I am so ready to get my hands back in the garden! I don't have the space or lights to grow seeds indoors, so I don't get to growing early. Looks like this week is a bust for outdoor gardening!

I started my tomatoes indoors today, the peppers & eggplants were started 3 weeks ago. With such crummy weather, starting seeds lifted my spirits today!

I did 40 jugs of wintersow first time this year. Some actually sprouted before the snow came. With this weeks snow and temp, and another storm this weekend, I really don't expect anything would live.

As backup, I started 3 trays of seeds indoor on heat mat on March 4. The first tray of tomatoes, almost 100% germinated and the seedlings are doing well. The second tray of pepper, some are peeking out but not much. I know peppers take longer to germinate. The third tray is half herbs and half marigold. Herbs have sprouted mostly. Not so much with the marigold.

i plan to start a tray of lettuce this weekend.

Cant wait for this snow to be melted!

After last year, I decided to give up on my garden. I have had a decent sized garden in my small yard for 10 years (approx 18x20). After reusing the soil so long, every bug/virus has taken residence in my soil. I can only use this one area, so I can't move across my yard. All of my time and effort, I just couldn't deal with losing my plants anymore. The squash bugs are new-I never had those! Luckily they didn't kill anything, but laid a bazillion eggs (and I got rid of every leaf I found). So I felt defeated and gave up on gardening until I could feed my soil and hope the bugs move away in a few years. Well that was until the seed catalogs started rolling in...and so did the gardening itch. I changed my mind!

So, I decided to try out containers only-for now. I am sure I will still have plenty of cucumber beetles and powdery mildew, but I am hoping with everything growing raised it will be easier to take care of. So my plan is to line both sides of my existing garden with earth/grow boxes, and line the floor with cover. I have wire fencing around to keep the bunnies out. I have all of my new seeds and am ready to begin the war of 2017!

So this week I will start my tomatoes, peppers, and I have some Asian luffa that takes forever to grow so I will start a couple of those. I usually start seeds in a self watering seed starter in a window. It seems to stay warm enough and I never had an issue with germination.

Good luck to you all this year!

Squishsquash, so sorry to hear that. It must be heartbroken. I am wondering if you can get some advice from the argriculture extension, such as the Rutgers extension I have here in Nj. I called them a few times and spoke to the master gardeners on duty and they have been helpful.

Yes, I'm going to have to do my homework and get their recommendations for sure. This will be an interesting summer! I just started soaking my (luffa) seeds today so I am officially started!

I do wintersow perennial seeds directly into the gardens, but didn't think wintersowing vegetables was feasible here. I will have to read more about it, gardenstateof_mind.

PineBarrenGardener, I've found that the cool-weather veggies like lettuces, mixed greens, cabbage family, etc. do well as winter sown crops, as do many herbs. The warm-season crops like tomato, pepper, basil etc. take longer to get going, but they do certainly work. And it isn't too late to start now.