The cold snap has passed, and now warm weather is once again tempting me out into the garden. Good thing too because it's finally time to plant carrots and peas.

This year, I'm trying a hybrid approach to my pea-planting. I was excited by how well inside-started seeds did in the garden last spring...but a bit daunted by the idea of starting several flats of peas to hit our full quota. But what if I direct-seed the rows, then fill in gaps with inside-started seedlings?

To that end, I filled about two-thirds of a flat with peas (the other third going to basil and tomatoes) and soaked the rest of the packet to go straight in the ground. Of course, you probably already see the problem with this plan, which I only noticed as I wrote this post. Inside-sprouted seeds will come up significantly faster and may need to hit the garden before soil-started seeds have poked their heads above ground. Oh well, live and learn!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.