Congrats on your babies! One of the most rewarding things is to see seedlings emerge. I really want to get some things started, but I'm afraid its still a little early for my area.

Where do you start your seeds? I have the best luck by putting mine in the foil pans with plastic lids on top of my fridge.

Oh heck, you've triggered it! I will start some seeds this afternoon. :D

I started these in cardboard egg cartons (tops cut off and put under the "cup" part). This is a new thing for me, we'll see how it goes. I just planted one seed per cup and will transplant to 4" pots IF they sprout!

Four cartons fit on an old cookie sheet and they are just sitting in my living room on a baker's rack. I have a swing arm light with a full spectrum bulb in it over the top. I "let it shine" for 30 minutes or so this morning since they actually popped through. Will turn it on more tonight. I need to find a way to shade it though....it's a very bright bare bulb!! LOL Good for plants, weird for the living room!

Yeah, c'mon...........start some!! :+)

Deanna

Saw a robin out on my lawn today. He/she is very early this year. I use these lights when my plants get too big for the shelves. The fixture has a ceramic socket that resists heat.

Here is a link that might be useful: Charleys Greenhouse

Deanna,

Congrats, you proud parent!

Turn that light on when you go to bed and let it shine all night. Then you can turn it off in the morning, so the plants get the benefits but you avoid the weird glow!

I start lots of tomatoes and peppers from seed and I can tell you they do best with lots of light. I put mine under shop-light fluorescents, just a few inches above the seedlings, 16 hours a day.

When you transplant, plant 'em deep --- bury the first set of leaves. They'll grow new roots along the buried stem and turn into sturdy little plants!

Zabby,
in Toronto for the weekend but now itching to get home and start a few herself --- great antidote to the blizzard outside...

Plant lights can be placed on a timer. Usually about 18 hours per day are sufficient. Any more than that, the plants cannot 'breath' properly as they do need a little darkness for a short while. I have mine on from about 6am to about 12 midnight. My tomato plants get so big, I usually bury about 4-6 inches more of it. Those white bumps later on are roots wanting to poke through the sides of the stems. Same with peppers, but not as noticable.

I'm planting toms next week...yippee!!! My peppers are up for the most part. I have some flowers under lights and winter sowed a bunch of other cool type veggies. It was nice out today and I got a small part of the garden tilled and a few rows made out so when it is time for peas and such I'll be at least going in the right direction.
Deanna, congrats on the babies. I love growing plants from seed, it is just so rewarding. I would second Zabby's advice, those babies need at least 16 hrs or you will have thin, leggy plants. Lori

Ken, I give my babies 8 hours of dark each day, but I know some folks who have tried 24 hours of light and apparently had perfectly healthy seedlings. Haven't tried a controlled experiment to see which wd grow faster/better....

Lori, you can till in Zone 5???? My beds are under several feet of snow still, including the latest 12 inches from the weekend, sigh.

Z

Actually, I am not sure how well plants take to a 24/7 light source. In nature, as you know, most plants have some dark intervals and this is when they release the gasses they don't want or use.

Baby update!!
11 of 12 broccoli are up.
1 Roma tom.
5 Brandywine tom.
NO peppers yet, no cherry toms.

It was about 65 degrees here on Sunday so I moved my little tray outside and let them see some "real" sun! LOL

That temp was a fluke.....this week we are back to rain and highs around 50, lows in the mid/upper 30s. Oh well, at least it hit on a weekend when we could enjoy it!

Deanna

Peppers like 75 degrees or more for good germination. If they don't show any sprouts after 3 weeks, they may have died before sprouting due to the cool surroundings. Here, its very cold again, after torrential rains Saturday night. Big lake in the celler again. Maybe look into a heat mat?

Oh, I may not have been clear. My seedlings are in 4 egg cartons sitting on an old cookie sheet. They are indoors with a light. I just took them outside for a couple of hours yesterday. Temps inside are closer to 75!!

They're only a week old, so I'll see how many germinate after another couple of weeks.

Deanna

ken, I know that plants get darkness at night in nature. And I give mine only 16 hours of light (for one thing, I'm too cheap to pay for all-night energy! ;-p). But I found it interesting that 24-hour light has been tried and found to be successful. There are a lot of things in gardening that we hear or assume and pass on as "true" without trying them, and I'm always interested in hearing people's actual experiences!

This leads me to wonder about gardeners in the high arctic, for example --- anyone ever grown tomatoes in the Land of the Midnight Sun?

Deanna, isn't is just so exciting to grow from seed??!!

Peppers do tend to be slower than tomatoes to come up. And giving them some bottom heat does seem to help with more and faster germination of them (putting on top of a computer monitor, or heating pad on low, for e.g.). But if your seeds were viable you'll probably get some peppers germinate within two weeks.

Have fun!

Z

Midnight sun is short lived. If growing under artificial lights the plants will probably not care as much if they get a bit of darkness or not, as the indoor lights are not as strong as sunlight. Many times, I wait 3 weeks and don't see any peppers sprouting yet. I add another 1-2 seeds per pot at an off center location. Usually, a few days later the original seed pops up, and then the second planted ones start to show up too. I usually loosen the soil around some, and pull out the whole plant and drop it into any empty pot with soil, into a hole as deep as the original root. Most survive this upheaval and are just fine. Bottom heat does give seeds a good boost

I have a baby of my own sprouting, but it is more of a 9 month variety baby. I am on week 15 of 40. Looks like September will be yielding more than one kind of harvest for our family.

Here's to canning with a baby on board this summer!!!

happy harvesting,
bluejean in ohio

Congratulations bluejean!!!

You should start a journal.....

Canning with BOB!!!

Don't do too much this year. Is this your first?

