Yup, spring is here and much of the relentless snow has been melted. This photo is dramatically different than the one in February's entry. By the way, it may still be cold outside as the temperature rocketed all the way up to a balmy 37 degrees today - however inside the greenhouse...
How about that! 78 degrees in here and it's all from the sun. I don't have anything growing out here yet because even though this is a heavily insulated greenhouse, the temperatures dip well below freezing each night. My only source of heat is from a space heater which is suspended from the ceiling. It works well, but I won't be using the greenhouse until mid-April.
Still, it's a nice place to visit when the sun is nice and high in the skies after noontime and it stays bright and sunny until nearly 6pm these days.
However, the snow still lingers on. As you can see, much snow still remains in the big garden. I actually was happy to see the tops of my herb garden signs! This means that the snowpack is below 2 feet - woo-hoo!
The snow is nearly gone from the straw covered garlic in the garden out in front of the house. The fence has been damaged from the heavy amount of snow this season. The posts are fine because I set them in 1 foot holes of Quickcrete (luckily) so all I need to do is re-staple the fence to the posts.
Okay, it's narly time! All of the planning, seed ordering, and organizing have been done. It's time to start some seeds! As of 3/26 & 27, 2011, I will first start my peppers, cabbage, basil, dill and marigolds. I use a big bin to mix my organic seed start potting mix with pure seed starting mix.
Here's another super-secret weapond I use for starting seeds - a split wooden clothes pin used upside-down, with measured marks drawn onto it. I call it my "seed dibble."
This is a photo of six pepper varieties seeded within the dibble holes. Only one more step remains before I cover the seeds with only a 16th of an inch of surrounding soil...
I always give each newly planted seed a good two shots of WARM water before I cover the seed with soil. I swear by this and usually get 100 percent germination rates.
Meanwhile, one of my cats is basking in the sunshine which floods the southwestern windows upstairs. This is where I built a two-level shelving system to start seeds (my cat is on the lower level in this photo.) I start the seeds on the top level because heat rises and is warmer on top in March. The starter shelves are 8 feet long, on two levels with 4x2 T8 energy efficient shop lights hanging above the seedlings.
So as you can see, a lot of planning and years of experimenting makes it look as if I actually know what I am doing!
All that I can say is, the more I document this stuff, the easier it gets.
:)
