Saturday, February 5, 2011

State of the Seedling Address

Light set ups don't need to be fancy pants to get the job done. In our basement we have two unfinished walls that are relatively close together. We cut a piece of plywood to just barely squeeze between them and then used another to wedge in as a center support and bam! We've got a light table. Then we chained up a light so I can raise and lower it by putting shortening the chain on the nail poking out of the unfinished wall.

It's not fancy, but it works. The empty space is where the lettuce seedlings go and the three black ones are the celery, broccoli and cabage packs.

The cabage and broccloi are doing very well. They always seem to down here. It's cold, cold, cold in that unfinished basement which really does a lot of good since they're not overly shocked when the seedlings get transplanted to the garden sometime this month.

The lettuce and chard do well also, but never can help getting a little leggy no matter how close I get them to the light.

I had almost lost hope on the celery. Just when I was about to call it a bust, look at the center cell on the left!
Woohoo! I may just get one celery stalk after all. I'm pretty excited about them, so we'll see how it goes.

Now all I need is a timer. I keep forgetting to turn the light off at night and the broccoli and cabage are showing a bit of angst about that.

As soon as I get these guys in the ground the tomato seedlings will go in here. That's the only bad thing about the set up - there's not much space there. Last year we were so lucky with such beautiful, warm weather so early. This year, I'm not as hopeful, but we'll make due. Hopefully it will be warm enough to where I can keep the seedlings inside over night and move them outside when I leave for school in the morning. That would work out very, very well.

Hope everyone's seeds are coming along nicely!

4 comments:

  1. Things are coming along nicely! This means mine aren't far behind LOL, I better get moving! I am so anxious to see how the celery does, my experiment is the asparagus and artichoke this year - the choke died last year LOL

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  2. I knew I needed a timer when I put mine up. There is no way I can remember to turn the lights on and off. The new shop lights need three prong plugs and the old ones only needed two, so I had to buy a new and better timer. Ah well. Your seedlings are coming along great. I always have issues with my chard too, but never my lettuce. I don't think I let it grow very long indoors.

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  3. Yep, it doesn't take an expensive setup to grow nice transplants. In all, i've invested close to 2 grand in my setup - but then again, i'm not normal. Ha!

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  4. You can't knock whatever works! LOL Good luck with the celery. I never did get the knack of that. Cheers.

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