Things are getting busy for me here with seed starting activities and with taking care of a growing number of little plants. I’ve got lettuce and arugula plants growing in salad boxes and containers in the greenhouse. And I’ve got kale plants sizing up out there, waiting to go into the ground in a cold frame bed. Hopefully all these plants will start giving us a taste of greens by the end of the month, if not a bit sooner.
parsley ready for transplanting
Last week I potted up parsley, bronze fennel and catnip that I started in early February. These all went into 3.5″ pots, and are currently still under the lights in the basement. That area is rapidly filling up with plants however, and I will start shuffling the cold-tolerant ones out to the greenhouse soon to make room for the heat lovers inside. You can see a flat leaf parsley called Einfache Schnitt (easy cut) in the above photo before I pricked out and transplanted the seedlings into their own pots. I got good germination on all the parsley varieties so I will have to practice some gardening ‘tough love’ and cull the extras.
early tomato seedlings
Speaking of heat lovers, I already started a mix of small-fruited tomatoes to give us an extra early start on the season. I also started a few peppers and eggplants that I plan on growing in containers. After these started showing their true leaves I potted them up into a 50 cell plug flat. I’ll keep these inside for a couple of weeks until they need to be potted up again into larger quarters.
early tomatoes in 50 cell plug flat
Next up in the seed starting lineup, tomorrow I hope to get the main batch of peppers started. I’ll use a 200 cell plug flat for that, with plans to transplant to larger cells once they are up and going. I have so many varieties the 200 cell flat lets me get them (almost) all in one tray so I can find room on the heating mat and under the lights. After that, I have a few more spring greens like mustard and pak choi to get going, then mid-March I will start the main round of tomatoes. I also need to pot up the petunias into individual pots. They about a week ago and are still quite tiny, as you can see in the below photo.
petunias
As always, you can find my general timeline in my Seed Starting and Planting Schedule. I hope you have enjoyed this update, and I’ll be back soon with more happenings!
Your tomato plants already look really good, so wonderful. Even your parsley has true leaves on them. Peppers always take forever to germinate for me so they’re one of the first things I start.
I’m starting the peppers now because they take long for me too, and I sometimes have to replant if any don’t germinate.
Any seeds sown here would need woolly bonnets!
Wow, tomatoes and peppers already. I’ll start sowing them in about a month. In the meantime I’ve got seedlings for various brassicas that I’m afraid to put in the garden for fear of vole attacks. I think I’ve got my bed pretty secure now but the boogers manage to find the tiniest gaps in the defense. I just plugged up one little hole that they got through yesterday.
You are really up and running! I’ve got some onions & my peppers/eggplant started, but that’s about it for now. A 200 plug flat for peppers?! And here I am growing 32 and thinking THAT’S a lot 😉 I’m assuming some are “extras”, just in case you need them and will be given away if you don’t. How many will actually get planted into the ground?
Yes, many will be extras. Us old IT guys gotta have lots of backups! 😉 I’m also allowing for some that don’t germinate. I plan on growing around 75 pepper plants this year, around 60 in the ground and the rest in containers.
i live in rural Nova Scotia Canada . I planted garlic in fall . When can i start my flower seeds ? I need them for my bees
Gosh, I have no idea when you would start flower seeds there. It would depend on what kind of flower, whether it can take cold weather, and so on. Sorry I can’t be of any help!