Our Garden: Starting Seedlings

This past week/weekend we started our garden. Realistically, we've been planning for months and months, so I guess you could say we started in the fall. But for the sake of keeping you all with me here, we started... we planted seeds. I mentioned that we are brand new at this! And so as I share with you the things we are doing, feel free to leave comments such as "you're doing WHAT?" or "You know, you're doing it wrong!" But leave them nicely... I'm pretty sensitive. And though I am always working on my fear of man issues, I haven't arrived yet, so I'm pretty sensitive. In fact, perhaps the two examples I gave are better examples of what NOT to say. :) I will still welcome any advice or ideas or encouragement though... I love comments!

Ok, there... now that I've said all that. Where was I? Oh yeah, gardening. We really are so excited to be starting our first EVER garden. And yes, we are a bit overzealous. But it's what we are doing... so we are ok with that.
We started Wednesday or Thursday of last week with these... our broccoli and Brussels sprouts. (I think you are looking at the broccoli, but I could totally be wrong about that.) We saved and save through the fall to collect and cut in half all our milk containers so that we could use them. Then we actually did... and we've decided not to use the rest of them... just not as great as they were supposed to be. I'm sure we'll still use the tops later... maybe... for something else. Otherwise, we'll just get rid of them.

Saturday we went to the gardening store and found this actual plant starter thing. It holds 36 little baby plants. We got two of them, but only 27ish plants needed to be started over this last weekend, so we only have the one out so far.

(Just an aside: The green plant with pink around it is the flowerless daisy plant My Beloved brought home for me a couple weeks ago. It just happens to be in the picture. But I thought it added nice color.)

Have you ever tried soaking your seeds before? I'd never even heard of it until I read this book (the whole gardening strategy we are following this year!) So we got out all these little cups (sippy cups to the rescue!) to soak our seeds over night. the Oregano, Marjoram and Thyme had such little seeds that we just put them in the dirt right away.

Did I mention that we are planning to grow 7 different varieties of tomato? It's true. We want to be able to can a lot of them in salsa, tomato soup, diced, etc. It's my way around the BPA in canned foods from the store. Make your own. :)

Here is the overall list of what we have started so far... in alphabetical order if I can:

Basil
Broccoli
Brussels Sprouts
Cayenne Pepper
Cumin
Jalapeno Pepper
Marjoram
Oregano
Tomato, Amish Paste (supposedly great for canning)
Tomato, Besser
Tomato, Big Red
Tomato, German Pink (also good for canning)
Tomato, Old Virginia
Tomato, Porter (another for canning)
Tomato, San Marzano
Thyme

I think that's it for now. We plan to do another grouping of starter seeds inside this weekend. My Beloved will also be clearing a flat spot of ground out behind the house and building our raised boxes this weekend. Turns out our source of soil won't be ready until the following weekend, but I'm pretty sure the work he has for this weekend will take all his time anyway. I'll try to get some pictures!

Blessed gardening!

Labels: Healthy Living, In our garden

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 2:39 PM