That was the temperature reading of the garden soil yesterday before I stirred it up.  I am so itching to plant something… but I thought it best to do some preliminary stuff.  The first thing I did was take the temperature of all three beds. They all read the same, and when I pulled the probe out of the ground and touched it, it was definitely cold to the touch.  Seeds are not going to germinate nicely at 41 degrees.

Then I decided to grab the hoe and go to town, stirring up the dirt and checking things out.  It quickly became apparent that I need to add some compost this year, so in the next few weeks I’ll be keeping an eye out for some composted manure, as I think that will be ideal.   I ended up pulling out a lot of the herb plants- they just didn’t survive.  The two lone survivors are the thyme and the sage so far- they didn’t want to pull up, but it will be a few weeks yet before they show signs of growth.  I was also quite surprised when I was working the dirt where the celery and fennel had been- WOW! Those were some major roots!

In other news, I potted up the tomatoes this week.  The paper cups ended up not being such a great idea as they were rotting, and all the cups had mold on the bottom of them.  My original intention had been to pot up some of my paper cup plants, but I ended up having to move them all.  We’ll see how they do.  So far, though, the tomatoes look fantastic!

I also decided to give up with sprouting onions from seed, and this week I bought some basic yellow sets from the garden center.  I got 100 onions for less than two dollars, so I consider that a good way to go.  It’s not quite the heirlooms I wanted, but I think I’ll live.  My onions were just looking terrible, and for the record, last years leek seeds had terrible germination.  I pretty liberally sprinkled leek seeds in the dirt, and ended up with maybe 8 leeks.   The onions ended up with about 50% germination, so there is some truth to onion seeds not being viable from year to year if you save them.

I’ll be keeping my eye on the soil temps now.  The Weather Channels 10-Day forecast has our lows finally moving up into the 30’s starting Sunday, so that will help move things along very nicely.