Seedlings Are About to Take Over!

The time has come....the seed starting unit is full!  The first seeding of peppers and herbs are starting to outgrow their trays!  We've got more tomatoes, peppers and herbs to start, and soon we've got to start celery, broccoli and cauliflower!  We've got to make some space!  Sooooo...it's time to pot up!

We've got tables at the ready with grow-light stands.  As our sun room is east facing, the light is not great for young seedlings.  We don't want lanky, spindly plants so, over the years, we've invested in some table top grow lights and had one donated by pal Deb, as long as she got veggies in exchange!  We also have some more lengths of fluorescent lights to hang under the tables because every inch of this sun room will be green within the next four or five weeks!

We'll pot up peppers and tomatoes largely into those six packs for now, herbs will go into 2.5 inch pots.  The flat of basil seedlings, thickly seeded in five rows, will probably become five, maybe six flats of little pots.  The flat of 'California Wonder' pepper seedlings will become four or five flats of six packs.  You can see how we start to fill the space quite quickly!  Along with space concerns, all the little babies become more of a maintenance chore - watering will quickly take twice as long  This cycle will continue for about six weeks: pot up, make room, start more flats of seeds.  With the nice weather we've been having, we may be able to move into the greenhouse early this year and 'thin out' the jungle the sun room will become.  Oh, right, add that to the never-ending 'to do' list: clean and disinfect the greenhouse!