Oh yes

It's winter.  We've just had a fairly large snowstorm.  In fact, it shut down the University of Minnesota, which never happens.  And I'm feeling antsy about starting my garden.  The problem is that at least according to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum website, I should be holding off on planting even tomato seeds until mid-late April.

Well, I've never been good about following rules when I don't see the reasoning behind it. I understand that here in Minnesota we have the potential for frost until Memorial Day weekend and gardens should be planned accordingly.  However, in recent years, particularly here in the city, we haven't seen frost past, oh say, the beginning of May (at least that's what I'm telling myself, don't spoil my delusions right now, this winter has been long.) Which is why on Friday night, I started a tray of seeds.  I really only wanted to start 4 tomato seeds, telling myself that I was really only trying to see if they're still viable (they were purchased last spring), but well, I have a curious and extremely persuasive 2 year old. And one thing led to another and, it was either plant a tray of 20 seeds, or forfeit the little soil disks to my daughter's toy box.
So now, I've started 12 basil, 4 spinach, and 4 tomatoes.  I know it's early for the spinach and basil, but I was having trouble with the spinach seeds germinating last year, so I want to see how good the seed still is, and the basil...well, I have a lot of basil seed and I never seem to grow enough.  We'll see if we can't get a head start on that.
Pictures coming as soon as I figure out how to download pictures from our nifty new camera