I prepared my seeds for some staple crops by soaking them in quart plastic bags with excess water for one hour. In reading order, they are lofthouse sunflower, bloody butcher dent corn (2 bags), wisconsin crenshaw melon seeds, miami ohio pole beans, and scarlet runner beans. I planted these in such a way that the beans should trellis up the corn and sunflowers. They were all broadcasted on top of the ground, and some of it was mulched with grass clippings, but I did not have enough to mulch all of it birds can't eat all of the corn and beans (sunflowers I will have to see about). I reserved more than half of my seeds for the corn, beans and sunflowers.
I also transplanted out the rest of my ashe county pimiento peppers that I have been growing in modules. These are 2" blocks. I kept them inside for a week or two longer than the others becuase there was a risk of mild frost. About half of the peppers planted out earlier died from either frost damage or transplanting, but it was more to do with location than variety (though shishito seems to have frost hardiness characteristics as it was completely unphased).
I planted out some collards that I sprouted in soil blocks (they don't germinate well in cool weather, though they grow just fine). I prepped the bed with a weed burner, though the would have done just fine without bed prep. I just don't want to pick out as much grass from my harvested vegetables. It was quite dry so I watered these in.
My lettuce has been doing well. In the picture are red sails and yedikule. They are doing quite well. I transplanted them due to cold weather when they went out, but they were fine with the mild frosts that they went through. I also planted cosmo lettuce, but I forgot about it and so I killed it by accident when prepping the melon bed. I resowed that veriety by direct seeding in another location. It appears to have come up in about 3 days.
Lofthouse kale has been in the ground for about a year now. I started out with around 20 plants, but most did not last the winter, and my favorite one died from soft rot. One of the other two plants also had soft rot, but maggots ate it out before it could become a problem. That plant is just hollow with cracks in the stem now, but it is doing fine. The leaves definitely improve in flavor in spring.
I decided to reserve two modules of ashe county pimientos to put in pots and grow indoors over the winter.
Last year, I decided to see if I could overwinter kohlrabi and one early purple vienna from southern exposure made it. I think I'll grow these in the spring if I want seeds next time because it doesn't work all that well to get seeds from fall planted ones.
Senposai and rutabagas overwintered exceptionally well here in zone 6, West Virginia. The senposai stayed green for longer than any other plant except for mache, even out of wild plants. I tried a few varieties of rutabagas, and most of them overwintered just fine, but when the heat came in spring, most of them got soft rot and fell apart. Honestly, the best way to save them would probably have been duct tape seeing as though they did just fine as long as they were physically attached to the rotting plant. The rutabagas that did well were southern exposure's american purple top, I believe. I cut a little section out of one to see if there was soft rot, and there was not, but the flesh did separate a little bit, and had fine cracks everywhere. Hopefully it will heal back up in time for the plant to produce seeds. I left three senposai plants out of the 40 or so I started with. I am introducing more seeds next year for more genetic diversity, though I should probably get a source in addition to kitazawa for senposai so that I can have a stronger population.
