Tools

Bought a new greenhouse

Jenni — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 05:44:36 +0000

Bought a new greenhouse Jenni Sun, 03/20/2016 - 22:44

So the shelf greenhouse I originally bought had some issues, such as the zipper being broken. Then I found out some of the pieces that snap together had cracks in them. As such, I took it back to the store to exchange it. They were out of what I wanted, but offere me the larger greenhouse at a discount. I didn't think that was going to be an option, but my complex was pretty cool about it and said I could indeed have it. So now I have a nice walk-in greenhouse available on my patio.

I plan on having this up for about a month until we get through these temperature fluctuations that we have in early spring. For instance, a couple days ago there was ice on the cars and the bird bath was frozen. Yesterday it was in the mid 60s outside and sunny. Today it's in the low 50s and rainy. The greenhouse will help protect the little seedlings until they're ready to go into the ground.

I put it together myself, which is quite a feat since I'm in a back brace. Just goes to show how easy it goes together. Then our 13 year-old came out and helped me move it into place, put the cover on it, put in the shelves, and bring in the plants. It looks really nice on the patio. Now everything seems so much neater than it did when I had trays of seedlings sitting everywhere.

Its doing it's job, too - today it is cool outside, but inside the greenhouse it's nice and warm. Of course the slugs have found their way in, leaving trails on the sides of the greenhouse. I'll be sure to put in some organic slug bait soon.

Topic

Tools

Setup

Greenhouse

Replaced the lights

Jenni — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 05:55:29 +0000

Replaced the lights Jenni Mon, 03/14/2016 - 22:55

Well, I found that I really liked the other light I purchased better, so I packed up all the lights that I had purchased and returned them. When I bought them they weren't what I had wanted in the first place, and the way I had them hooked up made it difficult for me to water plants, move them around, etc. They'd said if they didn't work out I could bring them back within 30 days and that's exactly what I did. Now I have the new lights hooked up and I hope these are going to work better for me. It's much easier dealing with one light, two cords, and two chains on each shelf than two lights, two cords, and four chains. Ended up saving about $100 this way.

Topic

Bought a new light...

Jenni — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 05:41:07 +0000

Bought a new light... Jenni Sun, 03/13/2016 - 22:41

So Friday I went out to buy a new set of lights for the third shelf since my eggplant had popped up and I didn't want it to get too "leggy". Went to my usual store and they only had one light (I needed two). They said they might have more in later in the day, but didn't know. Didn't even offer to put one aside or order one. I bought what they had and then ran around town trying to find another. No such luck.

So I went to Home Depot to see what they had. Couldn't find any 4' T5 lights that plug in, but did find some T8 ones. They were just under $18. Then a set of two daylight bulbs for the fixture was like $9. So for less than $27 I got a light that actually works better than the T5 ones I bought previously. They're brighter and are longer (even though all of them are supposed to be 4'). So I think I am going to see about taking these other ones back and replacing them. I haven't been entirely happy with them, but they were what I could find. For the $40+ I spent on each one, I would expect more.

If you go to Home Depot looking for them, here is what I got:

Topic

How-to: My setup

Jenni — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:44:00 +0000

How-to: My setup Jenni Sun, 02/21/2016 - 22:44

Over the last few years, I've learned a lot about growing vegetable, herb, and flower starts indoors. The first few years I just put them under my dining room light and a lamp and wondered why they were so spindly and weak looking. Why they often times died. Then I realized that they must not be getting enough light.

We have a grow store nearby that sells lighting, plant food, light stands, trays, and more for growing plants indoors. A good amount of it is targeted to marijuana growing (which is legal in my state), but is also excellent for growing your seedlings indoors.

Lighting setup

I went in and talked to an employee and explained what I was doing. They sold me a Hydrofarm 4' light that has 6 tubes as well as a 4' Jump Start stand that can hold the light. This pretty much covers my entire dining room table, even when I have in the leaf. I absolutely love this light. It is amazing the difference between when I was just growing them under a lamp and when I got a real grow light. The plant grow stronger, bigger, and faster than under just a plain old light.

