Seeds are up! Woohoo!

I checked this morning and WOOWZA! The tomatoes are reaching for the sky! I see little rootlets on the peppers and onions. Everything else is officially up except I didn't see anything from the eggplant. I can't wait to get pictures!

I think, though, that the dome covers need to be changed somehow. They do a great job of keeping the moisture in, but they make it so I can't put the lights low enough. The tomatoes are a bit leggy (though they don't even have real leaves yet) and while I'm sure they will be fine, it makes me think about next time.

If I can get some sort of clear cover that's flat instead of domed, especially just for starters, then I could put the lights a lot lower. I'd just have to watch them a lot more carefully and make sure that once the sprouts get close to the top of the plastic cover that I change it, either removing it completely or replacing with a dome cover.

And I just got a ship notification that my potatoes have been shipped :) So this should be a busy next couple weeks.

Didn't plant my sweet peas :(

Well on Saturday when I went to go plant my sweet peas I had a sort of accident - I picked up the jar of soaked seeds, with the packet behind it, started carrying them outside... and OUCH! I got stung on my pinky. There was a WASP on the back of the seed packet.

First off, HOW was he still AROUND, much less in my HOUSE in MARCH? Needless to say, he became a FLAT SQUISHED wasp pretty quickly but my finger still hurt!

Anyway, that happened, and then I had to come back in and by the time the pain subsided it had started to rain too much for me to want to go outside. So I drained the seeds, wet a paper towel and wrapped it around them. Now maybe they will sprout but I should still be able to plant them one of these days. We'll see. I don't want to waste these ones, it's a beautiful open-pollinated blue collection and cost me $2.50 for 20 seeds. I was hoping to save seed from them. I guess even if I end up with a few of them I should be OK.

Finished super early seeds yesterday!

So yesterday I had some time off from work which I spent getting all the remaining hardware to suspend my light fixtures (I only have 2 of the 4 up right now). I also went and got some humidity domes and then spent a nice chunk of time planting the rest of my early seeds.

So far I have a whole bunch of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, eggplant, cabbage and onions planted. Nothing's coming up yet, though. The humidity domes will really help though because the lights sit (literally) right on top of them. They aren't nearly warm enough to melt the plastic, but they warm up the air trapped inside the dome and keep it moist & warm. I can't wait to see what my plants will look like next week! So far no germination from what I did before, although it was all long-germinating stuff like tomatoes & peppers.

I also soaked my sweet pea seeds and I'll be planting them outside today after work. Maybe I'll find some working batteries so I can take a picture! I also will need to find some shade loving annuals like pansies, etc. We'll see how the day goes by. I think I want to add a bunch of vermiculite before I plant because I know myself well enough to know I won't be faithful with watering the flower areas every day. They aren't even in a real pot or container... they are just in a slim ledge thing that was made when the low brick wall was put in around the patio. So it's not very big and will probably dry out pretty quickly. So... I guess I'm on the search for annuals that are drought-resistant and do OK in the shade, since the area is shaded most of the day.

Started seeds!

One of these days I'll get new batteries that WORK for the camera and then we can start posting pics again!

On Sunday Wola and I had fun planting seeds. I planted 2 flats of peppers, some tomatoes, tomatillo, and some eggplant. Wola got a bag of pumpkin seeds and she had a great time planting them and mixing them in with the dirt. We put them under our lights, covered with saran wrap to trap in the moisture and here we go :) Nothing's happened yet, of course. Hopefully this weekend I'll get the rest of my early planting done - broccoli, cabbage, cukes, etc. I might wait a bit for the cukes though since I won't be setting anything out until the end of May. I'll also be doing some herbs, melons and squash soon.

I kinda wanted to do lunar planting but the way things are working out is that I am able to plant when I am able to plant. Maybe next year I can coordinate with the phases and whatnot. Apparently the gravitational pull of the moon makes a difference when you are planting. Next year I am buying a farmer's almanac. In fact, Mom if you are reading this, a farmer's almanac would be a GREAT Christmas present, this way I can plan it all out before I start anything. Next year I'm hoping to start my peppers quite a bit earlier.

I need to get pictures of my grow setup posted - it's so sweet! It's huge powder-coated steel shelf unit, 4 feet wide. So far I have 2 shop lights hung, I still need to get chains and bulbs for the other 2. I've curtained the whole thing with mylar space blankets to reflect the light from the shop lights and to keep in the heat. Peppers especially like it warm for germination and since it's not particularly warm in the basement it's been working pretty well, especially with the saran wrap on top of the soil to trap in the heat and moisture. I think I'll get some humidity domes to help them along but the plastic wrap will do in a pinch until I can get some of those.

