Prepping For Spring.

I got Pa one of them fancy heated Germination Stations for Christmas.

He’s been itchin’ to test it out, so a few weeks ago, we planted it on up. Now, by “we” I mean Pa. He planted, and I stood by watching and making our chart of each seed planted. In a few days we had a mess of seeds a poppin and tiny plants reaching up through that dirt.

At the end of two weeks, some of the seedlings were reaching the top of the cover. It was at this point I began telling myself daily that I needed to get them transplanted.

Yep, that’s right, we have lady bugs in the house in February, no idea how that happened. I guess we’re just kewl that way and they know it too and want to hang with us.

Needless to say, I am a master procrastinator at times. It was another week before I got around to getting all set up to transplant.

After covering my counter (yes, I am weird that way), and getting the seedling tray ready to transplant, I sat down with our chart, my Sharpie, and began to mark the cups I planned to repurpose into tiny flower pots. Yeah, Pa pointed out to me that styrofoam isn’t too permacultury (I made that word up, just want it on record when it takes off), but hey, this way they aren’t in a landfill somewhere. I used one of my chop sticks to poke a hole in the bottom of each cup for drainage.

I then began to oh so gently pull each tube of plant and soil out each row. A few holes had more than one seedling pop up and thrive. As you can see, they are close together and the roots all intermingled in the soil.

Very gently I rolled the soil in my fingers, and lightly shook the plants free of each other.

I pinched the lowest leaves off of each seedling. I planned to cover that portion of the plant with soil, so needed them babies gone. I dropped each pinched leaf in the respective cup for the plant.

Then I put a little soil in the bottom of the cup, and held the plant in place.

Then filled in around it with my soil. I just used an old butter dish bent into a point, and let it loosely fall in. You don’t want to pack the soil in there. Nice, loose soil will promote good healthy root growth.

Once the soil level was where I thought it should be I did give it a light little pat down, just enough to smooth it out and make it all pretty and such.

Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

Then more of the same. I finished this part not long after Pa got home from work.

I promptly put him to work. He gave each baby a little drink, then we tag teamed giving each plant it’s own fancy little humidifying tent. The tents were fashioned out of cheap ziploc bags (another item not in a landfill) then held in place with a rubber band. We figure they won’t be needing another drink for a week or so with the tents in place.

At the end of the day we ended up with 107 plants to put under the grow light Pa fashioned up for me (ain’t he just the sweetest?).

Here’s the list –

9 Catnip, 9 Boxcar Willie Tomato, 14 Black Krim Tomato, 8 Tomato Romanesco, 19 German Johnson Tomato, 22 Ground Cherry, 10 California Wonder Pepper, 14 Jalapeno Hot Pepper &  2 Mystery Tomato

Oh! I almost forgot! I had to run in to the store to grab a couple of things, and noticed that someone lost their kitty. They obviously love their kitty very much. So much so that they took the time to post a flyer on the bulletin board right outside the store. Please, if you have seen this kitty, let us know when and where. I sure hope these people find their beloved pet!

And with that, I’m off. Ma

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