Soils should not be left exposed to the ravages of the sun, wind, and rain any longer then necessary. Often, the concept of waiting to seed a second crop in the same field as another was done to give the other crop time to germinate and grow some so you could see where to plant the other seed, no other reason. In your garden, unless the planting bed is several acres, you could simply mark where you planted and then plant next to that with no need to wait.

I've got the seed-starting light shelf out of storage, dusted off and cleaned up, and it is set up in the spare bedroom. I sowed seeds in two 72-cell flats....a combination of veggies, herbs and flowers. I didn't even get out the seedling heat mat because there's nothing I seeded that really needs extra heat to sprout. I just put pea seeds in water to soak for a little while so I can sprout them in baggies. Part of the front garden is cleaned up and ready to go, and the rest will be ready by the end of this week. It's too early for me to do much of anything else. It is, after all, still only February. One warm spell in February doesn't cancel out the fact that it still is winter, and I'm not going to rush anything into soil that still is pretty cold. I'd love to be out there planting everything in sight, but it is too soon. Shelly, Dorothy gave you good advice on planting times, and I'll just add this....I am at least 120 miles south of you and it is too early for me to put much of anything in the ground. Onions can go in now, but not much else. When you sow seeds or put transplants into the ground while the soil is still this cold, it can hurt them more than it helps them. They often will sulk and refuse to grow because the soil and even the nighttime air temps are colder than they like even if we are having sunny, warm days. I'm going to link Tom Clothier's Vegetable Seed Germination Data Base for you. Look at his numbers and you'll see the "best" temperature (the one at which the highest percentage of seeds sprouts in the shortest amount of time) for each kind of vegetable. I find this database enormously useful. Why sow seeds into soil that is 40 or 45 degrees if that particular seed sprouts best when the soil is 65 degrees? Why not wait until the soil temperatures are at the temperature that is best for quick germination? When seeds are put into cold ground, they'll eventually germinate....in 2 or 4 or 6 more weeks. During that time when the soil is too cold, you can lose a lot of seeds. They can rot, blow away, wash away in rainfall, or be eaten by hungry soil-dwelling critters. Why risk it? While strawberries and the herbs you mentioned can be planted in the ground now, they still will be vulnerable to late freezes and frosts, so I don't know that I'd rush anything into the ground yet. If you put them in the ground, watch them carefully and watch your forecast low temperatures very closely. The other day, our forecast low was 30 and our actual low was 22 degrees. I was glad I didn't have anything in the ground that was marginally cold-hardy because it either would have frozen to death or would have been severely damaged. In the springtime, even when daytime air temperatures are decently warm, nighttime lows often lag behind or fluctuate wildly. Soil temperatures warm up much more slowly then air temperatures. When the OSU Garden Planning Guide lists a range of planting dates, as it does, that say "Feb 15 - Mar 10", that doesn't mean that anybody anywhere in the state should start planting seeds and transplants February 15th. It means that the folks in far southeastern OK can start planting on February 15th. Those of us further north and further west need to wait a bit longer. The further north and west you are, the longer you should wait. That March 10th is the recommended date for extreme NW OK. I will put onions in the ground in mid-February of most years, but nothing else much goes into the ground until March. I don't plant much earlier than Dorothy does. That is because I have learned from experience that planting earlier than that does not give me an earlier harvest or a better harvest, and planting at the early end of the range often means there's lots of pest and weather challenges that can mostly be avoided by waiting a few more weeks to plant. If it sounds like I am hopping up and down hollering "Shelly, slow down!", well, I am. : ) I have a friend here in my area who insists on putting seeds in the ground a month earlier than I do every year. Guess which one of us gets the earlier harvest? (And if you're thinking it is the early bird planter, guess again.) I was in a nursery yesterday that had warm-season flowers and veggies in stock, and I was so shocked to see some of those plants in the stores in February. It instantly gave me an immensely bad case of planting fever. I had visions of buying plants, coming home and planting them and having a beautiful garden off to an early start. Then, I took a deep breath, said "it is too early" and left the store empty-handed. It was the right decision, and it wasn't an easy one either. Every gardener I know wants to start the planting season too early. Generally the well-seasoned gardeners like Dorothy and I know that there's little to be gained by starting too early....and guess how we learned that? Our spring weather is so erratic in nature that it always is risky to think the first big warm spell signals we should plunge full-tilt into planting. Very rarely will the weather warm up in February and stay suitably warm. If I feel like I have to plant something in February, I'll plant it in a container that can be carried inside when the more seasonably cold temperatures return. Heather, Welcome back to the gardening world! It is hard to picture your little type being big enough to eat dirt already. I bet y'all have been having the time of your lives watching him grow. They change so fast when they're so young, and I hope you're enjoying every minute of it. I think your onions will be fine even if they looked pretty dehydrated. They shouldn't have been at the store for so long yet that their energy would be totally depleted. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tom Clother's Vegetable Germination Database

Hi Martha! I'm planning on starting my seeds next week too. I still have to replace some of the bulbs on my light stand, but I have enough for the shelves that I do my starting on and and where I put the baby maters after their first transplant. I need to test my heat mat and thermostat for it to make sure I can maintain optimal germination temperatures. I too have a lot of seeds from years past (2003 & 2004), and on some of them I need to regrow to replenish my seed stock. Here is my tenative list of the ones I need to grow for fresh seeds. Aker's West Virginia Aunt Gertie's Gold Banana Legs Baxter's Early Bush Cherry Biely Naliv Black Cherry Black Early Black Plum Buisson Bull's Heart Bushy Charbaroysky Costoluto Fiorentino Crnkovic Yugoslavian Dad's Giant Polish Dad's Giant Polish Orange Dr. Lyle Druzba Elbe Eva Purple Ball Floragold Basket German Red Strawberry Golden Queen (USDA Strain) Golden Tsaritsa Hawaiian Pineapple Hope Tarasenko Hungarian Pink Heart Kalinka Lida Ukrainian Lillian's Yellow Heirloom Magnum Matina Neves Azorean Red Omar's Lebanese Red Fig Richardson Rutgers Select Thessaloniki Titan (Krasnador Titans) Tropic Warsowia I've also managed to collect seeds of all the varieties I know of that were bred at ISU: Benewah, Bonner, Gem State, Latah, Owyhee, Payette, Sandpoint, and Shoshone. So I plan to grow all of them out. Of course I also have a lot of seeds that are new to me that I want to try. With the ones that are listed above, I'm already at about 50 varieties, so I'll likely wind up with between 75-100 for my own garden. Betsy

No...Jay didn't skip the wedding! Couldn't do that. Unfortunately didn't get to do the festival. We had to hurry and get back Saturday. A guy was showing up to straighten up some greenhouse items that was messed up from the manufacturer. The guy is like the E.F. Hutton of greenhouse/sunroom installers. When he talks, you'd better be listening. He's been doing this stuff for over 25 years and travels all over the country doing installs. So any tips or help I can get is gold. Besides, I wasn't footing the bill for it! Also, after driving back from Maryland, neither my wife or I felt like another two hour ride farther from home.