My tiny u.p. farm

I’ve been busy getting ready for my summer garden.  I have an elaborate plan for this year, and I’m starting pretty much all of this year’s plants from seed.  I’m working with a staggered-out planting schedule – I started some seeds in early April, and yesterday I planted my Early-May seeds.

I had a lot of success so far with my seedlings from April.  Most things did well, but I did have a couple of things not even sprout.  I started some aster seeds, and none of them sprouted – I’m not sure why, except maybe my seeds were bad.  They were a leftover packet from last year. I’ve usually had great success with asters, they are one of my favorite garden flowers. I love their little colorful puffballs.   I usually start too many seeds on purpose, just because sometimes you get some that don’t sprout – i.e. I planted 6 tomato seeds but really want 4 plants.  My tomatoes are growing well, I planted three different kinds, I ended up with 5 plants of two kinds, and six plants of the other.  Most of the April seedlings are now replanted into pots – they got too big for their original peat pellets.

I only have one spot to start seeds inside, a table in a south-facing window that’s about 5 feet x 2 feet, with a grow light hanging overhead.  I needed that whole space for this new Early May batch. Which meant that I had to figure out what to do with my older seedlings.  I can’t put them outside yet.  But I do have another grow light.  I devised a plan:  To hang the extra grow light underneath the table, and put the older potted seedlings below that.  Here is my new setup:

I also have a cat that likes to eat plants – I found this out while potting some of these up – he came up and started chowing down on some.  We have some extra window screens in our bedroom that aren’t in the windows currently, so I used them to block his access:

In the pictures, the sheets of paper hanging down below the seed trays on the table are my charts of seeds in the trays – otherwise I could end up lost with mystery plants. Some things I would recognize, but I’m trying a lot of new plants this year, so I need a map.

Here is the whole setup:

I have a few small seedlings that are still small enough for their peat pellets, so they are sharing the far left tray with some new seeds – about half the tray is seedlings, half is seeds.

Here are some of my little guys close up:

I love plants, they are a ton of fun to grow.  I just hope that nobody gets too big before I can get them outside – their beds won’t be ready till probably the end of May.  Plus it may be too cold before then – my plan is to get them outside over Memorial day weekend.  We’ll see how the weather is.  I got a mini pop-up greenhouse I can put them in later this month.  I plan to harden them off out in that before actually putting them all in the ground.