Spring came early this year, and with it, the itch to get gardening! Yes, it’s earlier than usual to think of planting outdoors in our area. Nights are still cold, but many days are fairly warm. Garden clean-up can certainly begin, and compost spread around the base of perennials and in the waiting vegetable garden, but is it OK to begin direct-sowing vegetable seeds? The answer is yes! Lettuces, radishes, carrots, kale, arugula, spinach, parsley and Asian mustard greens can all be directly seeded into the vegetable garden as soon as the soil temperature is 45 degrees or warmer. Peas can go in when the soil temperature is 50 degrees or warmer. How do you know what the soil temperature is? Folklore says old-time farmers would simply sit on the soil with a bare bottom to test the temps. A  more accurate, and less embarrassing, way is to use a stainless steel soil thermometer, available at most garden centers. If you don’t want to purchase a thermometer just for soil, you can use a digital or regular household meat thermometer to get a good idea of what temperature your soil is. Soil temperature is important in early planting because most seed will rot or have very poor germination if sown in soil that is too cold. To test soil temps with a soil or meat thermometer, push the tip of the thermometer into the soil about 3 inches. If possible, do this in the very early morning. Wait 5 minutes or so, long enough to have a few sips of coffee or tea, then check the thermometer. If you have garden beds in several locations, repeat the temperature test in each one. Usually the most sheltered bed, the one that gets the hottest in the middle of summer, is the best to plant very early, especially if you seed lettuces, kale, herbs and mustards that can be easily transplanted to a cooler site as the days warm up and summer arrives. A soil thermometer and 2 meat thermometers in my warmest planting bed, all reregistering about the same temps. Still a little cold for lettuce seed but almost there!

Photo credit: A soil thermometer and 2 meat thermometers in my warmest planting bed, all registering about the same temps. Still a little cold for lettuce seed, but almost there!
---Betsy Williams (Betsy is an Andover gardener and the Andover Seed Library consultant)

Visit the Andover Seed Library page for gardening tips and resources.