So far, my seed starting is going GREAT!   I can’t believe it!  In a house full of cats, they have left my little farm alone!  The pop bottles are a success!  I think it’s partially that they are big and bulky and there’s really no reason for the little twerps to bother these little greenhouses!  I have 27 going so far.  The 8 or so that I started first are really going to town.  They are mostly dollar store old seed packs of morning glory and moon flowers, and a few zinnias.  They are just starting to work on their second set of leaves!  Yah!

The rest, I started last weekend, and they are primarily slow starters, like a bunch of peppers and some herbs like catnip and lavendar.  The peppers can take up to 21 days to sprout, so I think I’m pretty safe with them being started soon.  I haven’t seen any sprouts yet, but it’s only been a week.  I also planted a couple rouge pumpkins and broccoli, too!

My plan is that something will be ready to get in the ground when it’s warm enough.  The soil temperatures around here are really warm for some reason… 40 degrees or so.  That is a great sign of a good early spring.  We just never got super cold this year.  Not that I’m complaining at all!  It’s helping our heating bills considerably.  And I think I’ll be able to get stuff into our straw beds early, especially with a little row cover to protect from chills.

And if I plant my greenhouses in weekly or so succession, even if one early batch gets a little leggy on me, I’ll have another batch that will be a little younger.  There’s a weird bit of reason to my madness…  I think!  I’m just so pleased on how the little greenhouses are doing.  Once they get really crowded, I’ll remove the top lids.  I made sure to give them lots of dirt so that I don’t have to transplant them at all.  Just into the beds!

Maggie just fixed our wheelbarrow… the front wheel was old and leaking air all the time, so we finally just bought a new one and OH MY GOSH… how much better that is!  It’s actually a joy to use now.  So that means we can start to fill up our straw beds a lot easier!  We have 4 barns to clean out of the deep bed litter in the next month, so we want to get started on that.  Pony and sheep barns are first, so that should commence this week…  And then when we start to dig our pond, we’re going to dirt good farm dirt for the tops of our raised beds from a hole that is going to be our pond eventually.  One wheel barrow load at a time!

I hope to start another 10 or so this weekend.  I have this huge stash of old seeds and so far, only one pack has been a total dud.  Since they are upwards to 3 years old, I figure if they start, great!  If they don’t, well, then shame on me, I should have used them earilier. I’ve gotten a few packs of new seeds here and there, some I’ll direct sow when it’s time, some I might start in the next couple weeks.  Just thrilled to have some seedlings this year without all the space, time and critter drama of the past!   This is awesome!!!