It’s been over two weeks now and the seedlings are doing really well. I transplanted a few of the taller ones over to individual containers, just to give them a bit more breathing room and make it easier to transplant outside when it comes time to do so. Just about everything has sprouted at least one of its seeds, including an apple seed. For some reason only one of the banana pepper seeds has come up so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Oh, and no luck on any of the pear seeds yet.

Found this little guy on the side of our house just a few days ago. He’s only about 4 or 5 inches tall.

Wow… This was a bit unexpected. Two sets of the romaine seedlings have already germinated as well as one of the cucumbers…

My daughter and I sowed this year’s seeds in a starter tray this afternoon. I’ve got them sitting in my studio under a 75 watt fluorescent light bulb on a timer that will stay on for about 16 hours per day. If all goes well, in about 6 – 8 weeks they should be ready to be brought outside. The tray has a clear plastic dome lid that sits on top and is able to turn the thing into a mini greenhouse. I’m hoping I see a difference in these seedlings from the ones I started last year in just a simple foil tray without the enclosure. I also used a couple drops of Superthrive in my spray bottle and filled the tray liner with about 1/4″ of the water/Superthrive mixture.

Of the seeds I kept from last year, we added the cherry tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and the cucumbers. I’ve got two other varieties of tomatoes in there as well as another cucumber. I probably didn’t need to start the cucumbers at all, seeing as how last year when I first tried my hand at this, I threw them into the containers outside around May and was picking huge fruit just a couple months later. There’s also broccoli, romaine lettuce, and banana peppers in there. Of the herbs I wanted to try this year we added basil, parsley, and rosemary.

I started looking through and sorting the seeds for our garden this year. Over the holidays I had picked up a handful from Burpee, but I also kept some from last year’s yield. The last frost around here should be somewhere between the end of April and beginning of May so getting them started indoors this week should give them plenty of time to sprout and get situated. For giggles, I recently kept some pear and apple seeds to see if I can get them to grow. The likelihood of them growing is probably slim, and even if they do, the likelihood of the trees bearing fruit is even slimmer… regardless, it’ll be fun to see what happens.