Step 1: Start seedlings…..
Here’s how I started the seedlings and the equipment I’ve used:
- 3x 4′ shop light fixtures with 2x 40w flourescent plant/aquarium lights each.
- wire linen closet shelving cut in 4′ lengths, plus brackets for attaching to the wall
- Various plastic trays and clear lids from HomeDepot and Rona to grow the seedlings in.
- Several Jiffy pot trays – which are little dehydrated peat pellets that expand when you add water, and then you plant the seed in that. each tray holds 72 pellets. the cheapest bulk price I found for the pellets so far was at Hole’s Greenhouse in St. Albert where they were 10 cents each.
- Bags of seedling starter mix for trying to start the seeds all together in a layer of mix.
- Mister, and watering can
- Seeds
- Got lots of books from the library, am intrigued by the Square foot and cubed foot gardening methods. I will be applying principles from those schools of thought into this year’s garden.
Check out the online photo log of the garden’s progress:
Step 2: Forget which days what got planted…
First some tomatoes got planted (maybe too early?), then a few days later some more tomatoes, then a few days later some cucumbers, then later some peppers, and some weeks later pumpkin and cantaloupe…
Step 3: Pot up like mad….
Things are growing really, really well…except for the groundcherries of which only 5 of the 12 seeds germinated. I bought a bale of Aggregate mix #4 on the sage advice of another shopper at Home Depot who seemed to know what he was talking about, and am now transplanting the seedlings that have outgrown the trays into larger pots…and cups since I’ve now run out of peat pots. I didn’t realise I’d need so many pots…and that they’d take up so much room. Now’s the time I realised I’d have to give some seedlings away since far more have sprouted than I thought would sprout. Davin’s class got a tiny Tim Tomato plant each.
Step 4: Start sourcing materials to build the cold frames and 4′x4′ frames for the garden plots. I asked at a construction site for their wood scraps and things are looking good to get enough materials. I found cheap materials at a used architectural supply yard too. I got 2 rolls of orange snow fencing for next to nothing so am going to test it out for all the vertical gardening.
