Saturday, February 20, 2010

More Seed Stuff


The lettuce is growing like crazy! Still now "true leaves", but definitely time to thin out the plants to just one or two seeds per container. I guess someone put a bunch of seeds in each container. Its hard when your working with small seeds like lettuce, but I always feel guilty letting a few of the plants go. We'll keep these seeds in the same containers until their true leaves appear. At that time we'll start transplanting them to bigger pots to continue to grow.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Small Seeds


Its difficult working with small seeds. Check out the picture above with a Dusty Miller seed (towards the bottom circled in blue). We really should have been tools when it comes to working with these small seeds. Tweezers would be good. To start with I usually pour out all the seeds in the packet onto a paper saucer. Tweezers would be great to pick up individual seeds and also useful when it comes to thinning seeds.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Winter Time

We're had quite a bit of snow so far in Febuary. Its hard to think about gardening when you have about 15 inches of snow on the ground. Here's what some of the gardens look like right now - snow, snow and more snow. It will be interesting to see when the soil will be ready to work this spring. We've got lettuce and pansy starting indoors.

Epworth Veggie Garden


Maple Grove UMC - Extending the Table


Ascension Lutheran Helping Hands Garden

Monday, February 15, 2010

Germination!


We started seeds Saturday morning and when I check on the seeds Monday night, I noticed some of the seeds have already germinated! We've got lettuce popping up!



Starting to get into a routine again. Checking the plants in the morning, turning on the grow lights and watering them as needed. Then, in the evening they get watered again as needed and then its lights out.


The next step will be to thin out the lettuce so we just have one or two seedlings. Looks like the Zinnas are starting to germinate as well.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Starting Seeds




We finally got around to sarting some seeds. We used peat pellets for some of the seeds and plug trays with potting soil for the other seeds. We started the following seeds:

Lettuce - Black Seeded Simpson, Simpson Elite and Parris Island Romaine and Mesclun
Flowers - Painted Daisy and Zinnas

Thursday, February 4, 2010

What to Grow?


So many cool things to grow. I was particularly amused by Strawberry Popcorn. How cool would this be to grow and then use to decorate in the fall. You can even eat this variety of corn.


Bunny Tails looks interesting as well. This year, we'd like to incorporate even more color and textures into the garden.


Ribbon Corn looks nice as well. This would make a wonderful backdrop. You could have the large corn in the back along with shorter items in front.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds


Once again we got hooked up with seeds from Livingston Seed Company. This winter we will be sorting out seeds and sharing as much as possible with other gardening groups. I'm always amazed at the different varieties of seeds. This year we got not only vegetable and herb seeds, but also flowers. So many things we'd like to grow - Sunflowers, different color beans and so many different varieties of lettuces.