.....is it really possible that Spring Break is only two weeks away?!?! It seemed much farther away than that as we moved 7 inches of snow off our driveway, and piled it on the remains of the 5 inches that fell last week, and still hadn't melted.
The garden is still buried, just under even more snow. I had worried that we weren't having a wet enough winter, but I suspect we will go into spring with plenty of moisture.
My winter sowing jugs are buried, too, but I suspect they enjoy that lovely blanket of snow providing a thermal layer. I can't wait till I see some evidence the seeds are sprouting.
So.....time for more indoor stuff! I repotted many of the seedlings I started inside, and thought I'd put away the germinator. The one down side of my germinator is that it is designed to hold a big tray of seedlings -- 50+ seedlings. But since things don't germinate at the same rate, I always ended up having to shift stuff around.....and it just seemed inefficient. I discovered what I think is a better way by repurposing something which had been sitting around the house for years, unused.
For Lent this year, the small group ministry coordinator arranged a project called 40 Bags in 40 Days. Not a new concept, so if you Google it, you'll find lots of similar projects and suggestions all over the interweb. In a nutshell, the goal is to declutter one's life by doing one thing each day of Lent (with Sundays off). Each day, the goal is to get one bag of stuff out of one's living space. That can include trash, recycling, things to donate, things to sell --- anything. We gave a Facebook page for the group, and we post pictures and updates every day of how we're doing.
During one of my purging and tidying efforts in the kitchen I found clear plastic cups, and aluminum foil loaf pans with clear plastic lids. HMMMM....the plastic cups were PERFECT to put the cucumber seedlings in -- nice and deep for both a good root system, and to add soil on the top to keep them from having spindly stems.
The loaf pans were the perfect replacement for the tray in the germinator-- each loaf pan holds 8 of the larger seed starting pellet things which expand when you add hot water. The lid makes a perfect mini-green house, and 8 is about the right number of seedlings I need of most varieties. Once one pan is ready to move from the germinator to just being under the grow light, I can start something else if I want.
While I was doing all that, I rearranged my seed starting station, and moved things around so I can fit two trays under the grow light. I potted seedlings, and after a couple days for transplant shock, the cauliflower and broccoli look MUCH happier with their larger root space.
I also found a fantastic book on vegetable gardening on the bookshelf that I didn't even know I had! I've been thumbing through it, and will look at it in more depth as I'm revising the planting schedule.
Speaking of, I gave up even looking at my original planting schedule. LOL -- I oh, so, optimistically really thought I'd have stuff in the ground by now! I'm just hoping that by Spring Break in two weeks, the weather will be hospitable enough that I can at least plant out the cauliflower, broccoli, and some spring lettuce. I also hope the seeds that I already planted actually sprout! Once I DO get something in the ground, I'll adjust the schedule. I guess I better dig out my industrial strength eraser, and/or the White-Out!
I can tell I'm ready for some green and growing things outside -- one of my "bags" for Lent that I'm working on getting out of the house is a bag of odds and ends of yarn, and I'm knitting hats with it. Right now everything I'm drawn to is in shades of green! This is the Northern Lights hat from the original Homespun Handknits book. The original color ways was in the shades of the Northern Lights (which you might have already guessed from the name), but I like it better in shades/tones of one colorway. I'm really liking how this one is turning out:
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