Gardening – Starting Seeds

(I have never started plants from seeds, but it can’t be all that hard – can it?)

——————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Hi fans. Got my teeny little seeds planted today. 3 kinds of peppers, none of them hot or bell. 5 kinds of tomatoes, none of them normal. Well, I suppose Oscars Lebanese might be considered normal.

Peppers:

Jimmy Nardello – red, cylindrical, some heat

Japeto – jalapeno appearance, but no heat. Green

Banana – I don’t remember which particular breed of banana, but it’s my favorite pepper. Yellow with orange streaks

 

Tomatoes:

Black icicle – similar to Roma in appearance, but longer, bigger and darker

Morning Sun – yellow, smallish

Tsungshio – orange/red streaked

Black Cherry – It is what it is. I’ve had these before. Incredibly delicious

Omars Lebanese – more pinkish/reddish, fairly big

 

 

(The rest of these are direct sown into the ground.)

 

 

Greens: I’ve got 5 kinds. The 5th one was a bonus thrown in by the seed company.

Tom Thumb – little green head. One makes a salad for one person.

Red Thumb – Okay, that’s not the name, but it looks like Tom, except that it’s red

Romaine – that’s the one that was thrown in

Spinach –

Mustard –

 

Shelling peas, leeks, onions, nasturiums. The Nastys (yellow and dark brown) are edible, look wonderful in a green salad.

 

Sweet peas to climb up the trellis that sits in the really big pot by the sidewalk in front.

 

I’ve never tried leeks before. We’ll see how it all goes.

 

 

I got 3 plant-starter trays that holds 12 each. Each tray is about 10″ long. I got a little heat pad that the trays sit on. And I got a grow light. I could have gotten the light set up for $100 at Linders, a greenhouse. I went to a hardware store and got a plug-in fixture for an under counter fluorescent light, and I got a grow bulb. I took them home, put the grow bulb in the light fixture, propped it up with a quart paint can at each end, place the heat pad underneath, put the plant trays on top of that. All of that for a cost of about $50. Remember, the light setup alone was $100 at Linders. That is without the bulb, pad, trays, etc. Yup, I’d say I did very well with that. I only need it for a couple of months, so it doesn’t need to be high tech, high bucks.

 

I put it on the table in the sunroom. It’s on the same table Hammy’s cage sits on. She will find it all very interesting. I keep the door to that room closed because the cats like to go in and stare longingly at Hammy. One even knocked her cage off the table trying to get at her. FuzzButt knows Hammy is one of the family and does not bother her. The point I am meandering to, is that cats will not be trying to dig into the plants.

 

Those little grow trays are flimsy, cheap plastic crap. You know, like MallWart. They came with domed, clear plastic lids which will help control the climate and humidity in them. They also had grow pellets. Those disks were about 1/2″ thick, and maybe 2″ diameter. They were made of some type of peat-like stuff, with a band around them. The instructions said that was what I should plant the seeds in. First, I had to water them. I added a little more than a cup of water to a tray, and those little peaty things puffed up immediately! They sucked that water right up. I even added a little more. The puffs stayed cylindrical, with a little hole in the center for the seeds. The hole was only about 1/4″ deep.

 

The directions said to put one or two seeds in each puff, but I put three. Gramma taught me a little verse about seed planting when I was very small. I think it was in the context of planting a squash hill. “One for the birds, one for the bugs, one for me!” So I put three seeds in each puff.

 

The sprouts should be showing up in 5-8 days. I’ll let you know. Eventually I’ll need to get some decent-sized pots for them. I think I’ll get cow pots. They are biodegradable and made of cow shit. Really.

 

 

———————————————————————————————————————————————————

 

 

It was really fun doing this. It might not be so much fun if I get lousy results. I guess I’ll learn the answer to the question I started this post with.