Almost Ready

I visited the greenhouse today and took a few little seedlings from my cups to bring home.  

I've added the little batch of parsley and a few other wanton seedlings to the collection hanging 

under the florescents in my kitchen.  

I am going to pot up some eggplants and peppers growing under the aerogarden lights to bring to the greenhouse and put in a south-facing window at home and see how they all do.   They are all really going gangbusters under the aerogarden lights. Time to leave the nest guys.

And finally I got the chain from the hardware store that I might need  to hang my lights ... just in case I can't just lean them on something so they light the shelf I am setting up on a table in a south window upstairs ...  a little redundant since this new monster has four 4-foot tubes ... but I'm thinking I might be able to use it to just augment the sunny sill.  I'll have to make sure the timer is set so my home doesn't glow from afar in the middle of the night.

I've hauled the new lights upstairs and I've lined up cells in trays ... everything this year is being planned around 56 varieties of tomatoes ... two trays with 72 cells each - heheh - that means each tray gets the whole shebang and more.  Oh the anticipation of seeing all 56 seedlings together and deciding what will go in the remaining 16 cells.

I planted three little self-watering potlets of sage.  I call them potlets because they are so small that I just 'know' (I think) that I'm going to have to pot up within the month which I don't really think is the best use of my time ... but they are self-watering and quite cute ... if I remember from last year, sage is quite small & cute so I am hoping to be able to get away without potting up!   Intellectually risky business - this gardening!  

I like planting a few seeds in deep cells and clipping the one or two weakest seedlings when they come up (often I wind up gently wiggling them out and planting them in another pot ... and I know I said I don't like potting up - I just realized that's what I am doing ... hmmm ... it felt good saving the little guys and almost as good being so thrifty and super good giving them away because they're extras ...  and I really like bottom watering & fertilizing (which I'm just getting the hang of with the deep cells under the aerogarden lights now.  The tray takes a bottle and a half of the container I am using now ... I was enjoying using the squirt bottle to moisten the tops of the dirt but heck sometimes that's just too much work so I've experimented and found what it takes to do it solely from the bottom.  Each day means adding a little more ... but I've got the hang of it now that I took the time and did that experiment.)