Spring is coming!
Spring will be arriving later this month, are you as excited as I am?
Spring is when I start a few varieties of annuals to plant out later in pots and in the garden. The seeds I saved last fall are lovingly planted according to their needs for light and temperature and watched carefully for signs of sprouting, and are watered and nurtured until it’s time to harden them off and plant them. Since I save seeds from flowers that I have grown myself for several generations, I believe I have my own open stock varieties now, perfectly suited for my conditions. The flowers are larger, the seedlings are hardier with less damping off, and they germinate at an amazing rate of speed compared to their cousins in the seed packets. If you have some grow lights or a greenhouse, I highly recommend starting some seeds that you saved yourself from your favorite flowers- it’s a great way to garden full circle. I built my own plant shelves and grow lights- it’s not hard, and this is a great time to build a set up if you have a place to put it.
Here is how to build one if you have the inclination: You will need a set of storage shelving 48 inches wide by 18 to 24 inches deep with wood or fiberboard shelves, with 4 to 5 shelves, six or seven feet tall. I got mine from a store that was going out of business, but they can be purchased at Lowe’s or Home Depot too. You will need two 48 inch two lamp fluorescent shop light fixtures for each shelf you want to equip, the kind that use 40 watt bulbs and have a cord longer than a few inches. The shop lights hang from their chains from the underside of the shelf about 15 to 18 inches above, so get some screw in hooks to hang them. The lights are then plugged into a surge strip on the edge of a shelf or on the wall. You can put up to six shop lights on a surge strip. The surge strip is plugged into a timer set to be on for 16 to 18 hours a day, and the timer is of course plugged into the wall.
I have three shelves set up, and don’t see the need for more than that. I replace the bulbs every year even if they aren’t burnt out (I just use them in other fixtures) and sometimes I have to replace the fixtures themselves, but other than that it is a very low cost, low maintenance set up. With these three shelves, I grow about 16 flats of plants- four flats fit on each shelf, and I have things timed so that some of the plants go outside to be hardened off at the same time that I am starting some new flats of more quickly maturing seedlings.
Seeds are such amazing things. Inside each tiny little shell is every part the plant needs to grow into a mature specimen, be it a simple marigold or a mighty oak. Given just the right conditions that little plant emerges, thrives and grows, matures, and produces more seeds, continuing it’s species. Much of the varieties I save seeds from and start again every spring are ones that left to their own resources will just come up in the cracks in my driveway or along the paths in the yard, so I figure, why not collect the seeds, and produce some plants that I can put in the spots I want them in?
In late winter and early spring, I go out into the garden almost every day, to see what’s new out there. It is so astounding sometimes how quickly seeds sprout, or the wildflowers and bulbs start to emerge from the ground and burst into bloom. In some parts of my garden I have woodland wildflowers planted that can only be seen in the spring. They come up as soon as the ground starts to warm, they bloom and then they disappear just as the leaves on the trees start to fill out. And those seeds, those amazing seeds, start to sprout right in my driveway. Spring is so awesome, isn’t it?
See you in the Garden!
Ellen Leigh
