Gardening Update: First seeds planted

I've been a little late in posting this, because of storms and other things that have come up over the past couple of weeks.  About mid March we had some really warm weather, and I thought it would be a good time to start planting.  I also knew that at least one more snow storm was on it's way, so I didn't want to plant everything.  So, I planted my cold weather plants.  

I started with my Detroit Red beets, which are a good general beet for pickling and baking.  I love pickled beets, particularly if they are sweet beets, so I got quite a few.  They are also heirloom (though not packaged as such), so I can collect the seeds next year and replant them.  I planted about three to four short rows of these.  

Next I planted some watermelon radish seeds that my Parents had, just for some variety.  They are a white radish with a red center.  I planted about three rows of these, though to date my cat has dug up almost one whole row.  Stupid cat.

The next group of plants were my Golden Beets.  Another heirloom variety, these beets do not bleed as the red ones do and are extremely sweet, so they are good for baby food.  I planted three rows of these.  

Following those I planted five rows of an heirloom beet that escapes my memory, but has concentric alternating circles of red and white going through the body.  I thought they would be interesting pickled, and provide some variety with the other two beets. 

I then had my father plant some icicle radishes, a long white radish.  Next to that I planted some regular carrots that my mother picked up.  These were special, in that they were the VeggieTales carrots, which show my nephews absolutely adore.  

Finally I had two very long rows to plant, so I planted some head lettuce and some leaf lettuce.  I'm not usually a lettuce eater, because I'm not too fond of iceberg lettuce (it's absolutely tasteless in my opinion), and I don't trust lettuce in a plastic bag.  The lettuce always seems to go bad very quickly, along with just about every other plant in a plastic container.  Nope, it's just better to grow your own.  

And finally, I planted some heirloom lemon cucumber seeds in a small spot at the top of the little garden.  These look like tiny melons, but taste like cucumbers, and should look really cool floating in a nice, large pickle jar.

It's also a good thing I restrained myself from planting the corn I have waiting, and the pumpkins.  I wanted to wait until the danger of a frost was over, which will be sometime this month.  Also, I would have planted my Bloody Butcher dent corn (really good for parched corn) near my Strawberry Popcorn, which would have been disastrous.  As it stands I'm going to have to plant the popcorn at my in-laws house to protect the seeds and have a good crop.  

The pumpkins I'm not too worried about, as they will have a physical barrier.  But that barrier only goes up to 4 feet, which means the corn could try to cross-pollinate.  Not a good thing for two heirloom varieties, both of which are very useful for long-term storage.  

At any rate, I'm really excited for this year's growing season.  I already have a list of plants I want to get for next year, and I'm in the process of finding locations for them as this year's experime