This will be the third growing season that I've used the lamp and stand. They've served me well. And when we had an issue with some of the connectors breaking on the stand, Jump Start sent me new ones at no charge. Excellent company and I love their products. Thus far I have not had to replace any of the bulbs and I have my light on about 12 hours a day for a few months. I haven't noticed much of an increase in our electricity from them, either.

This year I decided to increase the amount of seedlings I can grow at a time, so I purchased a heavy duty shelf at Home Depot, some chains and s-biners to hang the lights, and some more 4' grow lights. I originally planned to do one light per shelf for 3 of the shelves, so I bought three lights. But after hanging them, I realized that I wasn't getting quite as much light as I might like when the lights were down low, so I decided two lights per shelf might be best. So I went ahead and set it up that way. I currently have two shelves covered and will be purchasing two more sets to do a third shelf. The other two shelves are being used for storage, such as seeding soil, trays, tray lids, and pots.

Each shelf can hold 4.5 trays. I have a few of the little in the window trays I bought a while back, and those are right at half the size of a regular tray, so they work great. I'm actually using both the lid and the tray as trays, so that allows me to fill up more space. So between the shelves I'm currently using and the table I have about 17 trays worth of seedlings going right now.

So that I don't have to remember to turn the lights on/off at the right time, I bought a timer that does this for me. It's specially made for growing indoors, so it has two settings - bloom and grow. With bloom the lights are on for 12 hours per day, while with grow they are on for 16 hours. I just tell it what time I want the lights to come on and it does the rest from then on. I believe I can also create my own setting, but I find these two are all that I need. I picked this up at my local grow store, Grow World.

Seedling soil

At first I was using a seedling soil by Miracle Gro, as it was the only thing I found in the stores. However, a lot of people don't like using their products because it's not organic. That meant I didn't sell as many of my extra seedlings.

Two years ago, though, I had a hard time finding it in the store and instead found a larger bag by another company that was indeed organic. I tried it and since then I haven't used anything else. It's called Jiffy Organic Seed Starting Mix. Ever since I started using it, my seedlings have grown so much better than they ever did in the past. Best part is that it's right around $5 for a 12 quart bag, which is less than I was paying for a smaller bag of the other stuff.

It's taken me about 6 bags worth of this to do the 17 trays that I have out right now. The nutrients that are in the soil do a really good job of lasting until the plants are ready to be transplanted in the ground, which means you don't need to add any nutrients while they're growing - just water and lights. Which is even more money saved.

I'm hoping to find it somewhere in bulk so that I can buy larger quantities of it at a lower price, but right now I just run to the feed store, Home Depot, etc. and pick up bags as I need them.

Pots and trays

I use a variety of pots while I am growing my seedlings. I start out with the small cell ones where there are 6 cells to a block and 12 blocks fit in a tray. This is a good size for starting them, as it allows for a lot of plants to be started at once. The cells have holes in the bottom to allow the roots to reach the water that you put in the bottom of the tray.

Once the plants get larger, I move them up to bigger pots. Plants that will be pretty large as seedlings, such as beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant get moved up to pots that are about 3.5"x3.5" at the top and about 4" tall. Ones that won't get as large as seedlings, such as greens, go into peat pots that are about 2.5"x2.5" and 2.5" tall. This gives them more room to grow and the peat pots can be put right into the ground.

Some plants, though, I will leave in those smaller cell planters and transplant directly from there. This includes root vegetables like onions, which prefer not to be transplanted a lot since it damages their roots.

