Is it “that” time of year again? You may think by reading the title that I am getting ready to start my garden seeds. But, I’m not. To me, “that” time of year refers to when almost everyone else in the blogging garden world start Their seeds.

I read a lot of blogs and websites, often on a daily basis. It never fails, this is the time of year when the majority of those writers are getting ready to start this years seedlings. Don’t you all realize how HARD it is for me to keep reading and looking at pictures of seedling containers and packages of great looking seeds??

 

 

 

Here in the Cariboo, it is far too early to get started. Outside, we usually have several feet of snow – this is what my Garden looks like right now.

 

 

 

We’re at 2800 feet elevation here and normally we can’t even get into the Garden until the early weeks of May.  The flip side is that vegetables seem to grow a lot faster here than they did down on the BC Coast where we used to live. So even though we start later than a lot of other gardeners, most of our late maturing vegetables can still be harvested before the end of September.

Several years ago, I sat down with all my seed packages and figured out a Seed Starting Timetable.  This is specific for my area and I use a transplant date of June 1 (the date by which I can actually move the seedlings into my Garden).

 

 

Here it is – if you want to read my timetable, just click on the picture to make it larger.

 

 

 

Here are my Headings across the top of the page. I’ve got the Indoor Start Date, the Days to Maturity and the Dates of Maturity, using the June 1 transplanting date. I also have a column named Direct Seed. This is for those vegetables that I can just direct seed right into the Garden and don’t need to bother starting in the house. You may think that is an unneccesary column, but it helps me when it comes to seed ordering time. I can look at the vegetables that fall into that Category, check them against my supply on hand and figure out easily if I need to buy more seed.

 

 

 

See the numbers in parantheses after the Vegetable type? Those were the number of seed packages that I had on hand the year I made up the list, so just ignore them.

As you can see by looking down the Indoor Start Date, the earliest date to start anything is March 26! I will start with seeding Cabbages and Peppers and won’t even move on to seeding any Tomatoes until mid-April!

Now do you see how difficult it is for me to read blogs in early February and find that so many of you readers are already starting seeds now? Often by the end of February, I am so engrossed with finding Something to get started that I seed a few flats of Perennial flowers. That seems to satisfy my seed starting cravings!

If you live in the Cariboo (or northern US) and you’re not sure when to start your seeds, feel free to borrow my timetable with a link to this site. Don’t start your seeds too early – it is heartbreaking to end up with very leggy vegetable seedings that tend to break very easily when you try to move them out to the Garden.

 

 

 

I start a lot of my seeds under lights down in our basement and then move them up to my living room, to make room for even more seedlings downstairs. If the weather is warm enough, I then move them out to the Greenhouse, where I can also start other seeds. Our Greenhouse is unheated and so it depends on how cool the nights are, as to whether I can move and start seedlings out there.