Some early planting

I've spent my lunch hours this week doing some early work in the yard while I wait for things to dry out and warmup. I put four pea trellises in the garden to try and add some vertical space by the garage (it gets a nice bounce of sun in the afternoon). 

Tonight Jess and I planted an early crop of shell peas at the foot of the trellises--about 20 feet worth. The soil was thawed down about 4 inches and peas are pretty resilient with frosts. And I have a lot of seed from last year (note to self: 1 cup of pea seed does 100 feet of trellis), so I'm going to gamble that these will germinate before they rot!

In front of the trellis is some garlic we planted last fall and some carrots I left to overwinter to see if they'd produce seeds. In the empty 12 feet we put in some golden beets ("plant as soon as the soil is workable").

I've also been working the raised bed on the east side of our lot. These get a lot of sun and a nice bounce off the other side of the garage. We put in 36 feet of red beets here, about two weeks ahead of last year. The rest of these beds I'm reserving for carrots and those are a month or more away from being seeded. We'll plant a second crop of beets at about the same time.

Around the side I added some more spinach seeds to the cold frames as well as some radish seeds (a mixed pack) to see what happens. I'm off to the garden store to look for onions this afternoon. We ran short last year so I've set aside about 60 feet of rows and would like to put in about 200--perhaps this afternoon if it warms up.