Day 4 and WE HAVE GROWTH!

Holy Cannoli! I went in to turn on the the lights for our little seedlings, and I saw some of the newspaper had been moved. Could it be growth? Or did I accidentally move it last night before shutting off the lights? To my great surprise, WE HAVE GROWTH! I yelled for the girls to come look and while screaming with excitement we saw at least an inch of growth on some of the flowers and a quarter of an inch on the broccoli. Wow, I can hardly believe it!

All of this adrenaline was brought down quickly when I saw MOLD growing on the "cool flat." Sure the broccoli and peas are starting to sprout but I can also see white fluff on the top of the soil throughout the flat. The "hot flat" didn't show any signs of mold. So of course I headed to the computer to do some research. My best hit was to Dave's Garden http://davesgarden.com/. He talks about "The Dreaded Dampening Off." Oh dear this sounds serious!! Even though I did cook the soil, there are other culprits to watch out for 1)no air movement and 2) too much water. What a rookie I am! It definitely is damp in there, so I removed all the newspaper. Next, I removed the plastic hood for time being on the "cool flat." I got a paper towel and tried to gently removed the mold that I found. Some of the suggestions included mixing some hydrogen peroxide with your water (1 Tablespoon per quart of water). Misting this on top will help prevent mold. While I might still try that, for now I am using a more interesting and who would have thought of it approach with CINNAMON!

With a light dusting of cinnamon, we are hopeful this will do the trick. Check back to stay updated!

We learned a valuable lesson today, "Minimize wet conditions, and maximize air flow." Thanks, Dave!

To Seeds, Soil, and Hope!

Yours Truly,

Kat

Seed Germination!

Who would have thought that you didn't just plant the seeds in the ground and water!! Well to make sure we were on the right track, we did a lot of research. I came across a great resource called Sarah's Pioneer Living http://www.exploreourplanet.org/ . She has a web show on YouTube called Pioneer Living. I watched all of her Urban Gardening: Gardening to Survive video clips. My husband listened while watching the March Madness Tournament:) A quick note about Sarah: she has a great deal of knowledge regarding this topic and reminds of a free loving hippie chick with an awesome green thumb, which is my way of saying check out her gardening videos. Anyway after coming up with a game plan, we sought materials that we had on hand and went to Lowe's to get the rest (kids and all).

We quickly learned that we are about seven weeks until the last frost in our area and needed to get a move on and plant the seeds INDOOR. The seeds have to germinate first before we can sow them outside. To do this, we came up with list that included these items:

-Organic potting mix

-Seeds (of course!) (Sarah would advocate going to the grocery store and purchasing the produce, but to get started TODAY we wanted seeds on hand that we didn't have to dry out)

-Trays to mix seeds and soil- something with a lid or cover to create a greenhouse effect.. Sarah does have great ideas for creating trays and using saran wrap!

-Growing light (We actually had a 48" fluorescent light and a heating light)

-Spray Bottle

-Tags to identify our seedlings

-Newspaper (We had this on hand!)

-Aluminum foil

- Compost Tea (for a fuller explanation see Sarah's video, but in short it is adding hot water to vegetable/coffee compost, blending, and straining. The water mixture is basically fertilizer for the young seedlings.)

Well we came back with more seeds than we needed of course. The girls wanted to grow flowers so we picked a few of those. Do we need to germinate those?...I have no idea but it made them happy. Check out the picks for yourself.

I will be back to explain the process in a minute!!!!

To Seeds, Soil, and Hope!

Yours Truly,
Kat