What To Plant Indoors in April

For most early spring crops, the time has passed to start seeds indoors. You may even have to resort to your local nursery for plants.
However, for these exciting and flavorful summer crops the time has come to begin them indoors!

1.  Squash While I would have preferred to have started these indoors already to have an early crop, there is still plenty of time to get these out in order to have some summer varieties of squash
2. Pumpkins Are you looking forward to Halloween!? Now is the perfect time to plant pumpkin seeds indoors to have jack-o-lanterns this fall. Personally, I'm planting an entire plot of sugar pumpkins for cooking.
3. Melons Be the hit at your BBQ's this summer by bringing your fresh, organic, homegrown melons to the party! Everyone will be so impressed.
4. Leafy Greens Have fresh Spinach, Kale and Lettuce all summer long. Plant some of these indoors, and plant more in a few weeks to keep the green party going!

Preparing to plant!

Like in my last post regarding Lavender, I recommend planting your seeds in clear containers. They help keep the moisture and heat inside while you get to stress less about keeping them watered. If you can't find something to use at home, I might recommend this kit from amazon:
I find this method to be the most productive (and exciting) way to DIY your garden space.
Find your chosen container (If you can't find one at home, here is a link to my favorite one for purchase on amazon https://amzn.to/3cQgO6w)  and fill it with seed starting soil or compost if you have it. (The prepackaged on from amazon comes with soil.)

Tupperware Container Seed Starting Bins

Read the back of your seed package to find out the depth to plant your seeds at into your seed starting container.
Proceed by making a hole of that depth in your soil. I like to add a touch of water into these holes at this step. It helps to make sure that your seeds are fully saturated enough to germinate properly. Especially since I will likely leave them go a few days before I check on them again.
Next, go ahead and pop your seeds into their cozy new homes for the next few weeks.
Most of the seed packages you can buy in stores will tell you approximately how long you can expect it to take in order to see your little buds begin to grow. My general rule of thumb is around about two weeks.

Seeds planted in Tupperware under a grow light

However, you're going to wait longer than that to plant these babies outdoors.
For my region (Zone 6), squash and pumpkins won't like to go outside until about late May. So let these plants grow and thrive for a good long while in a sunny window or under fluorescent lights in your home.

Seeds planted in a Tupperware container in a sunny window

You'll know your starts are ready when they begin to have "true leaves;" IE, they no longer have those dinky little sprout leaves but have spring alive and begun to look more like their adult plant selves.
With pumpkins for example, I'll let these chill out in my window until they've got at least 3 big honkin' leaves on 'em. They will be nearly busting out of their containers, but I don't let them go long enough that they start to get root bound.
That's a really vague answer on when to plant them outdoors, but if you're having a hard time deciding do a simple google search for your plant and see about when your particular plant likes to head outdoors.
I have a grow chart on my fridge that shows me about when is good to plant different varieties of things outdoors in my region. (A simple google search will help you determine your 'Zone' then, I would just search for "ZONE __ GROW CHART.") I also like to set reminders on my phone's calendar so that I won't forget when things need to go in the ground in case the colorful chart on my fridge doesn't help me out.