Planting Again!

Well, the best day of seed planting has occurred!  I planted the heirloom tomatoes and the hybrid sweet bell peppers 2 days ago.  If I could grow only 2 crops, those would be it.

Fortunately, I can grow a lot of other stuff.

For veggies, my list is nearly as long as the index list in a catalog.  I've even grown celery.

Right now, I have cabbage, broccoli. pay choy, brussels sprouts. lettuces of various types, tomatoes, bell peppers, and leeks.  Soon, I will have spinach, parsnips, beets. carrots, snow peas,  flat italian pole beans, squash, melons, pumpkins, radishes etc.

I have some blue potatoes this year.  I found them in the organic section of the grocery store, and they are sending out small shoots from the eyes.  4 blue potatoes will turn into 40 when planted in my containers.  And with luck, I will get 2 harvests by planting a few eyes in July.

I have been planting a LOT of annual flowers this year.  I spent 10 years on perennials and the short blooms are just not worth it.  So I've going back to annuals that bloom all Late Spring, Summer and Fall.  Salvias, Forget-Me-Nots, Carnations, Wave Petunias, Impatiens, Coleus, Cardinal Vines,

That needs a lot of indoors growing space.  Fortunately, I adapted a large storage rack to a light stand last year.  It is paying off now!

Each shelf has 4 fluorescent bulbs hanging below.  Each shelf has 2 daylight bulbs and 2 grow-light bulbs.  I really can't give the plants better lighting than that!

I keep the trays of seedlings close to the lights.  But the shelves are fixed in place.  So I do the adjustments by having wood stands of various heights.

Mesclun in a window box

Top view to show color.

Chinese cabbage.

Salvia, rudbecckia, and forget-me-nots...

Carnations and celery.

Rescued plants from last year.  Stokesia, clumping blue fescue, and catnip.

Bell peppers.  Lipstick is the best sweet bell pepper for me!

The heirloom tomatoes:  Aunt Gerties Gold, Brandywine, Prudens Purple, Cherokee Purple, Tennessee Britches, and hybrid suncherry.

An example of the stands I built to raise the trays as close to the lights as possible.  And to lower them as needed.  Best results are 1" away from the lights.  As they grow, they get put on lower stand.

Two stands before assembly.  They are just glued.

Here is a stand glued and with a weight on top.  The container is full of clean kitty litter.

After an hour, I can add a new glued stand.  They aren't attached, just stacked.

This is the seedling soil I used this year.  It wasn't perfect sterile soil, but it was "good enough" and it was on sale.

I've learned that the more expensive "seed starter soil" isn't required.  I got almost 100% germination with this stuff.  I DID have to pick out a few bits of bark and hand-crush some clumps of topsoil, but it was worth the cost.

BTW, when planting flats of 6 pack cels, I trowel lots of soil on top, scrape the excess away and tp down the cells with other 6 packs.  Then I plant the seeds, cover them with soil  using a flour sifter and tsmp them down again with a 6 pack.

That is all working great so far.