Ahhh. Such a beautiful day. The sun is so bright. I got a tray of seeds planted and I hope they are comfortable and warm down there.
I planted yellow sweet spanish onions (4 trays), red russian, winterbor and tuscan kale (1 tray each), and blonde escarole (1 tray).
Check out my nice dark table cover. Someone suggested this would keep the trays warmer than the white I originally used. I think it looks nicer. And anything for happier seedlings.
7 comments:
do you try and split the trays into "squares" where you only plant two or three seeds each or do you just splatter seeds everywhere and see what grows?
how do you transplant to your garden?
Hmmm. Now I'm hoping I did this right. But I suppose there are lots of ways that will work fine.
I figure it doesn't matter if I plant seeds too close, since I can always thin seedlings. And since some of my seeds are from previous years, I seeded pretty dense.
And I always like rows so I planted the seeds in rows. Its quick and easy to press a little furrow in the soil, drop in seeds and then smooth the soil over the seeds. I made two rows in each of the small plastic trays. When they sprout, the seedlings should make four long rows across each big tray.
I'm not real sure what I'll do next, as I've never seeded onions or greens inside. If they get too big for the trays before its warm enough to set them out, then I'll have to transplant the seedlings to small cells. (Last year I made these out of newspaper for my peppers.) I think onions can grow pretty dense though and I hope to just set these out directly into the garden. Onions and kale can stand pretty cold weather. They can probably go out in my garden around April 10th (if we don't have a late blizzard or flood....)
Looking good!Isn't it absolutely wonderful to start all over again!
I'm a real seed-geek and finally I got my fingers in the soil again.
Yes! Its a whole new garden season beginning.
I've never heard of blonde escarole, but it sounds interesting! What company are the seeds from?
They are an Italian package that my local True Value hardware store carries. It is shown on the website found it on the Gourmet International Seed website and called ESCAROLE BLOND FULL HEART (Bionda A Cuore Pieno). They say it is the most popular escarole in Italy and Europe.
A couple of other mail order companies list it: Harvest Moon Seed Co, Nicky's Seeds.
What you say about the onions is exactly right. They are really easy to grow in trays, you can let them stay in the tray longer than the other plants and you can let them grow pretty dense. At some point they will just stop growing instead of getting denser, and this is not too serious if it's not for too long.
If the onions don't get enough light in your house and become weak and spindly, because you will harden the onions in the tray before transplanting them to the garden, you can just let them sit in the direct sun for a day or two before transplanting them if necessary to perk them up. The same thing is true with the other plants as well, if you put them out directly in your garden.
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