Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Seedlings update

The seedlings were bursting out of the green house. I had weighted the top down but that was causing the leaves of the bean plants to be in contact with the condensation on top of the greenhouse lid, which in turn was causing leaf rot. Not cool! So I had to transplant them into larger quarters, until it decides to warm up enough around here to put them into the ground.

This was a challenge, simply because I don't have a lot of room around my house for 72 seedlings in beer cups. Oh yeah I said beer cups. I got 100 of the red plastic 'kegger' cups, you know the ones, cheap, usually filled with semi warm & flat beer from a party, well now they have plants in them. I have these cups on a half sheet tray, 2 of them actually, in front of my bedroom window. I have to rotate the trays every few days so everything gets equal sunshine.

I'll be planting some herbs and lettuces in the mini green house for this round. My hope is that as soon as they are large enough to be moved it'll be warm enough outside to plant them. I want to have herbs in the following places: front yard in a flower bed under the windows, in the back yard garden, in the new front yard garden area as well as potted ones to keep on the deck for easy access to herbal goodness as needed. I found a really cute pot at Walmart that I plan on using for the herbs, the colors will look great in my kitchen after the outdoor season is over. My hope is that I can keep fresh herbs growing in this pot inside year round.

Since my last entry I've bought a few new things:
seed potatoes for fingerlings including french fingerling, rose finn apple and banana.
purple potato seeders
beet seeds
10 bare root strawberry plants
various herbs & spices including: cumin (HOORAY!!!! I use SO much of this spice - I'm really excited to grow my own!), ball basil and lime basil.

Last year I grew lemon basil and it was good. The lemon flavor really helped overpower the anise flavor that basil has, which I don't like. I'm pretty excited about the lime version this year. And the ball basil will look great in pots, its leaves are quite small for basil & it forms a compact ball, should be pretty, like aromatic topiary.

I'll be back later on with some photos of seedlings as well as the front yard. We've started the demo/construction/manual labor portion of transforming it from 1/2 grass 1/2 weeds to 1/2 grass 1/2 garden. I dug the stump of an old pine tree out of the yard last weekend (GO ME!) and Brian transplanted the lavender bush in its place. We also have dug out the perimeter of where we want the garden and have laid 1/2 of the border stones. Hopefully today won't have 60 MPH winds and I can get out there & do some more work. Watch out yard, I'm taking over LOL :)

1 comment:

  1. wow! Do you ever have a garden! I am not doing seedlings this year. I'll wait until I am a bit more organized.

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