Spring vegetable transplants

My local farm supply store (as well as our nearest 'big box' garden center) has received new shipments of vegetables (all from the major company that supplies them, Bonnie Plants).  Bonnie does a good job of producing transplants, to be sure.

What's startling is the overlap between spring and summer veggies -- collards, cabbage, and lettuce are sharing space with tomatoes and peppers.  I don't remember seeing that before, but maybe I missed it.

Even in a warming climate, it's too soon to put tomatoes and peppers out in my Zone 7b garden -- the soil is still cold, in spite of a warm February, and the overnight temperatures are unsettled (34°F last night).  NOT the temperatures that tomatoes, peppers, and other warm-season vegetables like.

Peas and asparagus are only slowly emerging now.  So tomatoes and peppers will not thrive at all, for the misguided folks who buy the transplants (and don't coddle them indoors in warm temperatures).

But, I was tempted again by leek seedlings.  Yikes.  They're all too small to directly be transplanted into soil (uh, Bonnie's website has images of robust pencil-sized seedlings).  The numerous seedlings in these pots are small, barely having germinated and sent up shoots.  I managed to distribute quite a number of them between containers and a garden plot, hopefully for transplanting in the future  -- the survivors of last year's impulse purchase were delicious last winter.

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Winter leeks

My raised beds in the mountains have experienced extreme freezes already this season.

The Swiss chard, parsley and arugula is basically 'toast', but I harvested most of the (young) leeks yesterday, and we enjoyed them as roasted leeks this evening, along with pasta and tomato sauce.

winter baby leeks

Yum.

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Leeks, beets, chard, lettuce, and herbs

After I finished two more stone beds this morning (below our small mountain house), my gardening companion filled them with soil.

They're yet to be planted, but I worked on the previous four beds this afternoon.

Planting new beds is fun.

An afternoon trip to a local nursery snagged herbs, a couple of Cherokee Purple tomato plants, a Sweet Million cherry tomato, and seedling leeks.

Added to the flat of lettuces that I'd brought up from Clemson, and along with radish, beet, and chard seeds, among others, I'm set for now.

And waiting for the weather to warm up!

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Young leeks

I'd never grown leeks before, but was fascinated that one of our main vegetable commercial growers (in the US) was providing them to the garden centers of big box stores (Lowes and Home Depot) as well as to independent feed and seed stores.

I bought a pot full of MANY small leek seedlings this spring, and struggled to separate out the tiny seedlings. I transplanted some to containers, some to places in the garden, and then ran out of steam (they were very small seedlings).

But I harvested a young leek today, just to check on their progress. (I didn't follow regular leek protocol for our region of sowing seeds in early fall, but obviously this seed/transplant company didn't either.)

Hooray. It was tender and nice. Tomatoes, peppers, red cabbage, and squash were also from my (neglected) garden.

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'Spring' planting

Our local big box stores are raring to go, with hardy transplants (standard varieties) of broccoli, cabbage, and collards, as well as romaine, leaf, and butter lettuce (also pretty standard varieties) all just as easy to grow from seed. (At least the seed offerings are much more extensive than they used to be at these garden centers).

The array of tomato and pepper transplants available, as well as squash and cucumber seedlings, is certainly aimed at sales, not success; our average last frost date is April 15, a good 5 weeks from now.

An interesting new twist is offering up pots of arugula (at least they might be hardy), but growing arugula from seed is SO easy, a pot of a few young plants is an impulse buy, pure and simple.

But what really amazed me (I actually bought a pot as an experiment) was a pot of very young leek seedlings. Leeks? In a big box store? Offered by the mainstream purveyor of herbs and vegetable transplants? Hmm, maybe we're making a bit of progress in terms of vegetable varieties, or maybe it's really easy to germinate pots of leek seedlings (probably the latter). To the producer's credit, they have a very nice account of how you should transplant leek seedlings into the garden (suggesting that the ones in their pots would be a MUCH larger size).

They're supposed to be pencil-width by the time you transplant them, so these (having barely got past the cotyledon stage, and sporting seed coats, in some cases) are hardly ready for the outside world. But they were attractive, and obviously I bought a pot.

I transplanted the largest seedlings to several pots of potting soil enriched with compost. It will be interesting to see how they fare. I haven't had any success with leeks before, but I haven't tried very hard either.

I'm sort of remembering that germinating seeds in the summer, and overwintering leeks is the best method in our hot summer climate. But young leeks are tasty, according to the purveyor's website! All I'm familiar with is the huge, woody version in the supermarket, so maybe I'm in for a treat.

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