Total : 65 Hours
What is everyone in Blogger world doing lately with the unusual winter weather? Confused and twiddling fingers, garden cleaning chores, or lofty ideas of complete upheaval and redesign?
Spent an hour outside today. There was a break between the rain and the oncoming snow-ish weather. Finished the other 1/3rd of a bed I missed before snow actually hit several days back. I've sowed swiss chard, a few garlic bulbs, and broccoli into the second flat. Half of the flat was frozen yesterday. I added soil that was in a big pot from outside that was pretty much brick consistency. Now that the entire flat has finally warmed up to close to 60F i'll bother myself to seed the rest in spinach.
Going to need to purchase more lights....
Anyone bother to grow indoors using lights for the first few weeks then transplant outside?
Nothing else, it does make you think you are gardening for real when you see green things coming along. Perhaps even if they all failed to make it in the end, it still gave you something to do to pass the time in the bleak weather....That is if there was bleak weather.
I've always wanted to try the seeding inside under lights, keep us posted as to how it goes!! Enjoying your blog, looking forward to following from Seattle...Cheers Julia =)
ReplyDeleteThanks Julia! Glad that you are enjoying my venture as well. I'm sure you can see it is a lot of initial work getting it all setup, but after the first winter it should be smooth sailing right? I think I will need to step up the lumens here shortly once everything gets going. For the time being its working well. I was trying earlier to comment on your page but could not figure out where the post button was?? BTW, years ago I grew tired of working, saved up a pretty penny, and instead decided to live in OZ for 3 months. Did a bit of travel between Syd, Perth, and Brisbane. I was living on the beach near surfers. One of my ventures involved walking along the beach and picking up this unassuming toad. Turns out to be a cane toad. Guess they are poisonous. *shrugs* Good times!
ReplyDeleteWe start as much as we can indoors under lights. It saves money, extends the gardening season and increases yields. I can't imagine someone with your level of zeal not doing this. We'll sow our broccoli, cabbage and other hardy veggies indoors early next month. What zone are you in?
ReplyDeleteI believe that Ann Arbor falls within the 5a/5b area. To date I have sown broccoli, chard, onions, garlic, and lettuce so far in flats. I need to get a few more lights and more flats to put seeds in. I find myself down under the stairs in the until room just staring at the little canopy of green, loosing time.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you. We sowed indoors last year for the first time and your list is almost exactly what we sowed too. You may be a little early though. But that's not a problem as long as you have the space. Still, you definitely need nutrients that the flats may not be able to provide. I recommend using lots of natural fertilizer, we'll use fish emulsifier this winter(see "Fertrell" online for example). It will make up for the small amounts of soil and nutrients that are available in a flat. I'm no expert by any means. You've probably figured this stuff out already. Still,may I recommend Marcham's (can't remember his first name, Joel maybe) book on gardening with less than an acre. It continues to be very helpful to us.
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