The seeds for our summer garden came in the mail this week! The overwhelming majority of them will be directly sowed into the garden when the time comes - pumpkins, carrots, beans, peas, melons, and flowers. But this year I also ordered two packages of paste tomatoes and bell peppers to attempt starting all our plants from seed.
So many seeds! SO much excitement on my part!
My darling helpers.
We bought a special seed starting mix this year and after scrolling the internet/pinterest, decided to use egg cartons as our containers.
The kids enjoyed spooning the soil into the cartons.
Immense concentration.
I never would have guessed it, but this one was more careful and spilled less than her brother!
Mid-sentence - he was explaining exactly how to do it to his sister.
Once we finished planting the seeds, we came inside to create our "incubator" of sorts. I read online that one way to keep the seeds slightly warmer is to put Christmas lights in a plastic container and cover them with cat litter. I've had a bucket of cat litter in the attic for three years and of course we have Christmas lights! Perfect, no additional cost for us!
The more they tried to cover the lights with the litter, the more they became uncovered. Eventually, we had to pour it all out and start over. We were never able to completely cover the lights, but we came close and I refuse to buy more cat litter.
Ta-da! Our set-up. It's so high tech. The windows in our office/crafting room get excellent morning sun. We brought in a small folding table from the shed and we're all set. I'm praying the sun and warming bed will be enough. We've never had any success with seeds in the past, but we've never put much attention and/or time into it. I really hope this year we can have success!
This was perfect timing with the kids because this week we just started learning several verses/songs about spring and gardening. It was fun to not only sing about planting the seeds, patting the dirt, and waiting for the plants to emerge, but to do it!
Completely unrelated, but FYI - Tech is supposed to let us know if Hubby has been accepted after April 5th. So much for knowing in February, the first of March, early March, or even March at all. My guess is we'll know by June.
Ooo! Excited to see how your seeds come up! We were getting a little sad around here about ours...two weeks...nothin'...and then boom! There are some poking their little heads up! So don't give up after a week or two...we almost did!
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