Along with the seedlings I planted in the newspaper pots - I did a 72" cell of Jiffy....set those to seed in the jiffy pot on Sunday February 13th...and by Thursday, February 17, I had sprouts...see below. Finally on Sunday - the climbing cardinals and cucumbers had about a 4" leggy sprout that I had to transplant to bigger pots. These worked well, my alyssum, snapdragons and coleus and onions are also starting to sprout.
Any suggestions on how to get strong stalks, please feel free to advise! Wish I had more luck with my 52 little seedling pots that I put up. I think I didn't either water enough, or put enough soil in the pots. I have moved them all from the dark spare bedroom to my window in my bedroom - hoping that a little water and sunlight will surely do the trick...so far only one tiny sprout out of all 52....and I hope that will make it - I have a ton of impatients that i'm trying to seed. If they don't work i'm going to go back to the jiffy pots....I bought a pack of morning glory seeds and plan on starting those this weekend.
On other news, we had a small tunderstorm here today in Mckinney, high winds, supposedly we had hail, but I didn't see any signs of that. Went to check rain gauges and two of the three are busted......but on as a side note....I went and plunged the spicot on the rain barrell and had a steady stream of fresh rain water in it - yippee!
Also, just so you know how novice of a gardener I am.....last November (Thanksgiving Day, to be exact - my dad and sweet nephews gathered up all my pots of various plants and moved them to the garage for me, as we prepared for our first frost. I left the plants in the garage for almost a month....right before Christmas, I had this great idea to get a pop-up greenhouse and put my garage plants in there. I googled and found that a great heat source is Christmas lights.....even better. I set up my greenhouse - moved little tables and benches into it - set up my plants; water them really well and ran an outdoor extension cord and a string of Christmas lights to the greenhouse. A few days went by, non-freezing temps...so nothing to worry about - full sun during the day....then sometime first of January - we were hearing about our first snow of the season. I turned on my lights...it was a cute sight...and watched the snow come down...here's what the greenhouse looked like amidst the snow....
How cute is that!!! Well guess what...the lights I bought....umh, rope Christmas lights...Energy Efficient.....NO HEAT! can you say plant killer!!! Ugh...so I killed my beautiful lantana that I purchased in June in Pratt, KS on a trip to see my great uncle. Also gone, my lovely boston fern, my cheap Pentas (that I didn't like anyway), a really nice purple passion flower I bought in Sulphur, OK, cute little ivys, my shamrock plant (which I know isn't really gone) and my sweet potato vines, coral bells...ugh.....I have alot to learn.
Last Sunday, I opened up the greenhouse and much to my surprise - not all hope was lost......my little ivy was still hanging on - go figure, I can't!
Hey, neighbor! You are way more ambitious than I with seed starting. I just wait and buy the plants. I am so sorry to hear about your greenhouse adventure - don't know if you saw mine: http://texastufa.blogspot.com/2011/02/frozen-in-fort-worth.html It has been a dreadful winter so far. I am just going to sit with my hands in my pockets until April. Then it will be safe and I dive in with both feet.
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