What to Expect Now

Most seeds at this time of year take quite a while to germinate, especially in the very cool weather and cool soil we have this year. Don't worry if you don't see anything for a week or two after your plant. Peas, chives, and chard take even longer, while the mustardy ones: arugula, mizuna, and mustard, tend to sprout a bit sooner.

The most important thing is to make sure the soil stays moist the whole time while the seeds are germinating and also while the plants are extremely tiny.

On the other hand, it's pretty easy to wipe out the tiniest seedlings if you water them too heavily.

So being very careful not to kill anything, keep the soil moist. In the current weather that may mean you don't need to do anything, if occasional rain falls on your patch or containers. But if it becomes dry again and warms up, you will need to water every few days for a while.

Once the seedlings have more than the first two leaves, they will have generated enough roots to gather moisture from a bit wider and deeper and it won't be so critical to keep the soil moist right at the surface. (But you'll want to make sure it doesn't dry out deeper down.)

By the way, you may have to replant peas this year. At least mine don't seem to have survived: in very cold spring weather they seem to fail to germinate and just rot in the soil.

It can be hard to tell what sprouts are weeds and which ones are your plants. That's one way careful planting helps, because you can see the pattern when the seedlings start growing.

Here is what arugula, mustard, and mizuna look like when they sprout:

Notice the approximate straight lines of the rows. The spacing in my rows is pretty irregular. As I mentioned, I try to get them evenly spaced, but handling the tiny mustard seeds is a bit hard, and I'm not too patient.

In any case, a little thinning is still much easier than a lot of thinning. Once the seedlings have grown a little, you can pull out the smallest duplicates, being very careful not to hurt the ones you are trying to leave in. With these types of plants (arugula, mustard, etc.), you can wash and eat the sprouts you pull out: they are very delicious! Of course, don't eat seedlings with poisonous leaves, like tomato seedlings. But all of the early plants for this blog have edible leaves - including the peas.

Even at this stage, the leaves of different vegetable types are often distinctive, however. These mustardy sprouts all have those very distinctive heart-shaped leaves. (Broccoli and Cauliflower have the same shape, since they're in the same family. Their seeds all look quite similar too.)  Here is a close-up:

Peas look completely different - I'll post a picture when mine are up.

You may also now start to find weed sprouts as well. I have seen some now. As long as they're outside your rows and you are sure they are not the seeds you planted, you can pull them out as you see them. But there's no hurry to pull them out if you are not sure - better safe them sorry! I have, sadly, occasionally weeded my own vegetables. Hopefully once you have your own seedlings clearly growing and identifiable, then you will be able to tell for sure which are the weeds.