Monday, January 28, 2013

A day in the life of a seed

 I've started plants from seeds a handful of times, but watching them come to life makes me giddy.  There is nothing, then poof, there is life!  I wrote about starting our second batch seeds just last week.  We started them on Wednesday evening.  When I went to bed on Saturday night there were containers of dirt and a dream.

On Sunday at 7 am we had this:



At Noon, we had this:



At 10pm, we had this:



And this morning I awoke to this (well and a hungry kid):


It's a great way to start the week!  Grow seeds grow.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Our Seed Selections

Just before Christmas I stumbled upon a great blog Northwest Edible Life.  It is full of useful information for urban gardeners and it is written with just the right sense of humor for my taste.  We were deep in the seed selection process and actually experience stress over it when I read this post.  It takes a very even handed and thoughtful approach to seed selection.

The bulk of our seeds came from Botanical Interests for no other reason that their selection was ample without being overwhelming and their seeds packets are beautiful and contain a lot of very useful information about growing each plant.  We also purchased several seed packets from Totally Tomatoes.  They offered a better selection of hybrids that we wanted as well as several larger variety tomatoes.  We also have several seeds left from Cornucopia Seeds that I bought at our local Ace Hardware when we were rushing the calendar to get a garden in last fall.  In all, this is what our seed selection looks like.


Seed Year Source Notes
Arugula Rocket Salad 2013 Botanical Interests
Basil-Large Leaf Italian 2012 Botanical Interests
Beans-Blue Lake 2012 Cornucopia
Beans-Improved Tendergreen 2012 Cornucopia
 Beans-Trio   2013 Botanical Interests Bush bean yellow, green, purple
Beet-Early Wonder Tall Top 2012 Cornucopia
Beet-Ruby Queen 2012 Cornucopia
Beet-Early Wonder 2013 Botanical Interests
Beet-Gourmet Blend 2013 Botanical Interests Variety of colors
Borage 2013 Botanical Interests An edible flower that helps attact lots of bees
Buckwheat 2013 Botanical Interests A type of green manure to grow and turn back into the soil
Carrot-Calliope Blend 2013 Botanical Interests Multi Colored Carrots
Carrot-Little Finger 2012 Cornucopia
Carrot-Tendersweet 2012 Cornucopia
Chive 2013 Botanical Interests
Cilantro 2012 Botanical Interests
Cucumber-Lemon 2013 Botanical Interests
Cucumber-Orient Express II 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Dill 2013 Botanical Interests
Eggplant-Hansel Hybrid 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Kale-Italian Lacinato 2013 Botanical Interests
Kohlrabi-Purple White 2013 Botanical Interests
Leek-American Flag 2013 Botanical Interests
Lettuce-Buttercrunch 2012 Cornucopia
Lettuce-Mesclun Farmers Market Blend 2013 Botanical Interests
Onion-Flat of Italy 2013 Botanical Interests
Oregano 2013 Botanical Interests
Parsley 2012 Botanical Interests
Pea-Super Sugar Snap 2013 Botanical Interests
Pepper-Big Chile 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Pepper-Cayenne Purple 2013 Totally Tomatoes A free packet that came with our order
Pepper-La Bomba Hybrid 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Pepper-Rainbow Blend Bell 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Radish-Cherry Belle 2013 Botanical Interests
Radish-Easter Egg Blend 2013 Botanical Interests
Rutabaga 2013 Botanical Interests
Sage 2013 Botanical Interests
Spinach-Correnta Hybrid 2012 Cornucopia
Squash-Easypick Zucchini 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Squash-Sunny Delight Scallop 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Swiss Chard-Bright Lights 2013 Botanical Interests
Swiss Chard-Fordhook 2012 Cornucopia
Thyme 2013 Botanical Interests
Tomato-Big Zac 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Tomato-Brandywine Red/Yellow 2012 Botanical Interests These did not produce well in 2012, but they were SO tasty.  It's worth another go.
Tomato-Goliath 2013 Totally Tomatoes
Tomato-Heirloom Cherry Blend 2013 Totally Tomatoes A free packet that came with our order
Tomato-Supersweet 100 2012 Botanical Interests Bite size goodness in plentiful amounts.  Perferct for the smalls to eat off the plant.
Turnip 2013 Botanical Interests

Friday, January 25, 2013

Sowing the Seeds of Love

Forgive the painfully dated homage to the pop music of my youth...  wow did I love that song.

It's mid-January and we have started seeds for several of our selections indoors, namely tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and onions.  Most pepper, tomato, and eggplants recommend starting indoors 8-10 weeks before the last probable frost which is mid April for us.  We should have nice plants to transplant when  it is time.  There are a variety of ways to start seeds and we opted to get a grow lamp , a heat mat, and a thermostat to help get the little guys off to the best start possible.  Other than the seeds and these items we tried to re-purpose items before they hit the trash or recycling bin.

Egg cartons made a great way to start onions.  From what I've read, they can be a bit finicky to start from seed so I way over planted what we need.  It may seem silly to have the white table cloth as we did, but it helped to track down wayward seeds that otherwise would be lost against the backdrop of the table.





For the tomatoes and peppers we used berry containers and cut off bottle bottoms from sparkling water.  The berry containers had holes, but we had to punch holes in the water bottle bottoms for water drainage.

Watering new seedlings requires a more delicate touch so the seeds do not get displaced.  This water can was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest or the inter webs somewhere and it does a fine job.  It's another water bottle with small holes drilled into the top.  I leave it right next to the seeds and water as needed when I check on them throughout the day.


Until the seeds start to germinate, they don't require sunlight and can benefit from a cover to help keep the environment damp.  I used cake and pan lids we have on hand.




With all these seeds it's was imperative to keep track of what is what.  I pre-printed labels that we will use with seed information and days to harvest.  Then on planting day we wrote the date and the number of seeds that we planted.  This will help us gauge how readily our plant choices this year germinate.  This one is a pepper, a variety called La Bomba from Totally Tomatoes.  We planted 11 seeds on 1/24.
Germination, it typically takes place withing 7-10 days of planting, but as I learned today, don't give up too soon.  These seeds were planted two weeks ago and check out this little sprout that is popping up.  Look closely on the bottom between the two established seedlings.  He's there!

We are well on our way to a sizable edible garden for this spring and summer and these little sprouts are a welcome reminder that spring is just around the corner.  We have our seed nursery in our front room.  While we could have put it in a less visible place, this ensures they get attention throughout the day and that we get to see things right as they sprout.  The smalls get a big kick out seeing what grows each day and so far they have resisted the temptation to play in our indoor dirt.