Seed Update #2

Long time no see! Please excuse the fact that I fell off the blogging bandwagon for a few weeks. School started back up for me which sucks up a pretty good chunk of my free time, but I have a few posts planned for this week. Today I am going to show you some photos of how my plants are looking. Some of them are doing wonderfully, others have gotten off to a slow start, and some of them I am having trouble with. My next post (scheduled for Thursday) will be about container gardening. FINALLY! I wanted to get that post up much earlier, but better late than never, right? In that post I will go over what containers to use, which plants will work best, how to get started, and what we are growing in containers this year.

our tomatoes 3 weeks ago - 3/12

largest and smallest, both yellow cherry - 4/1

We planted our seeds about a month ago and we have about a month before we can plant anything outside. This excludes broccoli which was the only cold weather starter we did - more on that in a minute. So far the tomatoes are doing wonderfully...I could not be happier! They are not leggy, stalks seem strong, and they have plenty of leaves by this point. They are also growing at a crazy pace. The photo on top was three weeks ago and the next photo is from today. Huge difference! The second photo also shows my largest and smallest tomato plant - they are the same variety they just sprouted at different times. 

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.

Gardening: Where to Start

When I posted the link to my blog on Facebook I had a friend comment and say that she wanted to plant a garden this year, but had no idea where to start. You know how anytime a professor asks a question in Harry Potter, Hermoine excitedly wiggles in her seat with her hand straight up in the air? I am totally having one of those excited "I can help" moments. While I am definitely not an expert, I feel a bit like a crazy plant lady these days and if I don't know the answer I will do my best to find it. So where to start? Here are some things to consider when you are ready to plan your garden:

What sort of space am I working with? 

a view of our garden area from the deck

I think people generally begin to think about what they'd like to grow, but the first thing you should plan out is your garden space. Do you want several raised beds and six tomato plants so you have the option of canning? Do you want a container garden with peppers and tomatoes so you can avoid buying them at the store? Figuring out how much space you have will help answer these kind of questions. You have a few options here:

Containers: This is a great option if you are short on yard space. You can use just about anything: terra cotta pots, plastic pots, DIY boxes or even thrift store finds (think wooden boxes or old metal containers). A few things to keep in mind: it will need holes to drain out extra water, which can be drilled into the bottom if there are none, and bigger is better. Seriously, the more room you give your plants, the bigger they will be able to grow their root system, the more soil they will have to "eat" from and the more food you will get. Some things do better in smaller pots, like herbs or greens (think spinach and lettuce), but things like tomatoes and peppers will really benefit from having more space.

Starting from Seed

seeds from baker creek

I know it's still February and all, but I think the nice string of 50-60 degree days we had is making me dread our impending winter storm this weekend even more. I like to read a little about the weather even though I don't understand much of the in depth stuff. But from what I can tell, I guess the question in our area is whether we will get sleet or snow, and if we do happen to get all snow we could potentially have another foot of snow on the ground. Yikes! On the plus side, we are growing our own starters this year which means I get to start growing things in February...so it almost feels like Spring! Yesterday our seeds came in the mail so we got started planting. Now we have one hundred and forty four (yes, you read that right) seeds planted and I am hoping most if not all of them germinate. This is actually more plants than we need, but we figured we had the dirt, the seeds, and the space, so why not? Hopefully I can share some starter plants with family and friends, and if we still have extra I will be able to pick the healthiest looking plants to go in the garden! For now they will grow in the seed flats, and once they get their first true leaves, in three or four weeks, we will transplant them to small 3 inch " jiffy pots" so they can grow their roots larger. Once we do that I will have to find a new place for them because they will take up quite a bit more room!