We are anywhere from 1-4 weeks from our last frost. In recent years our last frost has been before May 1.

That means I’m shifting my focus to main season flowers, which is what I spent 2 entire days this week doing: sowing trays and trays of flowers! All told, I started over 500 flowers, many like the alyssum had a sprinkling of seeds in each pot (so probably sowed 100 seeds in total).

It’s one of my favorite parts of spring because it marks the shift from longer season starts to quicker maturing plants. My indoor seed starting marathon is more than halfway through; I’ve made it up heartbreak hill and now just have have to endure the steady commitment to sowing my indoor trays for a robust fall garden. My indoor seed starting will finish in late June or early July when I sow my last tray of head lettuce and broccoli.

Most of what I sow from now on will be direct seeded, and that’s a joyful shift, one that is much easier to manage for me.

Direct Seeding Vegetables

I’m delighted that our peas we sowed in late March germinated in about 2 weeks under cover with our season extending tunnels. It’s all so heartening, and honestly, quite simple.

At this point in spring, a cover is no longer needed to plant cold hardy crops. I am studying our extended forecast and our low overnight was 29 here, but the forecast will be frost free after tonight. It’s not uncommon for us, even in this cold low microclimate, to have our last frost during the fourth week of April!

Now this doesn’t mean I can plant out my tomatoes, because i haven’t warmed the soil in the tomato bed yet. Though when I take the cover off the peas, I will surely move it to where I plan to plant tomatoes to get that bed ready for transplanting. I do like to give my tomatoes and even peppers a month of added heat until summer arrives. This is what I use the low tunnels for. I keep the main plastic on but leave the side doors/end panels off for ventilation. This helps them accelerate growth and flowering and helps us get the maximum amount of fruit from them as our short season offers.

With the soil and day and nighttime temperatures steadily warming, continue to choose from any of these seeds to jump start the growing season:

• Arugula
• Cilantro
• Radish
• Scallions/green onions
• Bok choy
• Pac Choi*
• Tatsoi*
• Kale
• Cabbage
• Kohlrabi*
• Broccoli raab*
• Mustard greens*

* The next few weeks are your final chance this spring to sow broccoli raab, mustard greens, kohlrabi, pac choi, and tatsoi. These are all heat intolerant, so won’t grow well come June.

Of note is while I say you can direct seed cabbage, I generally don’t direct seed them (yet, who knows, maybe one day I will!). If you choose main season cabbages right now, something like Adaptive’s Primax or Amarant or Johnn’ys hybrid, Farao, those could be seeded now and probably will produce for you by August, so right in the height of summer cole slaw season.

Main season vegetables to direct seed now include:

• carrots
• beets
• parsnips
• onions
• corn
• snap beans

I might sow corn and beans by next weekend! I keep trying to get sweet corn by Fourth of July and miss, but maybe this year I’ll finally achieve it. It means I need to sow it possibly today (April 18!). This does feel uncomfortable and a bit off schedule, but I think it’s what local farmers do with their fastest/earliest maturing sweet corn varieties — April sowings.

Sowing Indoors: Vegetables

As we round out April, my list of indoor sowed vegetables dwindles significantly because I’m really heading into direct-seeded season. There are a few key late season crops that I will be sowing late this week, including:

• Brussels sprouts:
  • Early Half Tall, Darkmar 21, and Red Bull, all new varieties to me from Adaptive
• Peanuts:
  • Saved Red Valencia
• Heat tolerant lettuces:
  • Coastal Star
  • Concept
  • Jericho

Sowing Indoors: Flowers

Mid-April is my go time for all of my main season flowers, those frost intolerant, fast growing flowers that are the foundation of color in our garden.

I have a very specific goal in mind with my. flowers: I want orange, pink, and purple hues in the garden. I let yellow come in the form of squash blossoms, clusters of tomato flowers, and our surrounding prairie that blazes yellow come August.

I am trying for a second year to grow more flowers, though last year I felt the attempt grossly failed. I am scaling back our tomato garden further, and also reducing our potato beds as well, so that will help with my flower goals, on paper anyway. Things always get a bit wild when it. comes time to planting.

Zinnia	Benary’s Wine
	Benary’s Purple
	Benary’s Orange
	Benary’s Bright Pink
	Benary’s Salmon Rose
	Oklahoma Carmine
	Oklahoma Pink
	Queen Lime Red
	Queen Lime
	Señora
	Thumbelina Pink (saved seed!)
Alyssum	Carpet of Snow
	Rosie O Day
Calendula	Alpha
Marigold	Tangerine Gem
Cosmos	Afternoon White
	Apricotta
Nasturtium	Cherries Jubilee

Potting Up

It’s also time for some of my longer term indoor starts to get larger pots so they can develop healthy root systems. This week, I potted up my tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. And I’ll also be potting up my dahlia seedlings too so they are as large as possible before going into the ground next month.

I am very particular about how I pot things up. I don’t use newspaper pots for my peppers because I’ve found that they. tend to hold more water than soil blocks or plastic pots, both of which dry out faster. And it turns out that peppers aren’t fans of excessive moisture. In fact, I now understand that they thrive with less water than more water. So I even go so far as to deprive them of water. I don’t mean I stress them out, but I am sparing with watering them. By way of example, I potted them up this week on Monday, using damp potting soil. And it wasn’t until Friday that I lightly watered them. They looked happy all week long and I knew that giving their roots time to expand and grow and soak up the existing moisture was better than flooding the soil with water which might give them soggy roots.

I do the same thing with my tomatoes into 4″ soil blocks. Those soil blocks are very very wet and heavy so I know the roots will quickly spread out into the surrounding soil. I just watered those as well on Friday, though they are significantly more soil than the 4″ plastic pots.

What I’m Transplanting

After properly hardening off, I am starting to make a plan for transplanting:

• Onions
• Cabbage
• Broccoli (Spigariello, Waltham, Umpqua, Kailaan, and Piracicaba)
• Napa cabbage (Nozaki)
• Bok Choy
• Cauliflower (Earlisnow)

What I’m Not Sowing Yet

I’m still holding off on sowing any tomatillos, squash, cucamelons, peanuts, cucumbers, melons, or brussels sprouts.

Resist the urge to sow warm season spices like cumin, nigella, or fenugreek. I’m going to try direct seeding ALL of these in May.