What I've Done and Where It's Going

So this is a rundown of what you've missed and I wish I would have started this blog earlier because now I'm losing track of what happened when but I'll do my best. This is going to be a long one.
As I mentioned, I live in a studio apartment in a metropolitan area so gardening and beekeeping was just not an option for me. Being number 200 on the waiting list to get a plot in the local community garden wasn't going to cut it either. I'm lucky because I live on the top floor of my apartment building and have great skylights and I also have tons of natural light and two huge greenhouse windows. Yeah, that didn't work because the sun just blistered everything. I never knew that too much sun could be a problem but I'm guessing they got too hot and the soil dried out before I knew it. There is one other problem...my cat. Her name is Charlee (named after Charles Ingles from Little House on the Prairie). I just figured I should introduce her now because she is a slight issue for my seedlings.

Something had to give so I asked my parents if they would let me build a garden out on their property. They were enthused so I then asked if I could have bees too. Yes!! They were still on board. I told them that I bought 21 varieties of tomato seeds...they were not on board anymore. "Are you nuts?" Maybe.

I'll justify my insanity by saying that on the heirloom seed supplier's website there were probably at least 50 or more different varieties so I narrowed it down by less than half!!! They all sounded so delicious and fun I just couldn't help it. After I pushed the "order" button on $63 worth of tomato seeds I started biting my fingernails and wondering what I was going to do but we shall overcome! As of right now, I have 67 tomato seedlings...two days ago I had 29 and tomorrow I may have over 100.

I realize there is an issue of spacing to maintain the integrity of each variety and prevent cross-pollination. I believe they say at least 5-6 feet between plants. Does anyone know about this? Can I push this envelope a bit?

In regards to the seedlings, I was a bit worried. I totally flubbed on the 100 eggplant seeds that I sowed - I know this because only one came up! Yes, a solitary eggplant. I'm starting to wonder if it is actually just a weed seed that made it into the potting soil. I'm keeping it hydrated and it's growing at a VERY slow rate so I'll just have to exercise some patience. Since that disaster I switched over to a seed specific potting soil and I've had great success. The mixture I'm now using is the Jiffy brand Organic Seed Starting Jiffy-Mix and I've been pleased (I purchased mine at Home Depot). I learned quickly that you must pre-moisten this mix before you do anything otherwise when you pour your water into each well, the water just rolls off like water on a duck's back! I poured my mix into a huge mixing bowl and then added water and mixed it together with my hands until it was nice and damp but not soaking wet.

Another product I can recommend is a product from Lee Valley Tools. I love them, you must sign up for their catalog immediately. Great, great company to do business with. The particular item that I'm loving right now is their Self-Watering Seed Starter. It is amazing in so many ways: it waters from the bottom so this reduces your chances of dampening-off from a fungus, it lets you know with an indicator when you need to refill the reservoir with water, you can push the entire soil pod with seedling out from the bottom of each cell as not to disturb the tender roots, the containers are made of a good quality Styrofoam (I know oxymoron) so it insulates the seeds and seedlings, and the clear lid is a lot stronger than any other seed starter I've found. I know this because I have a volunteer willing to test this out for me, i.e. Charlee. I've had mine for at least 10 years and I've used them for 4 seasons and they still look great and perform just perfect.

I have some squash, lemon basil, salad bernet, melon, and pepper seedlings growing as well. I'm running out of safe seedling space in my apartment so I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm staring at a stack of seeds that I just bought last week that need to be planted. They may have to get the direct-sow treatment.

As for the direct-sowing...I'm not ready to do that. The garden plot has been tilled over once and then we covered it with clear plastic to start the solarizing process. I know it's not the optimum time but I was hoping it would benefit from at least a few weeks of solarizing. We laid the plastic probably 3 weeks ago. I'm going to remove some of it and see what we're working with. I'm not expecting to have all of the weeds and diseases killed but maybe I'll have less to deal with. If the soil has dried out a bit then we can till it again and work some organic amendments in and then recover. I'm not going to add any compost until the plastic is removed because I don't want to kill the worms in the compost.

Speaking of compost! I'm going to a composting class tomorrow at 8am at my local community garden so I better get to bed. It's going to be long day of composting, soil prep, adding more frames to the beehive and building supers (outsides of the bee boxes). I'm also going to measure the space that we've tilled and start working on a garden design. I just bought a book tonight called, "Starter Vegetable Gardens: 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens." It seems like it will be helpful and the author's last name is Pleasant. I like that.

Happy solarizing!

Daphne