The weather in southern Wisconsin, as everywhere, is alarming. Record one day temperature swings. It was 73 yesterday and 12 this morning. It will be back to the 60’s in a couple days. This new normal will cause mostly grief for gardeners and growers, but I’ll try to take advantage of the warm days to do some garden prep that normally would wait until late March or April.
The end of February marks the beginning of seed starting. I’ve put onion and leek seeds into flats. They would sprout well enough at 64 degrees, which is the ambient basement temperature, but I’m putting some heat under the flats to get the soil temperature to about 75, which is supposed to be optimal.
This little thermometer gun is a great help for checking soil temps. Accurate enough for the purpose and very easy to use.
I’ll pot off sweet potatoes next. I could wait on this, but since I have lots of sprouts that got knocked off an old root, I’ll put them into a soil box and let them root. Using sprouts from old roots is a great way to ensure a good bunch of starts that will go into the ground in May.
Here are some potatoes that I brought in from the barn, yesterday. We’ve had a steady supply of potatoes since July. We still have a few weeks more, but the spuds will show their age and start sprouting, soon.
We’ll see where the weather changes take us. Going forward, unusual is now normal.
