Seedlings

I am so happy that it's almost March!!! It's getting about time to get outside and get the garden ready. I ordered my seed potatoes today, three varieties - Red Caribe, Russian Banana Fingerlings, and Yukon Gold. The Red are supposed to be really early potatoes, I expect to be eating the fingerlings through the summer, and the Yukon Gold, which are supposed to be good storage potatoes, will hopefully take us through the winter. Last year the fingerling potatoes were SO GOOD, I've hated buying potatoes this winter, and have often been disappointed.

Indoors, I have a sweet potato vine growing inside, sprouted from one of our Beauregard's this winter. It looks fantastic. I think I will leave it in this pot all Spring and see if I can't harvest some potatoes out of it. If I can, then I will see about keeping some sweet potatoes going inside all the time.



I have my first true leaves on my broccoli sprouts now. They're doing pretty well. I've been misting them every day. Some of them are looking slightly yellow to me, but I mixed up a little fish emulsion and sprayed them with that today. Hopefully they'll perk back up.

Here's my little seedling set up. I have 13 broccoli plants, one lone cauliflower seedling, one lone brussels sprout seedling, about half a dozen red acre cabbage seedlings and probably 8 or so early jersey wakefield cabbage seedlings.

It's getting about time to start some tomatoes and peppers, eggplants, cucs and squash, but I'm concerned about having the space for them under the grow light. I'm going to think about that...

Broccoli Babies

So far so good. I've thinned a little already as some were growing right on top of each other. At the moment I have 14. No sign of the cauliflower or brussels sprouts coming up.

I'll be starting some cabbage and celeriac soon...hopefully this week.

After that, it's tomatoes, peppers and eggplants...

Broccoli seedlings are up!

Here's the good news - the broccoli sprouts are already up!

Bad news is that some of them are moldy....they got too wet. I'll watch and see what happens. Maybe they'll be all right....

Winter Wonderland...

What better time to be thinking about planting then when I can't even see my garden because of the snow? You can barely make out the very tip of the fence. This is the biggest snow we've had this year so far.

Based on the garden plan and my estimated planting dates, the first seeds that I need to start are the broccoli. They'll go in the ground around mid-April, and I'd like to be setting out good, strong, big, healthy plants. I'm shooting for twelve.

It would appear that in one of my fall cleaning frenzies I threw away all of the little black seedling pots I had accumulated last Spring and Summer, so my first order of business was to figure out what I was going to start these little seedlings in. I came up with this.

Last week I dumped what was left of a bag of garden soil on the deck (frozen solid with clump of ice included) into my canning pot and added some cold perlite. It's been sitting inside ever since to warm up.

My husband brought the seedling starter mat in for me that had ended up back out in the shed, and I moved a table into the dining room so I had somewhere to put all of this apparatus. I cut the bottles down, cleaned them thoroughly, and punched a few holes in the bottoms for drainage. I mixed up my soil and perlite, which was nice and warmish and moist, and filled the pots.

We put the seeds in liberally. Since I want a dozen plants I'm shooting to end up with two good plants in each pot, four in the large pot.

I put thier Ziploc bag tents over them, placed them on the plugged-in seed mat, and walked away. I'll check them daily until I start to see seeds coming up. Hopefully by next weekend I'll be moving these new little babies under the aerogarden light, misting them every morning, and starting something else on the mat - cauliflower and cabbage, I think.