Repotting Seeds

In theory, we should be planting peas and onions next weekend, but this is the state of things in the garden today:

A series of four nor’easters and below-average temps have set us behind schedule for planting. I imagine the snow will be gone by next weekend, but I’m not sure if the soil will be ready to work or if it will be too frozen or too wet or too something else. 

I’m not feeling in much of a rush this year since it’s been so miserable outside this month. The local weather reporters have taken to saying that March is the new February, and they’re right. Since we appear to have some additional time on our hands, I transplanted our broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seedlings into peat pots:

It should be noted that these seedlings look great this year. I attribute this to more diligent use of our lamp to make sure they were getting enough light on all those cloudy, stormy days:

The brassica is scheduled to be transplanted into the garden in two weeks, but this seems unlikely — mostly because it’s just too cold to think about hardening the seedlings off yet. So I put them into 3-inch peat pots instead:

This is a lot more space to give the plants room to develop better root systems before transplanting. We only rarely bother to do this, but this year it seems like Mother Nature is making a point about taking our time. I purposely chose peat pots (instead of pulling from our collections of plastic nursery cups that I’ve held on to for this purpose) so that when we finally do transplant them outside, we can avoid the shock of uprooting them again. Instead, I’ll just slice the pots open in a few spots and put the whole thing in the ground, where the roots will push through the organic material on their own.

I have to say, this was a satisfying project for a pretty cold day. It was nice to get a little "gardening" done, and they look pretty professional. In fact, I may even sell any extras we have after transplanting if they continue to do so well.