Here We Grow!

Instead of going to a greenhouse and buying vegetable and herb plants for the garden, I decided to try my hand at starting my own seedlings. How hard can it be, right? 

My choice for plants when ever possible is heirloom varieties. With heirloom plants, you can save the seeds and get the exact same kind of plant the following year. Seeds from hybrid plants will not produce the same thing the following year. You can't patent a seed, so developers figured out that hybridizing them is the next best thing. The science and marketing behind hybrid plants is an interesting subject. It's also a very complex one. One that I will delve into in a later post.

Until I get that post written, I'll leave you with this little teaser.....Remember your biology lesson about Gregor Mendel's peas? 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Seed Savers Exchange caught my eye while I was searching online for companies that sell heirloom seeds. They are a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties of plants.  You can find some very unusual, intriguing and sometimes rare things at Seed Savers.

If you're into gardening, Seed Saver's catalog and website offer some serious eye candy! 

Here's what I got from them for the 2013 garden.

They threw in a bonus seed pack too...leeks. 

A couple of years ago, I fell for marginally clever marketing by a garden supply company and ordered special grow lights and three flats of pots for starting seeds. 

Here are my lights...T5 grow lights.

And the flats...I have three of them although there are only two in the photo.

If I were to do it all over again, I'd just buy some regular flourescent lamps and use plastic cups for the seedlings. Guaranteed they'd work just as well and cost a lot less. Ah, well...we live, we learn.

In looking at the seed packets and the recommendations for when to start them indoors, I should have been doing this two weeks ago. Better late then never? 

I scrounged two saw horses and some scrap lumber from the garage to make the table. G.W., if you're looking for the sawhorses, I have them. Thank you!

After I got the lamps and flats of pots set up on the table, I realized I had a disaster in the making. This is our resident cat, Piper. She believes she is a puma trapped in a domestic cat's body.

Piper has made it her life's goal to disprove the whole, "Curiosity killed the cat" thing. She gets into everything. A table full of tender seedlings wouldn't stand a chance. I had to build a puma-proof barrier to protect my seedlings. 

I cut up a couple of large boxes left over from when we moved here and fashioned a wall around the lights and pots.  It was then that I had the flash of genius. Why not make a grow tent of sorts using the cardboard and some aluminum foil?

The foil will reflect the light and (hopefully) make the plants grow faster. I have to make up two weeks of lost growing time somehow!

Here are the walls.

It's hard see in the photo, but there's a cover and a front piece to complete the grow tent. All I need is a timer for the lamps. Seedlings need about 18 hours of light each day. Using a timer keeps things simple.

And now I wait. With a little luck, I should see some seedlings in about a week.  Gardening is an excellent teacher of the virtues of deferred gratification!