Deanna

Bluejean,

I am another one expecting a new harvest. I am only 4 weeks pregnant and have and 8 month old and 4 and 2 yr old helpers. Just remember that tubal ligation isn't 100 percent and you can get pregnant. So looking at a harvest around Thanksgiving lol.

Stacie

who gardened and canned while 8 months pregnant with a July baby just last year and more pregnant gardening this year.

HI Gang,

OK, IÂm not equipped for the 9 month variety "babies"Â THANK (insert whoever you worship), I donÂt think I could do it! You Ladies ARE the stronger sex!

I am however able to produce the GW type of babies!

Once again this year IÂve gone overboard. IÂve got 200+ GW babies on the go (80% HOT pepper, 15% sweet pepper and 5% Tomato). I donÂt know what character fault I have but each year I canÂt help starting way more than I need. Oh well, once again my neighbors, friends and co-workers will be happy I did it again. Two months at least before they can hit the dirt outside and IÂm already running out of space for other veg seeds.

Anyone in the Ottawa area want some plants PLEASE!!!

HereÂs a few shots of a couple of my starts. My tomatoes are in the second shot, top two right hand trays. The rest are peppers. Lots of Hap Gold this year and if things work out, some Bhut Jolokia Gold for those who have a death wish LOL.

Wishing the rest of you great success this season itÂs getting closer!

Bill

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Your growing rack/shelf system looks great. Wish I had been able to find an inexpensive 'bakers rack' for my setup. Mine is just steel shelf frame with wood fiberboards as the shelves. The lights, should be very close to the plants, like just 2 inches way or even closer. I do use the purple color grow lights as they work very well and give study plants. Must start mine today too. Hope those styrofoam cups have a drain hole on their bottoms! If not, watch the watering! The heat mats can be switched off once they have sprouted. The lamps do give off a litle heat for the shelf above them.

Thanks for the feedback.

I picked up a few of these racks at Costco. They were $80 CDN each. TheyÂre pretty sturdy (I think 400 pounds per shelf) and adjustable.

Yes, I try to keep the fluorescent lights a couple of inches above the plants (I just moved them up to take the picture). It gets a bit challenging though with different growth rates of various seedlings I seem to be constantly moving plants around to keep things level. The other area has a 400W HID over it so itÂs a little more manageable.

Yep, the cups have holes punched in them for drainage. I picked up a box of 2000 a couple of years ago really cheap and so far they seem to have worked out for me. Only one heat mat going in the shot for some peppers restarted after the first sowing didnÂt take (like I donÂt have enough!).

Bill

Imagine 200 pepper as well as 200 tomato plants, along with many herbs, trays of petunias, and impatiens, as well as portulaca, and even asparagus plants. I even started some shallots from seed last year, but none survived the transplating. This year, I am growing them from starts (small bulbs), and some are bigger than golf balls when planted. I will have to keep an eye out for those shelves. Here, I use thin plastc 2" square pots and bought a case of 1000 for fairly cheap money. They fit nicely in a sectioned insert, where the pots are held in place. The inserts are in a heavy duty plastic trays. Each tray holds 32 plants, so you can imagine the whole shelf system in full growth. For variable heights, you can set the lamps at an angle sloping down closer where needed on the ends. They all have chains, so its an easy task. Suggest that you start using some seedling fertilizers. PHC is a great one.

Here is a link that might be useful: Plant Health Care

Wow Ken, you must have a fair size garden for 200 tomato and 200 pepper plants!

I purchased six of the 2x2 inch trays you reference but found some peppers were getting a bit cramped so I moved them to the cups. The tomatoes are still in the 2x2Âs. Where did you get the case of 1000?

I do try to slant the lights but still end up rearranging things regularly.

I do recommend the shelf units if you can find them. Mine came with six shelves but realistically you can only use three or four if you hang fluorescent lights (depending on how high your plants get).

IÂve already given them a dose of ¼ strength 10-15-10 Schultz plant food. IÂll look into the PHC if itÂs designed for seedlings.

Thanks again for the feedback,

Bill

The link I provided is only one of the few sites that offer this type seedling food. Right now, we are having soem big trees cut down outside, and they damaged one of my small columnair apple trees and snapped off its main limb. I will be trying to root it. I bought the case from Mellengers, who aere now out of business. Millers sells the pots. Mine measure about 4 inches deep, and I simply rinse them out in fall for the following year. Only lose a few pots due to severe cracking. I just squeeze on the sides of the pots to loosen the soil and plants. My garden area alone is over 2000 sq. ft and at the outsides there are 5 apple trees, 30 blueberry bushes, raspberries, asparagus patch, horseradish, and my winter chives and garlic chives, and they are outside the 2000 sq. ft area. You can imagine what its like to stake each tomato plant. Some are so heavy they need steel fence posts (U type). Not sure if Shultz is organic, but that deep blue color liquid concerns me some.

Deanna and Stacie,

Sorry I missed your responses. Thanks for the well wishes.

I am really strugling with trying to take it easy. I just think I can do everything like normal!

I have a blog with pregnancy updates and random family stuff (including gardening)- check out "my page" for a link.

My GW babies are doing great too. I started them a bit late, but they are happily growing under their grow lights. The fish emulsion fertilizer makes them very happy but is hard on my heightened sense of smell. Makes me consider using the artifical "blue stuff" instead this year.

Happy harvesting,
bluejean

My next door neighbor had commented to me about a strong 'fishy' smell last year. I knew what it was. I had applied fish meal to my garden soil. This year, instead, I used blood meal and feather meal (clogged up my spreader!!). It just got tilled under yesterday. and next comes the black plastic weed barrier fabric. Another good seedling fertiizer is PCH. Its a black powder and is mixed with water. Been using it for several years on my seedlings and has worked quite well. THis fertilizer is made specifically for young seedlings.

Here is a link that might be useful: PCH