I had been buying these one seed starter pots where 18 of them fit in the same space as 72 of the smaller ones. Last year I invested a bunch of money into them, probably buying a dozen or more sets. Then I couldn't figure out what was wrong and why my plants weren't growing right. Turns out that they completely forgot to put the holes in the bottom of the pots, so all the water I was pouring into the bottom of the tray wasn't doing anything at all - the plants couldn't get any water. I tried and tried to get NK Lawn & Garden to replace them, but all I got was the run-around. When they did finally send me something in the mail, it was a pack of small peat pots and some seeds. Nothing compared to the money I had spent on faulty pots. I ended up having to carefully snip holes in them myself so that my plants could grow properly. This year I have refused to buy any of them even though they appear to have fixed the issue.

Instead this year I bought a bunch of pots from Amazon. For $20 (and free shipping since I'm a Prime member), I got 150 pots of approximately the same size. Pretty good deal seeing as I was paying about $6 for a tray with 18 pots. If I need trays, I can get them for about a buck at the store. That means I pay about 20 cents per pot (with tray) as compared to about 36 cents. I got them for so cheap because I buy the "factory seconds" ones, which means they're the ones at the bottom of the case that gets a little squished. There's absolutely nothing wrong with them other than them being a little bent and such - no breakage or anything. In fact, when I opened up the case I would have never guessed they were factory seconds. You can find the regular ones for about $40 for the 150 pots or click on the link for the "used" ones and that will take you to the factory seconds (they're not actually used, it's just how they are classified). Even at the regular price it's still cheaper than the other ones I bought.

And then I bought a bunch of peat pots online as well to use for all my greens. I like them because they are easy to pop apart in order to fit them into various sized trays and around other packs of cells or pots. I may end up ordering another pack of these this year.

When it comes to trays, I'm not too picky. As long as they seem fairly stable, are the correct size, and have no holes, I'm good with them. I especially like those that are one seamless area, as then I can pour water into one corner and it'll fill the entire tray. The ones that came with those NK pots have individual holes for each pot, which kind of defeats the entire purpose since you have to remove almost every pot in order to water the plants.

Topic

Tools

Lighting

How-to

A big upgrade

Jenni — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 07:07:59 +0000

A big upgrade Jenni Fri, 02/05/2016 - 23:07

So this year I decided to put in a big upgrade to my seedling growing setup. I've been very successful ever since I added a nice big grow light over my seedlings. That led to a lot more extra seedlings, which meant a good amount of sales of my plants. Last year was a very good year, which meant some money left over after paying for all the expenses related to growing the plants. As such, I decided to put that towards an upgrade in my system.

I've now bought a nice heavy duty shelf, three smaller grow lights, and a daisy chain cord so that I only need one power cord for all three lights. This will allow me to have a setup on the dining room table under the really big light as well as three shelves of trays. Each shelf will fit at least 4 trays, if not more.

I'm so excited about this setup, as it means all of the plants will have good access to light instead of me having to regularly rotate them so that they all get some time under heavy light and some under the outskirts of the light. The plan is to get this set up in the next week or so, as I'll be starting the peppers, tomatoes, etc. later this month. This will allow for even larger seedlings than I've been able to grow before, which would make them even hardier and more likely to better make the transition to outside.

Topic

Tools

Lighting

Setup

Transplanting herbs

Jenni — Sun, 15 Mar 2015 05:57:13 +0000

Transplanting herbs Jenni Sat, 03/14/2015 - 22:57

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.

My herbs have just loved these planters. They attach to the post on my patio and I can hang several of them all together. I started out with three, which I have used for chives and basil. This year I am moving the cilantro there as well. I also picked up one more set of three planters at Home Depot the other day. We had to dig to find the only set that was even close to being complete. Mine are black, but apparently they come in a terracotta color as well. I like the black, as it makes the soil nice and warm, which the plants seem to love.

The planters are made by Fiskars and you can check them out here.

Topic

Problems with planters

Jenni — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 06:02:52 +0000

Problems with planters Jenni Mon, 03/09/2015 - 23:02

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.

This is a pretty big problem, as the key to these seedlings doing so well is the easy access to water without needing to water the soil (and get the plant all wet). As such, I am taking a pair of scissors to each one and cutting a slit on each side like they would have if they were made correctly.

