I am quite behind on sharing on the blog, but to be completely honest, there hasn’t been much to share. It has been a very busy beginning of the year with extra-curricular work, as well as regular work, and having a puppy. I actually backed away from some of the extra-curricular projects because I was hardly home and I was getting mentally exhausted. Top that with the unfortunate relationship between Berkley and Basil, and it has been a very chaotic past few months. Unfortunately, Berkley and Basil have resource aggression around each other, which has led to some big blowouts. To make the story short, my parents luckily were looking to get a dog, and now our beautiful, sassy, Berkley has moved in with them. Basil & Berkley will still be able to play as they do get along most of the time. My parents get a lovely dog. And Kurt and I get to relax in our own house again. Plus we get to see Berkley as much as we want. It was a tough decision but so far has worked out in the best possible way.

Anyways, that is the update for the last 2.5 months. So here we are in late winter preparing for the garden.

In February we remembered to get a better head start on some of our plants. On Feb 19 we pulled the first of three greenhouses out of the basement and set it up in the living room where it will get full sun during the day, assuming there is sun.

I then got some trays ready and planted our onions, shallots, leeks, rosemary, broccoli and cauliflower. Last year we learned that we really needed to keep the onion separated when planting. Although I did manage to untangle them when planting them in the garden, it was such a hassle. So this year I grabbed some trays that will break down and have 12 small slots per tray. I am hoping that this will give the onions a good space to get started and provide an easy transplant into the garden. I won’t plant the tray in the ground like it says you can because I don’t trust that it will break down as fast as it may need to. But it should be very easy to rip or cut off to transplant without too much disruption to the roots.

Our first broccoli and cauliflower planting (12 of each) started popping on Feb 24. Unfortunately, I think that the greenhouse was too far over the furnace element and the trays dried out so quickly that I couldn’t keep up. I am sure that I lost those first few plants that popped. I moved the greenhouse over, and have ensured that those trays stay dark and saturated to ensure the soil and seeds are happy, while not being soggy.

On March 8th, I managed to do a second planting of the broccoli & cauliflower so that we have some coming off at different times. I planted another 12 of each. We do plan on sharing our extra plants with family and friends, and will not be growing 24 plants of each.

Today, we decided it was time to pull out the other 2 greenhouses and get the rest of our indoor start plants going. The greenhouses that we bought last year were not the best, and were quite shaky and unstable, so putting them together this year, I had planned to tape a lot of the areas for extra support and security. I must have taken more time to set them up this year, because other than a few cracked areas, I didn’t have to do much reinforcement.

The day started off sunny, but unfortunately by noon it had clouded over. My original plan was to setup some tables on the grass and enjoy the sun while we planted the seeds. Plan B was using my woodworking table in the shop, which ended up working out really well. We turned on some tunes and started getting some seeds planted.

After getting all the plants we could possibly need in our garden sorted out, we realized we had a bunch of space in our little greenhouses still. So we decided to plant some extras for family. We did some extra tomato plants to share, as well as some herbs. I did a couple mix packs for my mom and sister, and Kurt got some plants started for his mom. On top of that we did some extra tomatoes and herbs for friends who may want them.

In total, we have 304 seeds started in the 3 greenhouses. Greenhouse 1 has 198 seeds. Greenhouse 2 has 44 seeds. Greenhouse 3 has 62 seeds. The list is as follows.

Our Garden:

• 6 – large pot roma tomatoes
• 4 – large pot big beef tomatoes
• 2 – large pot sweetie pie cherry tomatoes
• 4 – ground cherries
• 8 – thyme
• 8 – oregano
• 8 – sage
• 8 – tarragon
• 6 – basil
• 2 – cayenne peppers
• 8 – California bell peppers
• 48 – borettana onion
• 12 – cabernet onion
• 12 – leeks
• 48 – shallots
• 12 – rosemary
• 12 – celery
• 8 – cauliflower
• 8 – broccoli

Kurts Mom:

• 8 – medium pot roma tomatoes
• 4 – basil
• 2 – sage
• 2 – oregano
• 2 – tarragon
• 2 – thyme

My Mom & Sister:

• 2 – Herb planters with the following herbs in each 6-pack:
  • 2 basil
  • 1 sage
  • 1 oregano
  • 1 tarragon
  • 1 thyme
• 2 – large pot roma tomatoes
• 2 – large pot big beef tomatoes
• 2 – large pot sweetie pie tomatoes

Additions:

• 6 – medium pot roma tomatoes
• 2 – California bell peppers
• 4 – ground cherries
• 16 – broccoli
• 16 – cauliflower

As of this morning, the broccoli, onions, leeks and shallots were all popping out of the soil. As much as we hope that all of our seeds will germinate and come up, we do know that there will be some that do not. Already, we are sure we lost a couple broccoli and cauliflower, but we will have to see.

Based on checking out the cost of plants at local nurseries and grocery stores and averaging the pricing, we would have paid $1104. 74 for the equivalent of the plants that we started in our greenhouses that germinated and we were able to transplant. We paid $103.42 for all of our seeds last year, which meant we saved $1001.32 by starting our seeds. It will be interesting to see what our savings are this year based on what germinates and are able to be transplanted. I will have to start checking prices of plants in the coming months as I imagine the cost of them have likely gone up like everything else.