Sproutage!!

So hello!! Top of the fridge is evidently a great place for sproutage! Today we have Salad Mix from Wild Garden Seed; these are most likely lettuces, with other greens still to come up:

And here we have mixed seedlings, Cupani Sweetpea from WGS on the right, Florist Pepperbox Poppy from Baker Creek on the left. The middle row, Apple Blossom Snapdragon from BC, is yet to pop:

You can see my goofy baked goods and deli chicken trays and my ever-so-high-tech seedling pots. The masking tape is holding its own! Pots in the greenhouse are falling apart but these are just fine. We're not going through the toilet paper fast enough to satisfy my seedling needs (it might be pretty awful if we were!!), so today I bought two 72 cell propagators. The cells are hexagonal rather than square and I don't honestly know if they're all they're cracked up to be--supposed to promote healthier roots that don't get rootbound, but who knows, really?--the main selling point was the price, only $5 each. I'll look online to find something cheaper, since I have to start hundreds of seeds, but for now these will do.

Don't know exactly how many people I want this garden to feed. It's going to be divvied up across three widely-spaced yards, although the third garden may turn out to be pretty small. We're calling it Sisters Seed Co-op. It'll meet multiple functions; food, flowers, medicinal herbs, groundcover, wildlife habitat, windbreak, and Native American sacred plants. The white sage plants (Strictly Medicinal Seeds) are coming in March and the Sweetgrass plants (Prairie Moon Nursery) in May; the Kansas native shrubs (Kansas Forest Service) will probably come in March as well, and will need some kind of protection from rabbits. Love those bunnies, but not enough to let them eat my baby shrubs--especially since once the shrubs get some height to them, their fruit will feed the rabbits just fine.

Got a shock when I checked out a local CSA. Under "what to expect" they had a list of veggies by month and even though their seedlings are already bigger than mine, it's nothing but greens until April, then radishes and peas, but nothing that I would consider substantial produce until JULY. No tomatoes, peppers, beans, squash until July! That isn't gonna work for me! If I'm starting seeds in February, I by golly want my first summer crops on the plants by May--because most crops are 75 to 90 days, and May marks 90 days. What this means is that I have to get serious about both growing space and lights, so that I can keep the summer plants inside until it's warm enough to put them in the greenhouse (mid-March). 

That's considerably more indoor growing than I had planned for and it'll be a challenge to find space for larger pots. Gryph and I are eyeing the laundry room, looking to see if we can make it work better and get shelves in which will hold the plants and give us storage both at once. 

Been planning on a lot of succession planting, so I guess I'll find out if planting now is a fool's errand or not... but honestly, the kid in me is so excited about seeds and seedlings that it's worth it. Hoping to be eating baby lettuce and needing to replant by the end of February, anyway! It's almost time to get fish emulsion so I can feed all those valiant little lettuce and pea plants growing in frozen soil in the greenhouse. It's supposed to drop to single digits by the end of this week, so I'll wait on that until it warms up again.

Wasn't sure I would ever be done buying seeds but when the next batch comes in the mail, I think that's it. This is all I can handle and more besides. Now I have to divert the money to seedling pots and potting soil, drip irrigation, 20 inch pots to go next to the wheelchair ramp, bird neeting to keep the squirrels out, and fertilizer.

Unexpected find as we were rummaging around in the laundry room--weed control fabric! That combined with the cardboard which is starting to come in from one of the co-op sisters who's moving into a new garden (with bonus house! Imagine!), should give me a head start on making a good-sized garden without digging or hoeing, always a consideration when one is disabled.

Going to do my best to keep this garden organic. Have omri-certified Neem oil and copper fungicide and will find an omri-certified fertilizer as well. The cardboard should eliminate needing to spray for weeds and should also defeat digging squirrels. We've used cardboard for the path from the steps to the trash can for several years now, and they ignore it as if it were concrete, so my hopes are up!

One final weird thing: the driveway runs from the street through the yard all the way to the back gate, and I lost the ability to keep it swept clean about six years ago. Mother Nature appreciated that. Between the silty dust that blows in on the wind and the fallen leaves each year, she's managed to lay down a three inch layer of topsoil over much of the driveway in the back yard. That's basically half an inch of new topsoil per year! We still have low spots where the elderberries came out, so that topsoil now has a destination, however slow I am to get it moved. We need a clean path with safe footing along the north side of the wheelchair ramp and space for all those 20' pots along the south side. .