March 23, Tuesday

I now count 4 eggplant sprouts in 3 peat pods, and 3 bell pepper sprouts in 3 pods. Time to remove the plastic dome and lower the grow light.

I have the light tilted a bit to avoid scorching the tomatoes. Should be about an inch above the plants. Now I have to get it on a timer. The rope light is still warming everything from below.

I never thought I'd be at this point in less than a week. I like this system!

March 22, Monday

I'm seeing the hint of 3 tiny eggplant sprouts and 1 tinier pepper sprout from my year-old seeds. Go nature!

March 21, Sunday

I have tomato sprouts! After only 4 days!

Now I have to read up on what comes next. At some point they're supposed to get bright light, but the eggplant and pepper seeds haven't sprouted yet. They're from last year; they may not sprout.

Update: I am to prop the plastic lid open. When the rest of my seeds hav sprouted it's time for sunlight.

March 17, Wednesday

Decided to limit my plantings this year. Tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and carrots. Also plan to add another 3'x6' raised bed. So I'll plant:

4 tomato plants
2 eggplants
2 peppers
Many, many carrots

This will supplement the 20 organic boxes I'm getting from a different CSO this year, First Hand Harvest.

Tomatoes freeze very well, and the others are just plain delicious straight out of the garden.

So today I started seeds. Here's my new Jiffy Self-Watering Greenhouse:

I've soaked the peat pellets and they're all ready for me to tear back the wrapper a bit and pop the seeds in. All the empty cells represent unused peat pellets for next year. The grey circle at the bottom of each cell is a membrane that draws water from below to keep my peat perky. There's a transparent plastic lid to hold the moisture in. It's all reusable, but very flimsy plastic.

I planted two seeds in each cell. If all sprout, I'll keep the most vigorous sprout from each cell, then later select the most vigorous seedlings to transplant. The rest I'll discard, unless Mom wants them.

I'm warming the seedlings to around 80 to encourage sprouting. Here's my low-tech setup:

That's a rope light looped under the greenhouse tray, which is propped up on some foam packaging material. I measured the peat temp with a food thermometer. Varied from 78 to 82 degrees, right where I want it. I'll check it again tomorrow.

Reminder for next year...

Calvin. It's March 1. Be thinking about getting early spring crops in the ground. You will have been late this year.