We sowed four varieties of onions back in the Fall: Rossa di Milano, Red Long of Tropea, Brunswick, and Yellow of Parma. Our first time growing onion in the Fall, we fully expected them to go dormant. They never did under the protection of cold frames, growing slowly through the short days of Winter. Although we were quite surprised and hopeful our onions would have a healthy jump start on Spring-sowed onions, they haven’t quite taken off as much as we’d like. Despite having heavily sowed seed in the Fall, due to having too many weak plants or bare spots, we still ended up needing to transplant stronger plants throughout the beds. We’re curious to see how the crops turns out.

Claimed by many as the one true shallot, we planted French Gray sets in the Fall when we planted garlic along with Dutch Red sets which are remarkable for their storage life of more than a year. All of the shallots emerged this Spring.

We sowed Gniff, Longue Rouge Sang, Kuttiger, and Parisienne carrots in the Fall under the cover of cold frames hoping for an early Winter harvest. Sadly our plans failed to come to fruition, but some of the carrots did slowly grow through the shorter daylight hours of Winter and further managed to survive the digging assaults by squirrels this Spring. We’ll also be sowing some additional carrot seeds as soon as the soil temperatures warm to at least 60°F (16°C).

In late March, once the threat of hard frost (below 28°F (10°C) for several hours) looked as it had passed, we sowed 28 two-foot rows of leafy greens under the protection of cold frames. Many of the seeds have germinated and are looking lush.  The cold frames have been put away for the season now. Only the row of arugula and 3 rows of lettuce look empty or sparse, but we did have some trouble with squirrels digging immediately after sowing the seeds. The varieties we are growing are Bloomsdale Long Standing and Verdil spinach, Red Giant mustard, Red Dragon arugula, Rossa di Verona radicchio, and 21 different varieties of lettuce.

Snow peas can be direct sown three to four weeks prior to your last frost date, and that’s just what we did. The only downside to sowing pea seeds prior to your last frost date is that if the soil temperature is below 60°F (16°C), it can take a while, up to a month, for the seeds to germinate. To combat this problem that wouldn’t allow us to get peas any earlier than if we had sowed seeds around the last frost, we covered the soil with wool mulch for insulation.  Out of 196 seeds own, 161 have germinated are growing vigorously.  It’s still early, though, and more seeds may germinate.