Seedling Update

My little babies are growing at an amazing rate. In fact, the first seed leaves are starting to shrivel up so I added some worm poo yesterday to my plants who are entering adolescence and dropping their baby leaves.

The first kiddos so far to lose their seed leaves were the broccoli rabe so they were the lucky ones to get some worm poo fertilizer added yesterday.


My lavender still never came up and I planted 12 seeds in 6 of the peat pellets so I'm not sure if maybe the seeds were just bad??

But, so far everything else is growing super fast - I've been transplanting like crazy into bigger pots.



Arugula plants


Cucumbers (with a few onion, peppers and tomatoes in back)


Zucchini (looks like they will lose their cotyledon soon)!


Kale, onion and tomatoes - which I can't wait to eat in a big, yummy salad!


Some nice looking (if I do say so myself!) cherry tomato plants


Eggplant and more kale (to be transplanted today hopefully)


And last, but not least, some branches that I pruned from our peach tree that are starting to bloom! It's beginning to look like Spring!

New Digs

I know some baby seedlings who got new digs today!


It looks like all those little plastic potting containers from plants we've bought in the past would have come in really handy right about now. I went by Home Depot and Gaddy's (a small, local nursery) to see if they had any extras that people returned. Nope. Surely, someone keeps these right?? I've checked Craigslist too and no luck. Hmmm. I went ahead and bought a few packs of the biodegradable pots that are about the same size as the plastic ones I was looking for. They were about $2 for 10. Not bad, but I really hoped I could recycle some plastic ones instead. Such is life.

Since I refuse to give up on my search for free plastic pots for transplanting, I only bought 3 packs today. Therefore, only the seedlings that looked like they really needed a bigger space got moved today.

So far, EVERYTHING I planted has come up except for the lavender. Well, at least a few of everything I planted. It's very exciting! Almost all of the plants already have their first set of true leaves as well.

Here is some kale













A sugar sweetie cherry tomato













A little cucumber showing off it's kicking new leaf













A happy red onion













A black beauty zucchini being a total show off with the biggest cotyledon and first true leaf













Today I bought some worm castings from Gaddy's. As soon as those seed leaves drop off, these babies are getting some worm poo!

It's A Jungle In Here

I can't believe that it's only Day 5 and I've got little, happy seedlings everywhere!

Here are my cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and some more cherry tomatoes. As you can see, I think I need to transplant the cucumbers and zucchini already! So, I'm assuming that the next time I start seeds for either of these plants, I should consider just putting them straight into a larger container.


Here are my kale babies which I'm totally excited about since kale is one of my very favorite veggies.


So far, the plants that aren't up yet are my sweet peppers, eggplant and lavender. My red onion just started to break the surface.

Here are a few random pictures from this week that I like:

Wake up sleepy head!


RAWR!!


My favorite


Happy Planting!

Let there be seedlings!

Wow, 2 days after planting and I have little baby seedlings! Even James was excited to see them come up so quickly.


My entire row of arugula has come up...


along with some tomatoes


and a little bitty kale doing it's best to unfold


I'm pretty sure that if I sat and stared I would actually be able to see the little seedlings break the surface - there are even more just since I took these pictures earlier today. I love my little babies!

Seed Starting

I had a very productive weekend setting up a seed starting area with grow lights and actually getting some seeds in! Yipee - finally! After much research and haggling with people over shelves on Craigslist, I decided to venture out and see what I could find at different stores.

My plans were based off of the information found HERE.

The metal shelves at Home Depot and Lowe's were pretty pricy @ $75+ and no one had quite what I needed on Craigslist. I went by Walmart this AM (hey, I'm on a budget!) just to do some price comparisons and found the perfect size shelves, metal, for $59. That price wasn't too shabby compared to what I'd seen elsewhere and the quality seemed comparable. I also checked out their shop lights and found them to be much cheaper than those at the big hardware stores. All in all, I purchased the shelves for $59, 2 shop light sets for $14 each and then a 10-pack of T8 32 watt, full-spectrum bulbs from Home Depot for $35. My intention is to buy a few more shop light holders over the next week (the reason for a 10-pack of bulbs).

So, here it all is:

Shelves - $59


Shop lights - $14 each


Bulbs - $34 for 10-pack


Although I'm going to try a few different seed starting techniques, today I went with the old tried and true Jiffy peat pellets. I'll venture out to try different forms of seed starting soon.


For now, I just used a plastic heavy-duty garbage bag with paper clips as a "tray" for the seeds to sit on. I'll deal with finding something more convenient later, but this seems to be doing the trick so far and I'm hoping the black helps to absorb some heat from the lights.






I'm pretty excited - we've got some more seeds to start over the next few days and then a few veggies that will just be sown straight outside once our beds our done. The plan is to start on those next weekend.

Yes Virginia, It Does Snow In Texas

Well, not all the time this far south, but definitely this year. The last few days have been well below freezing; definitely colder than usual. We even had our pipes freeze up yesterday, which I don't think has ever happened to either of us since we both grew up in Texas. Luckily, my dad walked me through some things to try to unfreeze them....and it worked! Now I've got faucets dripping to try to prevent that.

As much as I love seasons, I'm really ready for Spring. I've been plotting and thinking and planning my vegetable garden for months now. I found a folding table on Craigslist yesterday that I plan to use to start my seeds on. After the seeds move outside, I want to make a cover for it and use it as a craft table. After doing a bit more research about starting seeds, I'm thinking that I need to buy some grow lights. I really don't like the idea of having to hang a large shop light from a ceiling so I'm hoping to find something that stands alone. We'll see...I plan to visit some shops this weekend to find out what's available.

In the meantime, here is a picture of our backyard with snow - not a normal site in Austin, TX!



And a little video of the dogs loving the snow!