TerriHaute
Hoosier Gardener
We've had a relatively mild winter so far here in Indiana and it feels like spring even though it is early February. With seed catalogs coming almost daily in the mail, and offers from seed companies filling up my email inbox, it put me in the mood to start the earliest seeds for this year's garden. We have a greenhouse but do not heat it in the coldest part of the year, because it is just too expensive. By March, it stays warm enough to use but for now, it only gets above freezing during the day. So, after watching some YouTubes on the topic, I decided to set up a grow light on the basement workbench and get going on some of the plants that have a long growing season or can be planted out early.
The bench already had one of those standard fluorescent tube work lights. I replaced the old, partially burned out tubes with two natural daylight tubes with a Kelvin of 7500 and 2500 lumens, they were $6 at Menards. I already had two seed heating mats, so I arranged those on the bench, lowered the light to about 8 inches and went to work.
Seeds planted so far are two kinds of onions that are supposed to be long keepers for storage, Copra and Cortland. A YouTube friend sent me some celery seed, so I seeded a small tray with that. Peppers take a really long time to reach transplant-to-the-garden size, so tabasco, cayenne, jalapeno, and sweet bell peppers went into some more small trays. It is usually September before tabasco peppers start turning red and it is one of our favorites, so I am hoping this gives them a good head start. I watched an interesting YouTube about overseeding herb seeds to give them the best start, so I am planning to squeeze in some of those this week, if I can get my hands on some thyme seeds.
Although on a windowsill instead of under the grow light, I also started a few cuttings of rosemary and scented geranium plants.
Anyone else getting started on this year's seeds? What do you have planted or plan to start soon? What's your growing setup?
The bench already had one of those standard fluorescent tube work lights. I replaced the old, partially burned out tubes with two natural daylight tubes with a Kelvin of 7500 and 2500 lumens, they were $6 at Menards. I already had two seed heating mats, so I arranged those on the bench, lowered the light to about 8 inches and went to work.
Seeds planted so far are two kinds of onions that are supposed to be long keepers for storage, Copra and Cortland. A YouTube friend sent me some celery seed, so I seeded a small tray with that. Peppers take a really long time to reach transplant-to-the-garden size, so tabasco, cayenne, jalapeno, and sweet bell peppers went into some more small trays. It is usually September before tabasco peppers start turning red and it is one of our favorites, so I am hoping this gives them a good head start. I watched an interesting YouTube about overseeding herb seeds to give them the best start, so I am planning to squeeze in some of those this week, if I can get my hands on some thyme seeds.
Although on a windowsill instead of under the grow light, I also started a few cuttings of rosemary and scented geranium plants.
Anyone else getting started on this year's seeds? What do you have planted or plan to start soon? What's your growing setup?