Growing Under the Lights

My seedlings under the grow lights are progressing well. My onions and lettuce are making very good progress.

My grow light set-up is not fancy. It's just a rack and a shop light with a couple of 40 watt fluorescent tubes, mounted in my laundry room over a clothes drying rack. I find this a great setup to grow young seedlings, they germinate quite well in the relatively warm room.

Having this setup over the clothes drying rack does have it's perils though. I have learned to be very careful about watering my plants when my long suffering wife has fresh laundry hanging up below. Any water dribbling on to her fresh clean clothes are met with plant wilting protests that neither of us can recover from quickly!

I need to try to get this lettuce transplanted into the Hoop House before the end of the week.

Wintertime Hoop House Gardening/Give Peas a Chance

The Hoop House after yet another winter snowstorm, February 26th.

Even though it sometimes can be cold and partly cloudy outside, I have found that my Hoop House can buy me an extra 20-30 degrees during a partly cloudy to sunny day. It's not bad, but I need to work to retain some of that heat during the night so that I will not get too cold and damage the young plants.

I went out and planted my first seeds in the greenhouse on February 6^th.  I planted green peas, snow peas, turnips, lettuce and cilantro, which will soon be followed by spinach. As of February 27^th, I have noted the peas, turnips and lettuce emerging.

                                                          Emerging snow peas

                                                            Turnip seedlings

Being that this is my first season attempting to grow anything in the new Hoop House, I guess that I am going to have to consider any growing this year as just an experiment.

Lettuce Seeds are Already Sprouting

I checked on my lettuce this evening and found that it was sprouting very well after only two days since planting. From what I understand about lettuce seed is that it is activated by light and moisture, so I don’t plant it very deep in my seed mix. I just sprinkle it on the surface, scratch it in lightly, moisten, and then put under my grow lights. Seems to work  very well.

Early Seedlings

One of my favorite times of the year is planting the first seedlings of the season. Even though some of the varieties that I plant can be found at my local nursery, I do enjoy planting as much as I can for myself. However, the one advantage to starting your own seedlings is that you can choose whatever  plant variety you want, many of which are not available as transplants locally. This can be especially advantageous with tomatoes and peppers.

But the first seedlings that I like to plant the early in the season are onions, cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes. Instead of getting some pots or planting cells from my local nursery, I like to use recycled containers such as butter dishes and food containers.  Some of my favorites are the Panda Bowl containers I get from Panda Express (I like their Chow Mein and Sweet and Sour Pork!). They are wide, relatively shallow, and with 3/8” holes drilled in the bottom, they provide excellent drainage.  They also come with clear lids, so I have my own mini greenhouse! I like to plant the onion seeds in the Panda Bowls especially.  I have also planted Romaine and Buttercrunch lettuce seeds in some available cream cheese containers.

Even though I have in the past have grown the onion seedlings to transplanting size, ready for the garden in those containers, this year I am planning on getting the seedlings large and strong enough to transplant into individual plant cells so the roots could mature without competition. Hopefully this will make stronger transplants and better sized bulbs this fall.

One trick I like doing when preparing containers for transplanting is to fill the lower two thirds of the container with normal potting mix, leaving the upper third for the more expensive commercial seeding mix.  The seeding mix is good for providing a safe bed for the new seedlings. When they get older and more disease resistant, the roots can move down into the coarser and more nutrient rich potting mix, and mature from there.