The 2018 veggie gardening season has begun, at least for us!
Last year we had some real trouble getting our starts going when we wanted. One of the seed companies we rely on moved to a new warehouse and we didn’t receive our order ’til late March, way too late for most of the plants to get the kind of growth we want before transplanting outside. We’re still holding off on most of our starts, but after last year’s experience we want to get some celery and leeks going now. Since we’re getting our starting enclosure up and running we figured we’d give several varieties of our older seed a chance, to hedge our bets and continue experimenting with the best start times.
We put in a fair bit of work on the enclosure. We first put it together last year and it was pretty basic, just a wooden frame with plastic sheeting and fluorescent tube lights. We had decent germination rates but some very leggy plants, and we decided we needed to improve the light situation this time around. I did some looking and found some flexible-strip LED grow lights, and in the process of buying those discovered reflective mylar sheeting. I spent an afternoon last week taking the enclosure apart and putting it back together with the new stuff, and after a few tries felt satisfied with the result. Our first seeds arrived at the end of the week and we got them going on Sunday.
This morning while the coffee was brewing I checked in with everything. The bok choi got right to it, just like last year, and at least one of the other brassicas is showing some activity too. Not a bad thing to wake up to on a stormy winter day.
