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A lettuce bed planted today! There are 2 kinds of loose head lettuce and one kind of mixed lettuce under row cover. The row cover acts as mulch and shelter for the little lettuce seeds. One thing that also happens frequently with small seeds like lettuce is they get pushed around by water droplets and shift positions. But mostly the row cover is there to minimize the water needed to get them started. We used sifted sand to do the actual planting. Mix sand and seed together and then sprinkle evenly across the prepared bed. The sand spreads the seeds out to give a more uniform distribution and you can see where the seeds have been planted. We planted drifts of the different types of lettuce for the art of it. Lettuce is very artistic to my eye. It's hard for me to harvest them as they are so lovely.

I'll start some radishes soon as well. I won't eat a lot of radishes, but they are always the first thing out of the garden in the spring. It's worth some indigestion to have fresh vegs out of the garden so quickly!

To the upper left is the bed where peas will go tomorrow. We decided to soak the peas overnight before planting. This will help with germination. Otherwise it's hard to keep the soil wet enough to soak the seeds sufficiently to allow for the little root to poke out. We are soaking mostly sugar snap peas as they are our favorites. One of the varieties is supposed to freeze well. I just can't imagine having enough sugar snap peas to be able to freeze them.

How exciting! My internal clock has been shouting at me that peas and lettuce need to be put in the ground if we want any success with them this year. Neither does well in heat. And we have the heat usually along about July, but this year, all bets seem to be off.

It has been so warm and dry on the Front Range this late winter/spring. The fire season is already threatening. I sure hope that we learned some lessons in years past and put a fire ban on (like yesterday!). My neighbors burned out their irrigation ditch yesterday. It was very scary to watch but they were right there with lots of water and it went well.

The starts of various cabbage family have come up already. I am somewhat stunned. I just planted them a couple of days ago. It's okay as that family will tolerate the cool, so I moved the seed flats into the sun in the studio. We have plenty of other seeds so if these don't do as well due to started too early or not enough sun, we'll direct seed soon.

I am planning on pitching some cooking classes to the local greenhouse. Cooking with produce and herbs. What classes would you like on these topics? The universe is so big that I am sort of dithering as far as what to offer to teach. What do you want to know?