Today's Q&A comes from Margo, and it is such a good one that applies to all of us.

She says, most of my reading says cool crop seeds can be planted now. I have planted my spinach,

lettuce, arugula, and radish. The seed packets say 40 degree soil is fine. My soil is reading at 40. The packet for my carrots and

beets say at least 45 degrees soil, so I haven't planted them yet. My question is,

what timeline do I pay more attention to? The last frost date or the temperature of the

soil, because according to my last frost dates dates I could be planting all of this.

That is such a good question and basically it boils down to this. If you're planting seeds

directly in your garden, do you go by your dates or the soil temperature primarily? We know that

ideally the dates relative to our last frost date and the soil temperature,

they're all going to line up in a perfect world. But that doesn't always happen. Margo gives the

example of cool weather crops, but I'll tell you, I've had the same dilemma when it comes to

warm weather crops too. Maybe my average last frost date has passed, yet the soil temperature still isn't up to where it needs to be for good germination of seeds.

I gave Margo a fairly long response, but I'm going to try to sum it up here.

I think the best mode to go by is soil temperature.

The soil temperature is one of the most critical factors when it comes to

when seeds will sprout and how high their germination rate will be. It's Mother Nature's way

of making sure that seeds don't sprout before nature is ready to handle them. If you've ever had

volunteer plants in your garden come up, you know that they're pretty

good at knowing when the right time is to come up. I for certain don't have tomato volunteers coming up

in March, but you can better bet I will see them in May. That's why I think soil temperature is so critical.

But I will say there are some crops where the timing is critical as well.

I'll give you an example from my garden.

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