One of the things that I talk about a lot when I’m teaching basic vegetable gardening classes is that the soil temperature is actually more important to plant growth than the air temperature. In many cases, plants will still grow well with cold air temperatures if the soil is nice and warm.

Since I preach that you should plant based on the soil temperature, I thought I’d run out to the garden and check out our soil temperatures. We’re planning to plant some radishes, lettuces, cabbage, etc. tomorrow. I know you can’t see the picture to the left very easily…the glare of the sun was very annoying. If you can read the screen of the digital thermometer, it says 43 degrees. So…not quite the 45 degrees we would like to see, but probably warm enough, given that we are going to have some nice warm, sunny days this week.

Also on the schedule for tomorrow:

• Pruning the grapes, berries, and apple trees.
• Raking mulch/leaves out of the strawberries. Tilling rows into the strawberries?
• Incorporating compost and fertilizers into the various beds.
• Weeding!
• Planting seeds
• Replacing signs
• Anything else we come up with between now and tomorrow morning.