This was welcome, because everything else has the slows, due to another spring of cool and damp conditions. The brassica seedlings I set out on May 1 are just sitting there pouting, and the radish, peas, turnips, and lettuce I planted from seed on April 23 are only just poking their heads up.
This year I debuted my new seed starting setup. It's a steel 6-shelf rack, from which I hung 4-foot LED shoplights daisy-chained together to the timer. The whole thing was quite inexpensive compared to the ones they sell in the garden catalogs. And you can fit four standard 1020 nursery trays on each shelf.
This now gives me the space to start a whole lot more tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants than I used to. The trouble now is the upcoming weather won't permit transplanting outdoors. But they keep growing.
I mentioned last year that I was going to experiment with straw-bale planting. On Saturday I bought ten bales of Canadian straw from the local farmer who imports it. I placed them in the fenced garden and started the conditioning process. I had room for quite a few more bales, but at $10 apiece I thought I should start small for this year at least. If all goes according to plan I will be able to plant peppers in them by the end of the month.
That's all for now. Thanks for reading, and thanks to Dave at HappyAcres.blog for hosting Harvest Monday.
Cool and damp - sounds like our spring! We can always count on our asparagus to give us something when we really need it. That looks like a great light setup too. I've recently begun moving over to led fixtures for my lights too.
ReplyDeleteYou can spend a lot of money on LEDs, especially for those catering to the "special crop" growers, but the inexpensive ones I have seem to be doing a good job.
ReplyDeleteThat's some very fine looking asparagus. We are going to get some unusual cool and wet weather in the next few days, not extra heavy fog but real rain, an inch and then some.
ReplyDeleteThanks Michelle. Spring is not normally a wet time for you is it?
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