Zinnias

The zinnias, by far, are doing the best of all the plants. The stems are looking strong. The plants are healthy and tall. Many of the roots are starting to grow out of the little peat containers.


You always worry that the plants might look spindly if the lighting conditions are not correct. With the romaine lettuce the stems are not that strong. The lettuce plants - especially the romaine seems to be some of the most fragile plants. If you're not careful you can easily damage the young plants.

Grow Plants Grow!

Checking on the plants tonight the zinnias and lettuces look great. I can't believe how fast they are growing. We've still got snow on the ground. I'm afraid it will be the first of April before we can work the soil. This weekend we will probably start to transplant the plants with 2 sets of true leaves into bigger containers. We'll also make adjustments to the height of the lights.

Dusty Miller and Pansies

The dusty miller and pansies continue to germinate. These plants are not germinating and growing as fast as the zinnias and lettuce. It seems like the paper containers dry out a bit fast then the plants in the plastic containers. We probably should have started the dusty miller and pansies a month or so earlier. Both of these plants will do ok outside when the weather is a bit cool.

Pansies

Well.....this latest round of seeds are not germinating as fast as the lettuce. We planted Pansies and Dusty Millers on Sat. Feb. 20th. I've been anxiously awaiting their germination, but most days I wake up to find no change. Finally last night I did find one plant that has germinated. I guess its back to waiting and waiting and waiting.

True Leaves

We started our first batch of seeds on Sat. Feb. 13th. It didn't take long for the seeds to germinate. Within about 3 or 4 days, the lettuce, daisies and zinnias had germinated. We thinned most of the lettuce down to two or three plants per individual container and then just waited for the true leaves to appear. We are finally starting to see true leaves appear on the daisies and lettuce. Maybe in another week or so we will start transplanting the plants with true leaves into a big container to continue growing. I was wondering what the funny looking leaves were on some of the lettuce. Also, just glancing at some plants I was wondering if there were some grass seeds mixed in. I finally remembered we planted Mesclun which is a mix of different seeds. I'm always amazed at what is contained in such a little seeds.

Making Paper Pots

We couldn't resist buying one of these make your own pots for gardening out of newpaper. We actually purchased one last year and it was so popular we decided to buy a second one this year - Not a bad investment. They are around $16 to $20. Add some newspaper which is basically free, invest a few buck in a bag of potting soil and you're good to go. We cut strips of newspaper about 3" by 8" or so and wrapped the newspaper around the pot maker. It's an enviromentally responsible thing and it really saves money instead of buying all the little peat containers which could be 15 to 20 cents a piece or the plastic container which are even more expensive. We're always look for ways to recycle and save money.

more lights

Roni added more lights to the grow racks. Last year we only had one light for each shelf. It seemed like most plants were stretching to reach the light and we ended up with mostly spindly plants. This year we thought we'd add a second light to each shelf. We'll continue to rotate the plants around, but this will add to the amount of light each plant will get. The lights are on chains where they can be raised and lowered as needed. Hopefully this year we'll have a great year of seed starting and begin gardening season with a number of healthy seedlings to transplant.