I have a garlic sprout! I'm so proud of it. It's the only one up so far, but I did dig a little under the mulch and the others are coming up slowly. The neighbor's dog apparently did a little digging in my garden beds this winter looking for mice that I think nested in the mulch but I don't think he disturbed any of the garlic. I'm not going to be a happy camper if he digs up my plants after I plant them... my neighbor is a very nice guy though and so I'm sure he would be nice about it if I had to ask him to keep his dog in the yard.

That's all for today!

More work on the seed starting...

I've REALLY got to get this going! Big R hasn't gotten the fluroescent tubes back into stock yet so next weekend I'll have to go get some at Ace Hardware.

Yesterday Wola and I went downstairs into the basement to mix up our seed starting medium. Tommy lugged the (soaked) bale of peat, the 2 bags of compost and my vermiculite downstairs so we could work on it right away. I had a rubbermaid bin that I was going to use for the mix... so I cut open the bale of peat and we started scooping!


Saturday we'd made a trip to Target and I found some cool kids gardening stuff! I ended up getting Wola the cutest little cow print mud boots. The boots have eyes and they even have little tails in the back. I also got her a kid-size little red trowel.

So anyway, we scooped peat moss from the bale into the bin using our trowels. We filled the bin about a quarter full of the peat moss, making a "mig meth (big mess)" in the process. Then I dumped half a bag of compost and the little bag of vermiculite in. Then I added in the mycelium inoculant and also the bacterial inoculant I'd gotten from Gardens Alive. Mixed it all together with our trowels (Eleora had fun trying to put the mix back into the peat bale, but I tried to make sure most of the mix stayed in the bin), added a little water to moisten it a bit more.

Then we decided that we were "all deerty" enough so we went upstairs and cleaned up a bit. Now we have our mix prepped and moistened, I'm sure the bacteria and whatnot are growing away. I'll start planting next weekend, hopefully, provided I can get my light bulbs on time.

My grow rack

Well we've got things going underway now. I bought a nice sturdy rack at Costco for under $70. It's got 5 shelves and is super heavy, made from powder-coated steel. THe assembly was actually pretty simple. I realized that I could theoretically fit 2 shop lights on each rack if I wanted to. I have 4 right now, I might double them up and see how it does.

Tommy picked me up 8 plastic flats and 5 space blankets. I'm going to wrap the space blankets around the rack, leaving a "curtain" at the front that I can open and close at will. This will reflect the light and also trap in the heat. We've situated it pretty close to the furnace and so I'm hoping that the trapped warmth will eliminate the need for any warming mats in order to germinate my tomatoes and especially peppers.

Other than that, I've got my seed order and my seed starting ingredients. And I got a nice pretty green wheelbarrow to mix it all in, though I might just end up using plastic bins in the basement since I think that would be easier. I bought a bunch of peat moss, some vermiculite, and a couple bags of organic compost. I also have my mycogrow mycelium inoculant, and some different inoculant from Gardens Alive. I'm also planning on separating out my earthworm castings from my worm bins and using all of that. I've got some bags of dry, shredded leaves in the garage that I'll mix in as well. I'm trying to find a source of a larger amount of vermiculite but I'll have to settle for the small bag I got at Lowe's. I'm hoping that when the nurseries open up in a few weeks that I'll be able to buy larger quantities of vermiculite. Or maybe when Big R opens their lawn & garden shop for the season... I'll have to call them and see when that will be.

Other than that, I need to keep folding my newspaper pots!

Growing for Market

I got my first Growing for Market magazine yesterday! It came with a cool book with lots of ideas of how to increase your income for market year-round. I haven't looked at it yet, carefully set it aside for tonight. Tommy (hopefully) will be going out tonight to see a friend and so that leaves me with my magazine and a hot cup of tea :)

I keep thinking that soon I'm going to actually start working on my business plan. I think I might want to keep track of everything I put into the garden, even though it's going to be mostly for home use, but that's where everything will come from. Even just a one or two page plan at this point I think will help me stay organized and focused. I have so many ideas and they are just all over the place, so it would be good to get them all down on paper and think up some sort of timeframe.