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!