seed trays to rest for more than half a year.

It feels so good to be here. Even though seed starting slows down by mid-May, there are some key things I keep sowing indoors and transplanting to keep the successions flowing and set our fall garden up for maximum diversity.

In this final tray of 50 seed blocks, I’m sowing:

• our first and probably only round of fall kohlrabi (Kolibri, Terek, and Beas)

• first round of bok choy (Joi Choi)

• more head lettuce (Little Gem and Speckled Back trout)

• more beets (Detroit Dark Red)

• napa cabbage (Bilko and MerlotO

To be clear, all of these things could be direct seeded too, though I rarely direct seed head lettuce. I have successfully direct seeded bok choy and kohlrabi, and I guarantee napa cabbage would fare well too.

These are all 50-55 day varieties, and with a mid-August transplant, that puts them maturing sometime in early October. With sunlight dwindling by the fall solstice, this is usually perfect timing even though as I type this I am mildly panicking that I’m too late.

I thankfully write down notes year to year and did tell my future self in past years to sow these things a little later than early or mid-July. And with our trip happening, I sow them and they germinate under the care of our housesitter, like magic. At least that’s my hope.