Garden expansion project – Part 3 – Start Planting

It’s been a few weeks since we kicked off our garden expansion project, and we’re rolling along closing out our tasks as we go. We’ve got a few purchases under our belt and spent a little time setting up our indoor garden area, which brings us to one of our first big milestones. Today we got to start planting and put some seeds in their starter cells !

Project status update – ready to start planting

Based on our previous research back in part 1 estimation we set the start of our indoor planting at the First weekend of February. It was all we could do back then to keep from starting right then and there but we were making sure to take into account when we’d want to be hardening, planting and harvesting our leaf babies.  As a general update, we’re almost a third of the way through, and on track to stay within budget.  We did a couple of tasks early because the opportunities presented themselves which sets us in great positioning for the next few weeks. The schedule between now and the end of March is pretty light so all we really have to do is to take care of our new seedlings and make sure they get good and strong.

So what did it take to get us ready to start planting?

A couple of key tasks on the plan were in the way before we could start planting.

Indoor garden area cleanup

One biggie was setting up our indoor gardening are. In a spare corner of the house that’s not very heavily used, we have some nice counter space and a sink for easy clean up.  The area needed some tidying since we used it last spring, but getting it set up was short work.  We planned this activity for last weekend and set aside a day for it. Really it only took a couple hours, and truth be told it was hard not to start planting last weekend.

The LED light source and timer setup is the same that we used last year to overwinter our plants and do our indoor winter gardening project which worked out well. The lights are hung a little offset to get as much coverage as possible.  We added a fan for air circulation because we found last year that with out it we were getting a little powdery mildew. The timer starts early and ends late to account for the reduced brightness and that tiny little window that faces North and only gets reflected light in the afternoon.

The need for seeds

We needed to buy a few seeds too. Our seed inventory was already pretty stocked up. Even if you have seeds, you can always use a little more regardless of when you start planting, right?

Buying seeds happens to be pretty easy this time of year. There’s a ton of places online and every store seems to have a seed kiosk up (just in case you forgot something from your favorite place).  Our quick grab this year was from the home improvement store.  We don’t have a brand preference (but are open to recommendations).  Seed packets with germination and days to harvest information are nice indicators of when to plant indoors or sow outdoors.  Don’t take them literally though because things like soil nutrients, sunny days and ground temperature will cause variance in how much actual time is needed for growing

A little bit of dirt goes a long way

We also bought a brick of Coconut coir to mix in with our potting soil.  We had a few cubic feet, probably plenty for our planting cells, but a single brick added in helps hold moisture and keep our new indoor plants healthy.

Ready for leaf babies

And here we go! We filled all our trays (even the ones we weren’t planting in until next week and added seeds.  In our past projects we didn’t have all that many going at once so labeling them wasn’t as much of a priority. With as much variety as we’re adding in this year’s garden expansion project  we labeled all the things

What makes a good label

We had a few sticks from some garden flats, and we just wrote in sharpie on the back… until we ran out. Popsicle sticks, plastic or wooden ice cream spoons all work well in a pinch if you forgot to buy more.

On ours we tried to come up with a standard format for what to write

• Name of plant including variety where possible
• Number of cells
• Days to germination
• Days to maturity
• Planting date

Trying not to get too far ahead of schedule

It’s easy to over do it, especially since this is not a super aggressive project schedule. Sure the’ll be lots of things to do when the ground thaws. For now there’s still over 40 days until the official first day of spring and not much to do to advance things except to grow and care for our new seedlings. We are still keeping our eye open for good deals on items in our shopping list.  That said, we did pick up a cultivator ahead of schedule.

It was a little over budget on the used one we saw, but based on the reviews and relatively small sized job we have planned, this one looked to fit the bill best. We like electric yard tools. There’s less chance of spilling gas or oil and when you turn the switch it will be sure to start.  Sure they’re a little lighter duty than their fossil fueled counterparts. Electric tools are also a fair bit less expensive, cleaner and we factor all that into our thinking. For now it stays in the box as a secret. We’ll do a write up on it after we use it and start planting outdoors.