Seed Update and Weekend Plans

here's a little gardening humor for you

Hello all! I'm so happy to say we had a few 70 degree days this week! Never mind that it's currently in the 40s outside and I have been battling the cold that never dies. We made the best of it though: Adelle and Mallow got to play in the yard, Nathan grilled dinner and had a few beers, and I sat on the deck with some tissues stuck up my nose. Fun times.

In other news I have a bit of a correction to make! In my post that gives instructions on starting from seed I mention that I bought a clamp plant light for (only) my tomato and pepper seedlings. I didn't think the other plants would care much about getting a lot of light, but apparently all plants benefit quite a bit from a light source. My broccoli seedlings popped out of the dirt and grew 2-3 inches in a matter of days...which is exactly what you DONT want to happen. In that same post I also talked about how you don't want your plants to become leggy (tall and thin) because the plants are weaker than stockier plants. The reason they get leggy is generally because they are focusing all their energy on growing toward their light source (like a window) and less energy on growing leaves and bulking up.

my seed starting area

Once I saw that my broccoli seedlings were doing this I quickly put my plant light on them...and proceeded to burn the tallest one to death. Oops. The internet (and my mom!) said to keep the lights within a few inches of the plants so that the plants don't try to grow toward the light too much. Well, apparently that's not true for bare bulb lights that get hot. Hence my fried broccoli plant. I also realized that I had severely under estimated the amount of light I was going to need for 100+ plants. My one tiny (very hot) light was not going to do much of anything once they were all in their larger 3 inch pots and not the seed flats. So I did what any normal gardening obsessed person who has no idea where to put all these plants would do and splurged on a nice seed starting set up. I bought a 48 inch wide metal shelf and three 48 inch long fluorescent lights. The lights were pretty cheap, for the housing and bulbs it was $20 per light. The lights are great because they hang on little detachable hooks so I can easily raise them as the plants grow. I have this set up in my laundry room and I am happy to say that the broccoli plants have stopped growing "up" and all my tomato and pepper seedlings are only about an inch tall. Hooray! Using lights isn't 100% necessary for every situation though. If you have a smaller number of plants you can arrange them by a sunny window, and if they do get leggy they will likely still grow when you put them outside. Having a light source just makes them stronger (more resistant to disease) and lets them use their energy for more leaf growth (better able to grow and produce in the future/less catch up when you plant them outside).

my leggy little broccoli seedlings

So there's my first lesson learned in seed starting. Some days it all feels like one huge experiment! The plants are doing well though, and it is really fun to see them all grow, Adelle usually goes with me to check on them and she gets so excited when she sees one coming up. Since my broccoli got so tall I decided to go ahead and repot it into the 3 inch pots. I have tried to do some searching on the internet and as far as I can tell most plants benefit from being repotted deeper. This basically means that you can plant a seedling or transplant up to it's bottom set of leaves. It helps steady leggy plants and tomatoes and peppers benefit from it because their stems will "root out" which means any part of them stem under the soil will grow new roots. More roots = more water and nutrient collection = healthier plants and more food. Repotting is simple; I took the long end of a spoon, scooped out the plant, placed it in the bigger pot and added dirt. I had to be really gently because there's not much of a root system going at this point, but I know when we transplanted our plants into the garden last year we were able to just pop them out with no problem because they were bigger and had a root ball. If you're repotting seedlings just try to be gentle.

left: broccoli seedling, you can see wispy little roots in the dirt
right: newly repotted, they could be deeper but this will work until I plant them into the garden

Nearly everything has sprouted by now. Here are a few photos of what's come up!

left the lights off for one day while we were out of town and the cilantro shot up
from left: basil, cilantro, oregano

the tomatoes are getting their first set of true leaves!

the peppers took a long time to germinate
from left: jalapeno, red bell, pepperoncini, orange bell

the middle row has 3 tiny strawberry plants!

my beastly little okra plant, they took the longest to germinate

I'm so happy that everything is coming up! We've had a few seeds here and there that haven't germinated but that's to be expected. I'm also very happy that the tomatoes are getting their first set of true leaves. The first set of leaves a plant produces are called cotyledons and the second set of leaves are their "true" leaves, or the leaves that look specific to the particular plant. The cotyledons are the plants first source for gathering light, but they eventually shrivel up. Once the first true leaves on each plant are a bit bigger then it's time to transplant them into their bigger pots. One step closer to putting them in the garden!

the reason we need a fence - don't let his adorableness deceive you!

This weekend we finally get to get started, and it's even supposed to be 67 degrees and sunny on Saturday. Perfect weather! Some of the cold weather plants go into the ground around this time, so we will be planting carrots, dill, strawberry spinach and red lettuce. We can technically plant the broccoli as well, but I'm going to give it a few more weeks so it can get a bit hardier before sticking it in the garden as they are just now showing tiny buds that will turn into their first true leaves. We'll also be doing some building this weekend. We are adding a long box behind our current four boxes for our tomatoes which means I will have a raised bed tutorial for anyone who wants to know how to build them! We're adding a fence as well...there is a certain little puppy who I'm afraid might try to dig up my garden. We'll have an open corner in the fenced in area so I think we are going to plant some flowers there that will hopefully attract some pollinators so we don't have to do much self pollination on the plants that need it. More on that later though, this post is long enough I think! Thanks for reading!




-Kelly