What I’m Sowing Now

It’s time. This morning I opened my google spreadsheet, made a copy, and renamed it 2025 Sowing Trays.

I’ve been doing this every year since 2018 so that I have, as a fall back, last year’s schedule as I manipulate it to align with this year’s hopes and dreams. Last year on February 24, I sowed some onions, my earliest brassicas, which was a pared down list, artichokes, and lemongrass.

I’ll be largely following this schedule this week, but will add half a tray of celery to that too. I didn’t sow celery until mid-March last year—at the same time I started some tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers—and although it is likely wiser to wait, given that I’d likely pushed the timing out due to knowledge gained in 2022, I’m going for it. This is what makes gardening fun and a little reckless, in the most child-like, safe kind of reckless way. I can abandon my wisdom and fly by the seat of my pants and watch, in delight, as things thrive or fail. It is, after all, a kind of entertainment, is it not?

What I’m not sowing is as important as what I am sowing. I’m not sowing any tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, or early season flowers. While I sowed my tomatoes and peppers on March 17 last year, I probably won’t sow them until a week later this year, closer to the end of March. Because I sowed some peppers on April 4 last year, and they grew just fine, in fact, and it’s less time inside, less hand watering, less resources. I’m not brave enough to direct seed my entire garden though I do hope I will brave it one year and do it ALL direct seeded and document it, but there is a peace of mind and joy and, of course, power, if I’m being honest, in being able to control the timing of my plants. (Because life right now feels like wind-blown hair on a gusty day at the beach.)

It’s going to be a balmy 45 for several days this week, which is over 60 degrees warmer than it was last week. So we’ve gone from deep winter to spring practically overnight, though it’s just a peek for now. But with this warm weather I will be tidying up the cold frame, adding some compost, watering the soil really well, and sowing some seeds outside! It’s a big milestone, and while it may seem early, last year I did this same thing on …. February 5. And the seed germinated by February 25, and we harvested in early April. There’s a decent chance we will still harvest around the same time, if March warms up like it should.

What I’m Sowing this Week

Indoors

• Celery

  • Kelvin

  • Tango

  • Ventura

• Onions

  • Newbury

  • Mary Nagy’s Transylvanian

  • Karmen

  • Rosa di Milano

  • Red Long of Tropea

• Artichoke

  • Imperial Star

• Brassicas

  • Tiara cabbage

  • Primax green cabbage

  • Amarant red cabbage

  • Waltham broccoli

  • Belstar broccoli

  • Piracicaba broccoli

  • Purple Peacock broccoli

  • Kailaan stem broccoli

  • Joi Choi bok choy

  • Li Ren Choi bok choy

  • Beas kohlrabi

  • Terek kohlrabi

  • Kolibri kohlrabi

  • Kaleidoscope Perennial Kale

• Herbs

  • lemongrass

  • thyme

  • parsley

Cold Frame/Direct Seeding

• Arugula

• Radish

• Cilantro

• Scallions

• Tiara cabbage

• Dwarf blue kale