Check In: What have you got going on so far?

[Edson]

Our indoor seed trays are filling up. We've got several dozen onions started from seed, along with a handful of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbages. And peppers! For some reason I never do well with peppers, so I decided to start early this year. They took forever to germinate, but I'm trying a couple different varieties of bell peppers, along with some cayennes and jalapenos. Nothing too exciting - just trying to get the basics to work for once.

This weekend I'm hoping to get the tomatoes going, and I think my wife's got a few things too. We split up the garden duties into essentially two independent gardens - "kitchen" crops (hers) and "pantry" crops (mine), which has really helped it feel more manageable for me.

Anybody else getting some seeds sprouting?

[Katrien]

Hi,

I started too, several weeks ago! This is my first time doing ANY kind of gardening, let alone from seeds, and the idea is to feed two families and the local soup kitchen and food pantry... still, I may have overestimated our amounts (you'll see),

I'm blogging the whole thing on my blog.

So this is what's cooking:

- Sprouted and moved up to "seedling area" of our setup: about 20 lettuces (getting big), two eggplants, some 70 onions, 30 leeks, some 20 celery.
- Sprouting but still in "germination area": sweet marjoram, parsley, thyme, anise hyssop, rosemary
- Not yet sprouted: more onions, more leeks, more celery, catnip, wormwood, burnet, peppers (sweet bell), garlic chives.

This evening I hope to sow hyssop, rue, sage, sorrel, valerian, lovage, Greek oregano, lavender, basil and borage. And resow eggplant. Phew!

I had very little luck with my eggplant seeds: they were too cold, then I gave them too much top heat and dried them out, then over-watered them - all the classic beginner's mistakes - and out of about 18, only 2 sprouted. I would have given them more time but something gray was growing in the flat, so I tossed it.

I changed my setup now for better bottom-heat and hope I can resow eggplant and give that and the other heat loving seeds a good grilling!

Growing from seed has sort of become a principle for me, so going out to buy a small plant if my seedlings don't work is not really an option (yet).

Happy gardening!

Katrien