Seed Starting

Before I write another word I must first say that my latest project was inspired by Angie, so thanks for the gardening inspiration. I have decided that rather than buying plants for my flower beds and garden from a nursery this year, I would start them from seeds at my house. I know Angie has done this in her garage, but I do not have a garage so I chose to do it in my laundry room downstairs. I bought this seed tray at Lowes for about $6. It has 72 openings with little pellets of peat that expand when you put water on them. You plant your seeds in them, put the lid on, and wait for them to sprout. The tray is re-usable and you can buy refill packs of the pellets for another year. I also needed a grow light because the laundry room has no windows. Even if it did, the gardening lady on the radio said that the light from windows or lights isn't enough, you need a grow light directly over the plants 14 hours on, 10 hours off. So, I found this grow light, bought some PVC pipe and made this little stand for it to hang from. As the plants grow, the light should be a couple inches above the plants, so I made it tall enough to raise the light up as needed. I also plan to connect the light to a timer (the kind you use when you go out of town or on your Christmas tree) to put this light on so I don't have to think about turning it on or off.

I am not going to have a huge variety in the garden this year so I planted tomato plants, cucumber plants, and pumpkin plants. The rest of the spots are planted with Impatients (flowers for my front flower gardens.)

I'll post pictures of this as the weeks go on so you can see the progress. Hopefully this works. Alyssa was quite excited to help me plant the seeds last night. I am excited for her to see how they sprout, grow, and then grow outside for the whole summer! In the end, I have still spent less on the supplies than I spent on flowers and vegetable plants last year so that gives me hope that I could continue to do this. Lets hope it actually works!