My plants have been growing like crazy. We've transplanted the zucchini and cucumbers outside and they're getting used to the temperature and such on the patio. We started getting a lot of rain and such after that, so I've been waiting to be able to do the squash and pumpkins so that I have the room to start moving my peppers and eggplants into bigger containers.

I've really got to get a moment this weekend to transplant the squash, zucchini, pumpkins, and cucumbers outside. They are getting so big that their leaves overlap each other. They're also blocking the light from some of my smaller seedlings, like the eggplant and peppers.

My peas are doing pretty good. They seem to be loving the weather we've had lately. Even when we had the heavy rain they didn't mind, as I have them tucked under the patio where they still get sunlight, but not all the bad weather.

So today it's time to transplant more of my seedlings. This time it's the herbs. Once they start to get several true leaves on them, I go ahead and move them to the planters they'll be in outside. I go ahead and plant them all, as I know only some will make it through the process. If several of them end up growing large, I'll transplant them again to another set of these planters that I have, which means more herbs for me! ;)

With the basil I can also transplant it into some of my larger tomato planters once those are going, as the two plants love to be together.

Lately it's mostly been watching the plants grow and make sure they have the light and water that they need.

Took long enough - I was really worried about these seeds. I had already planted a second batch because they hadn't popped up. But today several small baby snapdragon plants were visible in the planters. They are tiny - probably the tiniest of all my seedlings - so I almost missed them. 

So over the last few days I've been transplanting all of the bigger seedlings into larger pots. The first ones were my zucchini. Every day I've been checking the watering tray to make sure there was still water. Not only was there still water, but it was about the same level. That really perplexed me today, so I decided to look further.

Turns out that the planters have a problem from when they were manufactured - the holes are missing. As such, the plants can't get to the water in the tray.

I was able to pick up some more of the flats of larger seedling containers as well as more seedling soil, so I did a lot more transplanting today. My husband and sister helped me to clear the table, move the light and stand, and add the leaf to the table so that there was more room. That allowed me to have plenty of room for all of the plants.

I spent some more time transplanting plants today. I had only picked up four flats of the larger pots yesterday, so I was limited in how many plants I could do. So I finished off the squash and did a bunch of the cucumbers. 

Did you know that cucumber plants smell like cucumbers? I love working with them because of their smell.

Today I did one of the things that is hardest for me - thinning plants. Each of my seedlings is like a baby to me and I have a hard time getting rid of them. Last year I carefully separated each extra tomato plant and then replanted them. Almost every one of them survived. But that meant I had a LOT of tomato plants. Way too many. I had a hard time even giving them all away.

Now that my zucchini is getting big, it's about time to move them up to the next sized container. This gives the plant more room to grow, more soil to pull nutrients from, etc. If you wait too long, you can kill your plants.

I wait for the first "true leaves" to show up and grow to a good size. By this point the plant is already bigger around than the little spot it's in, which means they all start crowding each other. Then I transplant.

So yesterday I was working on transplanting zucchini and squash into bigger containers. However, I forgot to make certain that every set of 6 seedlings had a marker in them. So about 20 minutes into the process I realized that I wasn't certain which plant was which. And have you ever tried to tell what plant is a crookneck squash, a straightneck squash, and a pumpkin plant? It gets easier once the plants are bigger, but at this size they essentially look identical.

There are some items I grow from seeds that go directly outdoors when they reach a certain size. Onions and peas are two of those (beans would be a third). Regular onions I plant directly outdoors since they have a large seed onion. Bunching onions, on the other hand, are tiny seeds and seem to work best if I start them indoors. These are onions that you would grow for their stems - green onions. I love green onions and eat them on a lot of things. As such, I try to grow at least two window boxes of these every year.

More and more true leaves are popping up everywhere. I can tell it's getting pretty close to time to transplant some of these seedlings. When I lift up the pots in order to put water in the watering tray I can see a lot of roots hanging down. I can just imagine what the root system must be like inside the pots. Don't want to let those roots get too crowded - that is a good way to kill your seedlings.

I have a number of plants that overwinter and bolt in the spring or have been with me for many years. This year I'm a bit worried about some of them. Normally my strawberries do great, going into a sort of hibernation through winter and then popping back up in the late winter. However, because we did not have much of a winter this year, it is looking like a lot of them died. I may end up having to replace a lot of my strawberry plants this year.

I was so happy today, as a little piece of Texas popped up in my seedling garden.

Every year there are two plants that worry me the most when I grow them from seeds - peppers and eggplants. They always seem to take the longest to grow. All of my other plants are popping up and putting on inches while not a bit of soil disturbance is seen over in the peppers and eggplants. It never fails that I start to worry - did I over water them? Under water them? Was it not warm enough? Too warm? Did I get bad seeds? Every day I worry about them until they finally start popping up.

Today I started noticing the first "true leaves" are starting to open on a number of the plants. That's amazing since it's only been 8 days since I first planted the seeds. When you figure the germination timetable on most of these is 10+ days, it's so surprising to have them not only germinated but also first true leaves in only 8 days.

So today my first artichoke popped up. I've never grown these before - never even cooked one. But I do love eating them. I hadn't even planned to grow any, except that I got a free packet of seeds from the place I ordered my Asian Fingers Eggplant from. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to grow something new, so I decided to give the seeds one set of 6 pods to try growing it.

It seems like every morning when I get up there is a lot more growth. Today there's lots of tomatoes popped up. Yesterday a few had just barely broken the surface and now there are more than a dozen standing over an inch tall. What a difference a day makes. I'm growing a few varieties of tomatoes this year. I always do Roma Tomatoes, as they are great for sauce. I love making fresh spaghetti sauce. And of course I need some slicing varieties. I like tomatoes on BLTs and hamburgers and it's always nice to be able to use a nice big fresh tomato from the garden. But I also like to make salsa.

It's amazing sometimes to see how quickly plants can grow just in a matter of days. The plants that just popped up two days ago are already about 2"+ tall.

I like to take pictures of them each day - often times once in the morning and once at night. This helps me next year when I look back to compare growth, germination, etc. I also have the plants in a busy area - the dining room table - so I walk past them a lot. This allows me to check on how they're doing.

I had a hard time finding some of the seeds I wanted in the store, so I decided to look online. I ended up not only buying the plant I really wanted - Asian Fingers Eggplant - but also some flowers as well. I haven't done flowers from seeds in many, many years and even back then it was marigolds. And anyone who's had those knows it's super easy - just pinch the dried flower, pull everything out, and spread the seeds. 

I woke up on the morning of the 26th to find that my Baby Bok Choi had sprouted. By later in the day so had my Little Gem Romaine lettuce, and Straight Eight Cucumbers. The funny thing is that their germination times were 10-21 days, 7-10 days, and 7-14 days, respectively.

So now that I have everything I need, it's time to start planting seeds.

I start by filling all of the trays with seedling dirt. I don't pack the soil in hard, as I want the roots to have room to move and grow. But I do gently push down on it to ensure I didn't leave any big air pockets.

So it's the end of February, which means another planting year begins for me. Since our last frost date is usually March 27th, I know that I can start my seedlings around the end of February and have them ready for transplant by the time our last frost hits. So that means getting together my seedling pots, plant markers, and seedling soil.