Finally Getting Started!!!

I hope everyone had a good weekend! Mine was good and fairly productive, especially since I wasn't home for the weekend. On Friday I started some of my seeds for my garden. I started my tomato, jalapeno, serrano pepper, green pepper, and red pepper plants in my little green house. I used some bigger recycled planters from some flowers we bought last year to start my tomatoes in, and then I used some peat pots to start my peppers in. The peat pots you can buy just about anywhere, and when you get ready to transplant your plants you just plant the whole pot and everything. We'll see how that goes!! I bought the 1.75"x2" peat pots that have 8 spots in each tray. I basically followed the article "Starting Seeds Indoors"  that you can find on the side of my blog under "Good Reads". I purchased Jiffy Organic Seed Starting mix as my soil for the containers. I'm not sure how much it really matters what brand it is, this was just what was available at the Orscheln's Farm and Home store when I bought my seeds, but I want to document what I used so we can see if this stuff works or not! I dumped my seed starting mix in a bucket and I wet it all down really good before I filled my pots. I didn't saturate the mix to where if you squeezed it a bunch of water came oozing out between your fingers, I just added enough water that it made the soil a little sticky. Also I spritzed all of my peat pods down with water from a squirt bottle before I filled them with soil as well. Then I filled all my pots with soil. After I filled them I placed 3 seeds in each pot (just to help the germination rate out of each pot), and then I covered them with dirt. I then gently pressed the dirt down in each pot to make sure I have maximized the dirt contact to the seed. Then I put them in my green house and spritzed them one more time for good measure and zipped them up!

I plan on spritzing the seeds every other day. Spritzing the seeds with a squirt bottle versus pouring water over them helps to make sure that the dirt stays in contact with the seed. Pouring water over the seeds can create a separation between the two and reducing the germination rate. We'll see if that holds true for me!

You will also see that I have a light in the corner of my green house. Home depot sells grow light bulbs that fit just perfect inside a heat lamp for only $7! This was exciting to me because to buy fluorescent grow light fixtures is quite expensive! Seedlings don't necessarily need the light until they germinate and become plants, but I'm using my grow light as a heater for my green house. It doesn't produce a lot of heat, but I am getting good condensation on the walls of my green house, which is a good thing, so it must be producing enough!

 

The last thing that I did over the weekend was I bought some good black composted horse manure from a lady down the street to spread on the garden! She had made a post on the local swap and shop selling horse manure for $5 a tractor bucket load! I couldn't pass this up so I hooked onto the trailer yesterday and went and bought 2 bucket loads. I spread it over the garden really good and then pulled out my little mantis tiller and mixed it all together. I would like to get a bigger tiller out and get everything turned over one good time before I plant, but the mantis tiller mixed it in good for now anyway!

 



(You can really see a difference with the manure!) 



Without getting a big tiller in it, I think it still looks pretty good!