Seedling Progress

I'm not sure if it's apparent here, but the tomatoes are pretty much shot.  I don't know what happened- they look dried out, but given that I watered everything well I'm not sure what the issue is.  The mass of green you see is cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.

I need to harden these off and get them into the ground under the frost blankets, but I'm procrastinating pretty hardcore because it's such a pain to get into the closet where I'm growing them, and my back is still bothering me.  I do know better- it's not really that smart to spend time procrastinating when it comes to gardening stuff, but I suppose a couple more days before I can get them planted won't hurt me *too* much.

I didn't get to the garden today like I had planned, because I'm just too sore- I am doing core strength exercises and stretching to try and get my back in working order, but we'll see how that works.  Yesterday I went through all my seed packets and marked the square foot spacing on them.  At least I'm feeling semi-productive!

My Seed-starting Setup

I know it's not terribly fancy or nice looking.  But the only space I have is in my closet, which is just.. Well, unfinished in the extreme.  It's also chilly, but thanks to the warming mat I got (review later), that isn't affecting things at all.  My tomatoes are farthest from the camera, and they have several true leaves, with cabbages and broccoli and cauliflower closer, with fewer leaves.  You can see some bare stems- blame the cat!  I'm not sure if it was my cat, or the new kitten, but one of them got into the closet and nommed things.  I'm using a fluorescent lamp for light, since this is a closet and there's no light. 

Obviously, this is not my ideal situation.  Even in the new house, there aren't a lot of windowed spaces that would serve well for seed starting- we don't even really have a good place for houseplants, as the one window that would serve currently has an exercise bicycle in front of it.  So here you have it- a completely artificially lighted seed-starting station.

4 Started; Cauliflower, Broccoli, Cantaloupe, Cucumber

You'll notice that a couple of these are things that aren't normally started indoors- the reasoning for this is that they need to be at a fairy warm temperature to sprout and you want to get as much out of your growing season as possible. Since I have the nifty kit, I can get rid of transplant shock on the cantaloupe and cucumbers and have them even further along when it gets warm enough to plant them outdoors in a few weeks.

Green Magic Hybrid Brocolli- Broccoli really should have been seeded weeks ago, but I'm going to try it this way because it's a fairly short season crop. If it gets too hot and gets away from me in the summer, I'll just plant another crop to have this fall. Oddly there were only 2 varieties to choose from at Gurneys, so I chose the heat tolerant one. I seeded a full 6-plug "greenhouse" with these.

Cheddar Hybrid Cauliflower- I've never grown cauliflower, and I understand it's a bit of a fussy crop to grow, but if there's one thing in my life I'm okay with making mistakes on, it's plants. So I decided to have fun and try out a novelty item- orange cauliflower. I've got 2 plugs sown with this, I'll likely get at least 2 plants out of that (thinned) and I'll either have 1 or 2 squares of cauliflower in the garden. This one's a learning experience.

Gurney's Burpless II Cucumber- technically a pickler (I might pick some to make my own pickles partway through the summer- yum!) but will also be good for slicing when I let it mature. No real reason I picked this over another; Gurney's has a large selection of cucumbers to choose from. Seeded 2 plugs worth of this, may start another 2 in the ground if I decide I want more cucumbers. The 2 empty spots in my garden might currently end up being used for more carrots or something, though.

Sweet 'n' Early Hybrid Cantaloupe- I picked this one because, well it's EARLY. The thing about melons is they tend to be a long season crop, and while the Rochester growing season is a good 2 weeks+ longer than the Northern New York growing season, I'm also impatient. So I picked this one. Hopefully it will taste yummy and I'll be successful in growing it. The plan right now is to grow it against my aunt's backyard fence and train it onto the fence to get it up off the ground, along with the winter squash (spaghetti and buternut, both to be seeded in the ground) and tomatoes. We'll see.


The cat has chewed a bit on the containers so I'm going to have to start moving them during the night so he won't be quite so mischievous.

Seeded: Cal Wonder Orange Bell Pepper

Our local Wegmans has a large selection of seeds from Seeds of Change, which is a very environmentally conscious seller of certified organic heirloom seeds. Where many seed catalogs are selling fancy hybrids and new varieties, Seeds of Change is one of those that tries to keep the old varieties alive. While I'm not one who subscribes to the "hybrid=bad" philosophy, or someone who thinks everything has to be strictly organic, I do really admire Seeds of Change, especially since they make an effort to have sustainable packaging (resealable seed packets! And I can put seeds I save in there, too!)

Anyway, I picked up 4 selections about a week ago. Cal Wonder orange bell pepper, Red Core Chantenay Carrot, French Breakfast Radish, and Sugar Pod Snow Pea, which does not seem to be available on their website.

As I said in a previous post, I'm getting a little bit of a late start on the peppers, but I got them seeded today (pictures to come later) in newspaper containers (folded newspaper filled with soil), so I'm on the way. That's the official start of Bronwyn's Garden!