Homesteading In The Pacific Northwest

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Hurry Spring!

It's January 11 and we are expected to get more snow tonight and tomorrow here in Western Washington.  But that isn't keeping me out of my garden.  Mike built me a great plant cart for starting my seedlings in the greenhouse...


I saw a metal cart online...they wanted $899 for it!  Mike made this one out of wood and some old light fixtures.  I love it!

I'm really sold on the soil block maker I bought from Johnny's Selected Seeds last year...it makes transplanting the seedlings so much easier...and no extra cost or waste with the plastic pots!


This is a tray of lavender and chamomile about 5 days after planting...


 
The seedling heat mats really speed up germination time and keep my seedlings warm in my "cool" greenhouse...



...I do have a small heater in there but it only comes on when the temperature really drops; the heat from the mats and the lights seems to be enough to keep the plants happy.



 I've already transplanted some of the seedlings into wooden boxes to wait for it to be time to go into their covered beds...we go over 10 hours of daylight here about the middle of February, so that's my target date.

And an update on the covered winter beds is in order...



 This was the lakeside bed after our first snow just before Thanksgiving.  I'm using only one 40 watt light to keep the bed from freezing...and here's a picture of the plants inside taken today...


 They've come through sub-freezing temperatures just fine!  It's actually time to harvest some of them...

Enjoy!

Deb

3 comments:

  1. Wow! Amazing. Great fancy garden toys. I love it! Did you notice last week Costco had 4x5' rolling heavy metal shelves for $100? We got one but not for gardening. My brother did though. Very useful.

    I love my soil block maker. A gardening buddy made me a single out of a pill bottle. I wouldn't plant without it! I like your model much better, but these are frugal times for us.

    So glad someone is winter gardening. I didn't this year. Looks great. Congrats.

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  2. Thanks! I need to go check out Costco!

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