Yes, since when are beans "cold-weather seeds"? Sorry, WAY too early to plant beans. Spinach, chard, lettuce - no problem if your soil temps are as good as mine right now. Air temps are irrelevant in the spring - it is soil temps that matter. ;) I wish you luck with the rest though. Dave

We had some problems with our pumkins not germinating either. In fact we had some rot and we have already replanted. I am up here in northwest Iowa and the weather here had been up and down with a LOT of cold nights. It wasn't surprising to us that some of the pumpkin seeds did rot. What you can do is lightly dig down and see what activity is happening with your seeds. If the seeds are not growing pull one out and squeeze...see if it is rotten. Some of our seeds starting germinating but then it must have got too cold and the sprout stopped growing and the seed rotted. All of our treated pumpkin and squash seeds ending up coming up okay but untreated and heirloom variety seeds took a beating and we had to completely replant those. Some we won't because of time factor like the Atlantic Giant, birdhouse gourds and etc. I really would check...after 11 days you should have some kind of growth.

Hi Angel, and welcome to the RMG Forum! I wintersowed arugula, lettuce, peas, harbs, and tomatoes already, and the arugula and lettuces are already up. I'll probably transplant them from their milk jugs in 3 or 4 weeks. As far as direct sowing into the veggie bed, I'm considering doing some onions sometime over the next week or so, and in a couple more weeks I'll do the carrots and radishes. If you've never wintersowed before, check out the thread below for more info. Last spring, I found several carrots that I had missed during my final fall harvest, but unfortunately some kind of worm had gotten to them first. When I've used a row cover over the winter to extend the spinach or lettuce harvest, the cutworms find it in the spring before I get any, so I've just about given up on extending my season in the fall. I'm all for getting an early start though ... Bonnie Here is a link that might be useful: Wintersowing 2010

Cut off the withered pods and bring them inside to dry on a plate--make sure it's somewhere that no people or pets can get to it. Sometimes there's enough moisture and nutrients left in a stem to finsih the maturation of seeds--but sometime's there's not. In a couple of weeks check the pods and see if the seeds inside are firm, if so remove and store them until sowing. If you can spare any do a germination test before sowing the whole batch to avoid dissapointments.