I've been playing outside these past few days. Digging out the cold frame, moving pots, tossing frozen cat poop, and beginning to think about picking up all that litter. Bulbs are shooting up greens, expecting crocus any day now. The cold frame has seen better days ever since it became the cat frame, and then snow shed, but it's hanging on enough to do its job.
And its job is to house the seedlings on sunny days, lid propped.
These complicated, bent beginnings are leeks, my first attempt at the onion.
These are the leggy, but graceful Broccoli 'Piracicaba' seedlings. I did not try hard enough to drop one seed per dib, but I do find that broccoli disentangles fairly easily when it's time to plant.
These seedlings are only a few days up, and the window sun and excessive kitchen heat push them to grow too fast. So they get to play outside whenever it's sunny and above 35 degrees F. They come in at night, unless it isn't expected to drop below freezing. I do want to balance the quick growth of inside with the hardening of outside, so that they are ahead of the game when I go to plant in the middle of March.