In January and February I started selecting the seeds...       

I usually get some garden seeds from the local home improvement store or hardware store, but I also shop online and from seed catalogs.  The local stores usually have a good selection of all around generally popular varieties.  


A short digression here... 
I remember the first time that I looked at the seed rack in the store.  It was mind boggling!  I had no idea there were so many different varieties of tomatoes, peppers, etc.  I remember thinking, "Why don't they just have one kind of tomato!"  Little did I know!


I got some seed catalogs and my mind was like a sponge... I soon began to absorb a lot of information; I began to learn about all the different kinds of vegetables and varieties!  One year I managed to get seedlings of fifty different kinds of tomato plants!  I had to create a huge garden for this, but I wanted to test drive them... so to speak!  I Loved that experiment!  My family had purple, red, orange, streaked, green, hollow, yellow, cherry, currant, beefsteak and every kind of tomato you could think of.  It was a great way to taste the different varieties and decide which ones I really liked! 


So... in February of this year I purchased seeds locally and I ordered seeds from some of my favorite seed companies.  Nichols Garden seeds in Oregon, Pinetree Garden seeds in Maine, Territorial garden seeds in Washington... to name a few.  I also made sure that I bought a small packet of bean and pea inoculant (I will explain this later).  


Some vegetables, like peas and lettuce, like cooler weather.  These seeds can be sown outdoors early in the Spring.  Other vegetables, like peppers and tomatoes are very cold sensitive and cannot be grown very successfully unless one starts them indoors in cooler climates.  


I probably could have started the tomato and pepper seeds sooner, but having just moved into this house and still not having everything put away yet, I still have quite a bit of disorganization about and I was searching for the best place to locate my seed starting endeavors.  I settled on the sunniest window in the house... a South facing window.  


I planted the tomato and pepper seeds indoors on April 17th.  They came up in about 7 days.  But they got really "leggy".... meaning, their stems were getting tall and they had almost no leaves!  I realized that even though I had them in the window, they were not getting enough light!  So I bought a 4 foot fluorescent shop light fixture and two fluorescent grow-light bulbs.  I set that up over the seedlings and within a couple of days the seedlings responded by putting on more leaves instead of lengthening their stems!


On April 19th I put my Cascadia snap peas in a small custard cup and covered them with water to soak over night.... this helps them sprout.  Only soak them overnight because if you soak them too long, they will spoil.


Here is a picture of the peas seeds soaking overnight.

On April 20th the seeds had absorbed quite a bit of the water.  I gently drained the excess water off and then sprinkled the seeds with a little bit of the garden inoculant (it looks like black dust). I gently stirred them around until the seeds were pretty much all coated with the black inoculant.  


Here is what they looked like.

So then I followed the instruction on the seed packet and planted them in a row, 1 inch deep and 2 inches apart.  I still had seeds left... enough for two more rows... so I planted them. The packet said that the rows should be 18" apart, so I made sure that I measured that when I planted each successive row.  So, I ended up planting 3 eight-foot rows of Cascadia snap peas.  


When I lived in Idaho, we had a St. Patrick's day target for pea planting.  I am new to New England, so I didn't plant that early... though I think I could have planted a bit earlier than I did.  


The seed inoculant is only for bean and pea seeds.  It is a natural Rhyzobium bacteria that improves the germination and growth of the beans and peas.  It is expensive, but a little goes a long way.  I only buy one package of the stuff each year and it lasts all season.  DO NOT use it on other seeds... it isn't necessary for those other seeds, doesn't help those other seeds to sprout, so it would be a waste of money to use it on seeds other than beans and peas.  


On April 21st, following the instructions on the seed packets, I planted a row of radishes, a row of spinach a row of lettuce and a row of beets.  We had cloudy and rainy weather for the next week so I didn't have to worry about watering the seeds.  If it hadn't been rainy, I would've used the garden hose and sprinkled the area gently so that the seeds could sprout.