I am in zone 5a, and I usually start my tender annuals in mid-April. They sprout so quickly! I throw a row cover or blanket over the containers if temps dip into the low 30s/upper 20s. Also, I ring my sprouted tender annual containers with my perennial/hardy annual containers to create a little bit of extra insulation from cold nights. At ellenr--I believe if you go to weather.com, there is a feature to look at historical weather data. If you plug in your zip code then scroll down a bit, there is a heading on the right titled "Today's Averages and Records." Just a little beneath that heading is a link titled "Historical Data." Click that link, and you can look at average, daily temps for your area. This might help! cheers, Norabelle

I've got lots and lots of flower seed that I'm wintersowing this year- 37 containers so far. And at least a couple dozen more to go through the next few weeks. These are getting planted in all over the place. I have an area of the yard I call the sanctuary that I'm slowly but surely filling in with plugs of different self sowing annuals and perennials. On the other side of the sanctuary is getting filled with different types of milkweed and other butterfly and insect flowers. Some others are going into the shady area in front of the house. Still others are going into a whole bunch of different spots around the yard that I want to be able to sow once, then leave to let them do their thing. I'm trying to WS thimbleberry for the first time- I want to cultivate up a patch of it on the back 40 somewhat around where the wild blackberries are growing- and where I plan on putting in the gooseberries I've overwintered, and later, raspberries- I want a big ole area of berry picking goodness. And bramble goodness to help keep out some neighbors I'm having trouble with- they can pick on their side, and leave mine alone, lol. Later in the season will be my WS of grape hyacinths- I WS them late in the winter in their containers so I can plant them in in blocks to a border around my solarium. I've found this works better with WS than it does trying to set them in in the fall when they are supposed to be planted. WS them kind of forces them to grow a bit faster and more solid than in the ground. I've considered WS some herbs and maybe veggies- but this depends on if I still have any containers and dirt leftover from doing up all the flowers!

I've been preparing the fall garden, too. I direct seeded radishes, romaine, amish deer tongue lettuce, wrinkly cress, 4 types of heirloom carrots, 2 heirloom beets, several types of onions, celery, 2 heirloom cabbages... I think that's all. Oh, I have French breakfast radishes coming up around all the slower growing stuff, so we'll have plenty of those. I'm about to plant purple hull peas, and I went ahead and started 4 varieties of winter squash, broccoli, 3 types of brussels sprouts and spinach in some of those little portable greenhouses. It may be way too early for the spinach, but we'll see. We're having a very mild summer, so I thought I'd give it a try. If the rain holds off, I'm going to plant several more cucumbers this afternoon. Aside from the cherry and currant varieties, the tomatoes didn't do much this year. Too much rain, I guess. I pulled some suckers from the healthiest plants, and we'll see if I can get anything out of them in the coming months.

In Nevada at about the same altitude and latitude as SLC I am doing some serious direct sowing this week. (I always start with a half dozen seed two to four weeks earlier. I have three sunflowers from a month ago that have survived several mornings of 30°F and one snow. Perhaps our only snow this year was about May 5th.)