The First Seed Starting - March 2, 2022 @goldenoakfarm

On Wednesday I was up early and got started on the garden notes. Around 8AM, when I hoped my general helper would arrive, I cleaned up the mess on the table and proceeded to make a new one for the first seed starting.

There were only 4 trays for this one, a mix of vegetables, herbs, flowers, and 1 house plant.

While I made the notes on how I started each one and made the markers for the pots, she started filling the peat pots with seed starting mix and watering them with warm water.

Then I showed her how to do each kind of seed and why. She had wanted to learn this stuff. I also showed her all the notes for each type of plant.

Trays with onions and verbascum went on the bottom shelf as it had the heat mat. The tray with mesclun, pots for the arnica when it came in, and pink polka dot went on the middle shelf as they don’t like heat.

All the others were in small baking pans and covered with plastic wrap and put in the downstairs fridge.

Tom was here and figured out why the downstairs shower had lukewarm water. Apparently there’s an adjustment under the handle for water temp. Now I can finally have a hot shower if I want one.

Once everyone had left, I set back to work on the garden notes. Drawing the new maps really taxes one’s brain! But I will be glad to have them when I start working outside, as I won’t remember what I planted where in the new gardens.

Because I had not known the final set-up of seed starting infrastructure when I ordered the first set of lights, I didn’t have enough. I was cobbing reflectors for them, but they weren’t very good. And I had to build each one.

So I ordered more lights and these came with reflectors, bulbs, chains and hooks and were exactly what I wanted for close to the same price I had paid 2 years ago for the others. I will still have to use the others, but these will be easier to use.

The missing seed order arrived late afternoon. I will have to plant the arnica on Thursday. The onions will serve as backup if the old seed doesn’t come up.

On Thursday my cleaning helper will be here again and we will finish building lights and set up the area in the office with the new lights. I’ll also get some more work done on the garden notes.