So if you buy some of these pots, be sure to pull up the pots out of the tray and make sure they are made correctly.

Topic

Tools

Setup

Mistakes

Another planting year begins

Jenni — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 07:07:56 +0000

Another planting year begins Jenni Sun, 02/22/2015 - 23:07

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.

Seeling Soil

In the past I've used the Miracle Grow seedling soil, but it comes in a pretty small bag and can be expensive. This year I noticed that Jiffy has a bag of seedling soil that is about the same price, but a larger bag (12qt as compared to 8 qt). I'd heard good things online about it, so I purchased that to use this year instead. There's also the added bonus of the mix being organic as well. Seedling soil is always good to use for starting plants by seed, as it is specially made to provide a seedling with everything they need, minus water and light.

If you look for this at the store, the package might be slightly different. The bag I had said something like "Natural & Organic" instead of just "ORGANIC". Apparently they did a slight change to the front of the bag this year.

Seedling Greenhouse

Because we had to clear everything from our patio last year so they could paint, all of my seedling planters, pots, etc. were all boxed up and went to storage. Of course nothing got marked, and it's been months since everything was moved, so my husband can't remember where in storage he put the boxes. So I went ahead and bought new planters this year. I had some of these last year and thus far I've found they work really well.

They're by NK Lawn & Garden and are a 72 cell "mini greenhouse". The set comes with a watering tray, tray of cells (which you can pop apart into individual 6 cell sets), a clear cover, and instructions. I like using the clear cover until the plants get too tall to be able to stand upright. Often times I will take the cover off during the day so that the seedlings get maximum light exposure, but then put it back on later in the day and through the night. This helps keep in moisture and heat. That is especially important while you wait for the seeds to pop up.

Seedling Markers

I went onto Amazon looking for seedling supplies, particularly seeds I couldn't find in the store and plant markers. I had used popsicle sticks in the past (you can buy a big box at Michaels), but I found that they often promoted fungus growth once they were wet. So this year I decided I wanted to use plastic markers. I looked at the store, but they were a little spendy for a small pack. I ended up finding a pack of 100 of them on Amazon for about what a 15 pack went for at the store.

These markers help me to keep track of what I have planted, which is especially important when you plant multiple items that look the same, such as different varieties of the same plant (Roma tomatoes, Beefsteak tomatoes, etc.). I use permanent marker on them to ensure that nothing wears off or rubs off.

Seedlings

But the most important thing I needed was seeds. And lots of them. I always like growing a variety of items. As such, it's not uncommon for me to have 20+ different plants growing at one time. This year I'm doing 30 different plants.

A lot of my seeds I pick up at the store when I'm out shopping. Whenever I go into a feed store, grocery store, dollar store, etc. I always look to see if they have seeds. Usually by about January they start putting out their seeds. I grab a few here and there until I have everything I need. This year one brand that I like - Home Farmer - still hadn't showed up at Walmart. I grew their Asian Fingers Eggplant last year and loved it. I like making curry and having easy access to fresh eggplant is always a bonus. Because I couldn't find the Home Farmer ones - or them from any other seedling company - I had to resort to buying online.

I was looking at buying from one of my many seedling catalogs I requested this year, but many either came too late or had too high of shipping for a single packet of seeds. I'm planning on buying from them next year, as they have some interesting varieties and often times throw in free seed packets to try. It was just too late for me this year. So I went and looked at Amazon.

I ended up finding a big packet of the eggplant seeds I needed for a really great price. Not only that, but I found some seeds I wouldn't have thought about growing before - snapdragons, pansies, and bluebonnets. The first two I always just bought at the store and the last one is something about Texas that I really miss. So I picked up some of those as well.

When my seeds arrived, I also got a bonus pack of artichoke seeds. So I figured "why not?" and am growing those as well.

Now that I had all of my necessary pieces to start gardening, the next step was bringing it all together.

Topic

Tools

Setup