Recently in Seeds Category

As readers will know I'm all about the wildlife in the garden, I love it. Whether animals, reptiles, or insects everything gets a fair chance to grow here. Unless you've been living under a rock you'll know that bees are on the decline in recent years and as bees are responsible for every third bite of food we eat we owe it to them to get their numbers back up! That's where the Great Sunflower Project comes in:

Your home, school or community garden and those around the world produce roughly 15-20% of all the food we eat. And for the urban poor, who spend 50-70% of their income on food, these gardens are a real source of good nutrition and an essential route to food security. Whether your garden contains vegetables, fruit trees, flowers, or even medicinal plants, many of these plants must be pollinated before a fruit forms. And as the headlines for the last year have made clear, bees are under threat.

We know very little about bee activity in home and community gardens and their surrounding environments, but we are certain that they are a crucial link in the survival of native habitats and local produce, not to mention our beautiful urban gardens. Our local pollinator populations require our understanding & protection, and to answer that call we need to determine where and when they are at work. With enough citizen scientists collecting data, we can learn much more, much faster, about the current state of bee activity. We would love to have you join us; let's learn about pollinators together!

Visit their website, sign up, and you'll receive free sunflower seeds so that you can join in the study! I received my seeds last week along with an information sheet.

We've had a TON of bees in our garden buzzing around the citrus blossom so it'll be interesting to see how many we get in Summer, plus thanks to the Great Sunflower Project website I can now tell the difference between a few types of bee. My only problem is getting the sunflower plants growing, the critters loved em last year and ate every last one!!! Time for containers, and some cage/covers I think!

Remember as gardeners we NEED bees to pollinate our plants, especially for us veggie/fruit gardeners! Do your bit and provide some data! Plus you get some pretty sunflowers, and can either eat the seeds or leave them for the birds :)

Just letting everyone know that HeirloomTomato.com are giving out free Basil seeds if you sign up to their website! The seed availability is limited so hurry and get signed up! I signed up at the end of March and received my Basil seeds in the mail last week!

Love seeds and love free!

Di

Peppers galore here at Yardcraft central! Last year I tried to grow peppers and failed, but this year I started early with proper seeds and have red, green and hot varieties all up and growing :) Love this stage!

The only problem now is they need transplanting already and I've run out of pots! Heaven help me, I should have staggered the planting a bit better!

Ah well live and learn! And maybe put a shout out for 3" pots!

Growing from seed has lots of pro's & cons. The biggest pro is it's MUCH cheaper! The biggest con' is what I call the waiting game. That's the time between sowing and sprouting. When you check the seed flat daily 'just in case', Anxiously waiting for some sign of life! Because not all seeds sprout, it's the period of time where you think "did I do everything right"? Did I remember to put the seeds in? Were the seeds viable? Are they too hot? too cold? too wet? too dry? Is there enough light? Too much light? Why aren't they sprouting yet? Honestly it's all I can do some days NOT to look every time I walk past the seed flats.

But then you'll catch it... the little glimmer of hope. Maybe it'll be a tiny shoot, or the compost ruffed up where the shoots are trying to burst forth, or you'll wake up one morning to find a 2" zucchini bursting out of it's pot already and invading the next spot over and already sending roots out all over (and then have to re-pot the darn things asap!). The waiting game stage 1 is over and from then on, it's all systems go. You're thinning, transplanting and repotting till the next round begins.

But you don't completely stop waiting and worrying! No! Now you enter stage 2, wait and worry over why the tomatoes sprouted but the peppers didn't? Are they going to? The whole light/dark/wet/dry conversation sparks again. You consider having a little dig in the compost just to 'check' there are seeds in there, cos surely by now they would have sprouted? Then just when you're about to give up tiny seedlings poke through!

Growing from seed is VERY rewarding but also very stressful, I wouldn't change it for the world!

I've been pretty busy sowing seeds and last weekend came the time for the first round of "potting up" where the little seedlings roots were bursting through and searching for more room! Always an exciting time to see them growing so well, and so fast! The first to grow fast were the zucchini and pumpkin which are BIG seeds anyway so no surprise there, but the next were the tomatoes! Yay! These are Amish paste, growing up a storm and with there first true leaves :)

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd overwintered one tomato plant (my accident due to laziness and curiosity), and wouldn't you know it the plant is flowering!

How cool is that though? I've had the odd tomato off it in Dec, Jan and Feb but the flowers mean more to come! Who knew there was a chance of overwintering tomatoes? Just to prove it, here is a small tomato on this plant

This variety is Imur Prior Beta which is sized between a cherry and a slicer, usually around an ounce+ each. Just enough in a couple for a salad :) Which is perfect for me. I'll be growing this variety again this year!

