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argh! so, i got so excited a month and a half ago about being able to grow my own food from scratch that i put all my seeds nicely in egg cartons, on the top bunk in our spare bedroom complete with grow lights... now, i realize and admit that several plants were started too early, even for this mild climate of ashland, oregon, but i thought, "oh, they'll just get a little bigger here inside, and i can have a nice early crop of some yummy produce"! ...apparently these little seedlings have a time limit on how long they enjoy egg cartons... and they're still really really tiny! not sure yet what i did wrong, but the majority of them have keeled over and wilted- their leaves have fallen off, and their gangly stems are laying flat on the dirt.
so, yesterday, being our day home from the office, i attempted to do some damage control. broccoli, cabbage, one cauliflower (that's all that was left, from two whole egg cartons!), leeks and onions (what little onions still looked viable, i plan on putting some more seeds directly in the garden this weekend) have gone into the garden to face the elements, for better or for worse. herbs have gone into a large herb pot we have sitting on our front sidewalk (and forgot to take inside last night, hope they survived!) even though they are still sooo small!
tomatoes, melons, and peppers (which apparently i wasn't supposed to start until APRIL, and i started them in FEBRUARY!) have been transplanted into all the larger pots i could find, and put back up on the bunk under the lights, along with celery, which still looks ok in the egg carton, and a few flowers which may be a lost cause... i may lose most of my tomatoes, but hopefully it's not too late to start some more seeds, i hope to have tomatoes coming out my ears this fall so i can have lots of canned and frozen tomato goodness to last us through the winter. :) ugh, so this is a rather dramatic start to our food-independence story! I'm sure it's not the end, stay tuned for more entertainment! =D
5 comments:
Ha! I did the same thing last year with some of my tomatoes. I kept some of them alive, but they never did produce any earlier than the ones I got later from the nursery to put in the garden. I also found that the grow light has to be REALLY close to the plants (like almost touching) so they don't grow too high. Always lots to learn!
Yeah, it is really really frustrating to buy a whole bunch of vegetable seeds and then realize EVERY SINGLE ONE GETS PLANTED DIFFERENTLY!!! Drives me nuts. Definitely easier to just plant everything outside. But then you have to consider staggered plantings as well, so you have produce ripening continuously. I'm going to plan another row of carrot seed every other weekend for 8 weeks so we can get them all summer long instead just in July. Same with squash. Lettuce is okay as long as you keep harvesting it every other day, it will keep producing instead of going to seed. Arg, just the beginning, good luck!
Whew, thanks, both of you! I know, there is so much to remember, I've been reading books, but it still gets the best of me!
I'm just itching to get planting, too... there's a great book, Month by Month Gardening in Idaho, that tells exactly what to do, which is the only thing that makes it possible for us to have a garden. :) I just checked, and there's a Month by Month book for Oregon/WA too. Good luck and it's fun to see your adventures!
Here's an article I found helpful on seed starting tips: http://www.gardeners.com/How-to-Start-Seeds/5062,default,pg.html
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