Sowing lettuce, checking compost and preparing to sow lupines

I soaked the lettuce seeds for 5 hours before planting, just like I did with the morning glory. Microgreen lettuce seeds are tiny, so I sowed them in a flat container.

I’d like to plant it in the ground as soon as possible, but I can’t plant delicate lettuce because there is still a risk of frost.

This is the firewood delivered yesterday. As soon as the snow finally melts we have to start preparations for next winter.

Last year, I put lots of leaves in a composter and then put some kitchen compost on it. I opened it to check today, it seems pretty good. I took some of it and mixed it with the soil that I had taken from the forest last autumn. I am going to use it for gardening.

We took the lupine seeds last autumn from our garden. I’d like to sow them tomorrow, so I took the seeds from the pods today.

Lupine pods look like hairy Edamame pods (Edamame is a young soybean) and there are lots of seeds in the pods. It was not easy to make our lupines germinate last year from seed. 

The ratio of germination was not very high. So, I am going to plant more than we would need. 

Lupines stop growing when the temperature rises above 25 degrees Celsius, so they cannot live through a Japanese summer. That’s why they say that you need to sow lupines in September in Japan. However, summer in our place is not as hot as in Japan, so it seems that you can sow them in spring here.

I am going to soak them tonight and sow them tomorrow.