Even with a blast of arctic air and two feet of snow still on the ground, it’s hard to deny that spring is upon us. Crocuses have poked up along the south side of our house, it’s light until after 7pm, the wood shed if empty, and 8-12″ ruts have returned to our driveway.

We’ve also been furiously seeding veggies. To date, we’ve seeded onions, shallots, leeks, peppers, eggplants, artichokes, cardoons (new for us this year), some tomatoes, herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, chives, lovage), parsley, celery, celeriac and … I guess that’s it for now.

More info and pictures inside the full post…

To keep us from heating our hoophouse for a little while (even just a week or two could save several hundred dollars worth of propane) we’re keeping all of our seedlings in our walk-in cooler until they germinate. Of course, it’s not cooling; we have a very small electic heater that keeps the temp between 70 and 80 degrees and there are banks of fluorescent lights to keep the tiny seedlings from getting all stretched out as they search for light. An added bonus which we hadn’t anticipated is that the plants are germinating much quicker with the moister, warmer, more consistent conditions. Last year it took three weeks for our peppers to come up, and many never even made it. This year, it took less than a week and every single one of them came up at the same time!

An eggplant just after germination.

Lovage seeds.

Graham enjoys hanging out in the hoophouse with me. He gets very very messy.

We also moved our chicks outside. They adjusted quite well to the cold.