As I mentioned in a previous post most of my gardening is by way of experimentation. I grew tomatoes from grocery store produce, and I've tried growing things out of season, in the wrong season, wrong time of year, but always I come back to grocery store produce experiments.

So bit of a back story to this experiment. Last year I bought some grapes from the produce market. Nice and juicy with quite large seeds. I ate them at my desk and once done had a large collection of seeds just sitting on the plate. Not one to waste I had a choice, save them or compost them. I decided to save them. Mid February I wet some paper towel and set the seeds on the towel and waited.

Now my germination rate was pathetic. One out of the bunch of about 20 sprouted, but it was also the biggest seed, so maybe the only fertile one? Hard to say. Anyway ONE sprouted!!! Focus on the positive! The rest became compost fodder :)

I grabbed a pot from the gardening supplies (ok it's an old canola oil container with holes in the bottom), filled it with potting soil and carefully placed the sprouting seed into the pot, and placed it in the kitchen window. 2 days later I had this:

Since then it's grown, a lot! I came into the kitchen one dinnertime and found it leaning right through the blinds to the window clamoring for sunlight! I'd say it's about 8" high and getting another set of leaves!!! I knew I had to figure out my grow light system anyway so now it's sitting under the grow lights in the hopes of straightening it out a little, before I try and harden it off for planting in the garden :) Once I find a place for it! Oh and the straw is for support, it is afterall a VINE!

The perfect place would be in the back (south facing, grapes love sun!) basically where the bougainvillea is now. Which means lots of work to get the bougainvillea out (or transplanted), the bed built and then transplant it. Till then I may look at a container or something. I have plenty of spare containers right now :)

Lots of work ahead with all these experiments!

Calling this part one because this is so not the finished project! It became apparent as soon as I sowed my seeds that a grow light system was going to be on the project agenda this year. However in true frugal "use what you have" style I raided the garage and put this together.

Nope it's not perfect and ideally I'd like to make more use of the light on the end but for now it works. It's a T8 light (supplies from the garage) with  2 bulbs, supported on boxes over the seed tray. Since I took the pic I raised the seed tray nearer the light using some packing materials we had on hand. In all it works for now but I am planning a proper shelving unit for the next batch. Oh and it's sitting on the dog crates cos there is nowhere else right now to put them! 

For seed trays, well last month I bought one of these Jiffy trays with 72 peat pots. I hadn't used them before and I was quite impressed with them. I was kinda worried though as it's tough to buy the replacement pellets, but I've since seen that the insert to hold those lifts out and I can use the pots instead which I can find locally :)

Here is a pic of the ever growing seedlings! I thinned them out just prior to this pic, though I'm not sure what to do with the arugala (does it need thinning?) so I need to research that. Some of the plants are ready to transplant to bigger pots too!

So there you have it! A make-shift, make-do lighting system for seedlings. Total cost = nothing, which is even better :)

I mentioned yesterday that when I started gardening last year our budget for gardening was low, ok pretty much non-existent, but I was determined to do what I could. So I got online and researched lots of tips and tricks on frugal gardening. We already had tools so all I needed to buy was plants/seeds and some potting soil.

Seed starting trays: I used eggcartons. Perfect, as they are small, hold just the right amount of potting compost and I just planted the whole thing when it came time to transplant which avoids root shock. Later when I bought plants in 6pack cells I saved them, washed them and re-used them. To put under the trays for water catching I use tetrapacks from milk/juice, simply cut the sides, staple in place and VOILA!


Seed flats: after using up all the flat plastic trays I could find in the house I went in search of more. I found the foil roasting trays at the dollarstore. Look carefully and you'll see some with clear lids! These make great greenhouse type flats! Speaking of which...
Mini Greenhouses: Plastic clam shell packaging that soft fruits or tomatoes sometimes come in, these make great mini greenhouses!

Containers: Basically I saved EVERY SINGLE PLASTIC TUB, from margarine, yogurt, soda bottles, oils, anything that was plastic and could be used.


Plant labels: Popsicle sticks were a first choice as I had a ton from crafts. Then I used margarine tubs cut down. I later changed to blind slats though. Take a plastic venetian blind, cut out the slats, then cut into plant markers. Use a sharpie to write on them. I prefer the blind slat plant labels but have yet to find a pen that works well in full southern exposure for 6 - 9 months!

Basically use what you have! Gardening doesn't have to be expensive! Unless like us you have crap soil and need raised beds, but that's another post for another day!