A transplanted Southern Californian living in North Dakota Idaho, with some insights on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.





Monday, March 26, 2012

Starting Seeds Indoors

The warm weather and Spring-like atmosphere has made me antsy to get gardening, but since it's only March, I'll have to settle with starting some seeds indoors.  It might be too early to start seeds, but I think that it might be warm enough to set out some of these transplants when they're ready in a month or so.  It might be pushing the envelope, but I like living on the edge.

I started four large trays with about two dozen six packs of pots I've saved from former nursery purchases.  It's super easy to just fill them with fresh potting soil and pop in the seeds.
All of the seeds are on the counter down in the basement with a large shop light on a timer so that seeds get plenty of light and (hopefully) germinate like champs.
These have some of our veggies (tomatoes, squash, honeydew melons, watermelons, eggplant and cabbages).
These are some annual and perennial flowers (zinnias, coneflowers, salvias, hollyhock, lavender, and clematis).  I'll be sure to show updates if/when things start to germinate and are ready to put out into the garden.  It's easier for me to be slightly more aggressive putting the flowers out sooner, when there's still a danger of frost, if they get frozen there's no big loss.  If I lose one of my delicious Sun Cherry Tomato plants though, I might be a bit of a sad panda, so I'll wait to put those out. 

This is only a fraction of the veggies and flowers that we plant.  We will still make our annual May pilgrimage to a nursery in Fertile, Minnesota, the fantastic Bergeson Nursery and buy other plants from local nurseries and hardware stores.

1 comment:

Karen said...

I do the same thing every year with my flowers and tomatoes. We put the greenhouse up two weekends ago already and I should have stuff planted but got sidetracked hauling rocks.

We use bottom heat here with an ingenious system Carl came up with involving a hot water heater element and a fountain pump (high tech, ha) which works great. That way I don't have to heat the greenhouse structure itself. I often start stuff under lights in the basement, too. The heat generated from the light fixtures is a great help in germination.