Urban Garden Prep

The community garden has gotten off to a bit of a slow start this year. Things got messed up because a few of the gardeners kept changing their minds as to if they wanted space or not. However things finally got ironed out at the end of last week and I proceeded to spend most of the weekend prepping my plot. After lots of weeding it's actually looking pretty good. I'm planning on getting all my bush beans and overflow tomato, eggplant and peppers into that garden by tomorrow.

Day 1 of Work:

Day 2 of work:

The Seedling Experiment - 2011

This year my seedling experiment revolved around light usage. When I first started my seeds there was plenty of room under the lights for all of them. Until I potted up. After that, only half of my seeds would fit under the lights. I thought about adding lights, but I really had nowhere to put them. Instead of trying to overhaul the makeshift system I had set up, I decided to split the babies and put half in a south-facing window with plans to compare the growth of the two sets when time came to harden them off. Well it's officially hardening off time! They're all on the porch with the windows open and will stay there a few days before I start bringing them to the real outdoors. The plan is to start transplanting them into the rural garden over the next 1-2 weeks since it's a zone warmer than the urban garden.

Here's the whole gang!

The leggy ladies from the windowsill

These were under the lights, more leaves and shorter stronger stems than the windowsill seedlings

The remainder of the windowsill seedlings have been moved under the lights to join the peppers and eggplant

Now that I've done the whole starting seeds thing once I feel like I can make the investment in a new lighting rig. I didn't want to invest money in something I wouldn't end up using again, but I'm officially hooked on starting seeds. I love seeing something big growing from something so small. Plus there are so many more varieties when you start from seed and it's way less expensive than buying plants!

Back Again!

It's been a crazy few weeks here. Between Easter, work and finals at school I've had just about zero free time to blog about my garden exploits. Plus, whenever I go to the rural garden I never seem to have a camera with me. However things are doing well there with sprouted peas and growing cauliflower and broccoli. Things on the home front are doing even better. The tomato seedlings are looking awesome. I lost a few after transplanting, but it looks like I'll still end up with at least as many plants as I wanted. The peppers are also doing well with the seedlings growing nicely and lots of new growth on the overwintered bells. The big surprise for me is the eggplant since I've never grown it from seed, but it's doing even better than the peppers.

Finals are mostly over at the end of this week and I'm planning a rural garden trip Saturday, so there should be some pictures up later this weekend.