Seeds are started!

Our seeds are started! Four of these trays are resting in our greenhouse, holding seeds of tomatoes, peppers, leeks, onions, basil, fennel, kale, broccoli, and cabbage. In just 8 weeks it will be May 5, which is a little early, but last year we planted on May 5 and got lucky.

These trays were made by Mark, Jake's dad and my FIL, for their family's greenhouse for the same purpose in the early '80s, and they served their purpose well. When Mark and Cheryl moved to Puerto Rico, Jake made sure to snatch these up. They also serve as kindling catchers in the wintertime.

For the past three years, we've used a soil block tool to create these 2" x 2" cubes of compost mix to start our seeds in. We used to start our seeds with those little peat moss cylinders, but found that some plants became root bound, and we were ending up transplanting spindly starters which didn't thrive.

The tomato and pepper seeds (including some seeds we saved from last year's peppers) are under pyrex pans for extra greenhouse effect.. hopefully that will help increase the soil temperature to support better germination. Last year we had a lot of failed plants.

Here's last year's garden plan, drawn out on a manila envelope, with all the seed packets we used inside.

Changes for this year will include growing more dried beans, pumpkins, and leeks, getting spinach, onions, carrots, and potatoes in earlier, planting more peas, and growing squashes outside of the fence so they don't take over everything.

Exciting times!