'Spring' planting

Our local big box stores are raring to go, with hardy transplants (standard varieties) of broccoli, cabbage, and collards, as well as romaine, leaf, and butter lettuce (also pretty standard varieties) all just as easy to grow from seed. (At least the seed offerings are much more extensive than they used to be at these garden centers).

The array of tomato and pepper transplants available, as well as squash and cucumber seedlings, is certainly aimed at sales, not success; our average last frost date is April 15, a good 5 weeks from now.

An interesting new twist is offering up pots of arugula (at least they might be hardy), but growing arugula from seed is SO easy, a pot of a few young plants is an impulse buy, pure and simple.

But what really amazed me (I actually bought a pot as an experiment) was a pot of very young leek seedlings. Leeks? In a big box store? Offered by the mainstream purveyor of herbs and vegetable transplants? Hmm, maybe we're making a bit of progress in terms of vegetable varieties, or maybe it's really easy to germinate pots of leek seedlings (probably the latter). To the producer's credit, they have a very nice account of how you should transplant leek seedlings into the garden (suggesting that the ones in their pots would be a MUCH larger size).

They're supposed to be pencil-width by the time you transplant them, so these (having barely got past the cotyledon stage, and sporting seed coats, in some cases) are hardly ready for the outside world. But they were attractive, and obviously I bought a pot.

I transplanted the largest seedlings to several pots of potting soil enriched with compost. It will be interesting to see how they fare. I haven't had any success with leeks before, but I haven't tried very hard either.

I'm sort of remembering that germinating seeds in the summer, and overwintering leeks is the best method in our hot summer climate. But young leeks are tasty, according to the purveyor's website! All I'm familiar with is the huge, woody version in the supermarket, so maybe I'm in for a treat.