Cracked open the cold frames today to tidy and fertilize and get some lettuce planted in the defunct kale bucket. Unfortunately some of the spinach that I thought had made it had died/was actively dying.
The roots had apparently frozen and rotted. But four plants survived, two of each variety (Double Choice Hybrid and Bloomsdale Long Standing). I gave a light tug on the plants and their roots seem to be still holding firm.
I added some "fertilizer" to the empty spots—the "fertilizer" being a super greens smoothie powder that was mainly powdered veggies and fruits. Hopefully some of the spinach seeds I started indoors last week will provide transplants to fill the empty spots.
Happily, two of the Swiss chards that I thought were goners were not.
Both of the survivors were Ruby Red chard—the one from the Rainbow mix did die so I pulled it. Not sure if that was coincidence or if the Ruby Reds are more cold hardy as the sample size is too small. The Ruby Reds did have smaller, thicker, more savoyed leaves though. Anyway, I sowed some Extra-dwarf Bok Choy in the bare spot left by the dead one.
In addition to sowing some mystery lettuce seed (from the seed library last year), I also removed some green onions that weren't doing well from this half of a small earthbox and sowed some Bibb lettuce in their place. Wasn't super impressed with the Bibb last year in comparison to the romaine-types, but it wasn't awful. If it doesn't do well here then no biggie. I'll be starting some of the romaines inside successively maybe later this week.
And speaking of inside...
First Chinese broccoli seedling is up!
And a boatload of hybrid beets in the seed snail. I saw some radicules on a few of the shallot seeds too, but they looked like perlite in a pic.
The Black Beauty eggplant seeds were germinating like crazy, so I went ahead and potted them all up.
One of the other varieties (Malaysian Dark Red) in the same sprouting bag was developing a greenish-black mold, so I carefully moved the two unaffected varieties (Antigua and Ping Tung) to a fresh set-up. I also put all of the seemingly unaffected seeds from the moldy variety in its own fresh set-up, but I don't have high hopes for it—the seed was already pretty old to begin with.
I also looked at the weather forecast (it was 60F today!) and given that only one day in the next ten is supposed to drop below freezing, I decided to take a chance with an early sowing of carrots:
Lightly prepped one 2x4' section of the sidewalk adjacent raised bed and scattered some Scarlet Nantes seed that I got a big packet for free in the alleyway (in a bag full of old seed packets). It's five year old seed so I scattered it pretty thickly. Decided to scatter it instead of making rows to try that out. I left a few inches at the back free for sowing peas a little later. Covered it loosely with some clear plastic sheeting I also scavenged, weighed down with bricks to keep the critters out. I ended up scattering a little bit of straw on top so I didn't end up accidentally solarizing everything.
Bonus pic of the scavenged bulbs I planted peeking through the leaves:
Daffodils and one hyacinth seem to have made it so far. The old clumps of daffodils I have in my south-facing front yard already have several inches of leaves so spring is definitely on its way!