February 18, 2009

Well, today was a hectic day.  Not insane, but hectic.  Mostly it was because all around me, panic was in the air.  If we don't catch up soon, heads will roll.  We don't know who, but likely our boss, which would be bad.  It's not his fault, he's treading water as fast as he can.

Of course, In between working like a dog, I took some time to converse with Ribbit about kids.  I figured you all didn't want to hear about all that on a gardening blog, but safe to say, Ribbit and I have similar situations with similarly aged kids.  Ain't parenting fun.

So, tonight, after putting the kids to bed, I decided to unwide the best way I know how.  Seed starting.  And sure enough, I had to start 10 tomato plants for one of the teachers my sons' school.  So, out to the garage I went to fill some cups.



You see the bag-o-vermiculite there.  It was the first bag I bought because I couldn't find a large bag.  It's out because I had run out of Mel's Mix.  So out to the garden I went to refill my Folgers can from one of my many bags of Mel's Mix.  Thinking that it didn't have enough vermiculite for seed starting (some folks start seeds in only vermiculite, though it didn't work so well for me last year).



Sure enough, after filling the remaining cups and wetting them, they didn't drain quite as well as I'd like.  More to say that the mix held water like nobody's business, hehe.  Not sure if it's good to have it so wet, but I wasn't about to start over.



You can definitely see the mix with mostly vermiculite and the one with more peat.  Anyway, I dug through my seeds and found 9 different varieties to plant (makes me mad I misplaced my Gardener's Delight, that would be 10).  So I dilligently labeled each cup and planted tomatoes. 



It's now perched on top of the fridge germinating.  I decided against doing the coffee filters because it would have been 10 bags and 10 filters to germinate the seeds.  Just a bit of overkill.  Here's hoping they germinate a bit faster this time.

So, hopefully these will all germinate and grow nicely in time for planting outside.  Only time will tell.  I've only had experience with six-inch seedlings purchased from Territorial.  I hope I can successfully get them all to that stage.  She's going to get me some quart pots to pot these up into.  Apparently Emery's Nursery has a pot recycling bin where you can pick up used pots for free.  That's cool. I never noticed that before.  Hopefully that will be enough.

So, that's it for tonight.  Enjoy your garden!