Moving!!!

I have moved my blogs and am now blogging at www.kateskitchengarden.com.  If you were a follower, you can continue to follow me there.  You will have to re-sign up to get e-mail notifications when I post, if you are still interested.  Thanks!

Eggshells as Planters

Found another one to try...I am testing an idea I saw on Pinterest that links back to an article on Apartment Therapy.  Using eggshells as planters to start seeds in.  Looks simple.  I wonder if it really works?  They claim so, but remember I am not great at growing plants indoors.  Trying it with a half dozen eggs.  Planted peppers in them.  We shall see.  Here is the link to the article I looked at. 

Ordering Seeds

R.H. Shumway's Seed Catalog

It is a good time to start getting your seeds and starting some indoors if you haven't already.  End of February and first of March are perfect where I live for starting indoor seeds.  I am always excited to start getting the seed catalogs over the end of the winter and I save them for this time of year when I can start browsing through and then picking things to try and grow.  I always end up with more seeds than my garden can hold, but it seems to be just fine.  I have kept seeds for several years and they still germinate well.  I have ordered from R.H. Shumway's and Gurneys before with good results.  I have also heard good things about Johnny's Seeds.  I was not very impressed with Burgess when I ordered live plants from them.  Many of them didn't grow well or at all.  Their seeds were okay.  I would go with another company based on my experience.   There is a very cool tool on www.davesgarden.com called the Garden Watchdog.  It helps you pick a company to order from based on user reviews of the companies.  You may also want to check that out. 

Our local garden supply store donated all of last years leftover seeds to our church community garden this year!  I love that.  It is the second year that they have done so.  It works wonderfully well because they can't sell the older seeds (as far as I am aware) and our church family uses what it needs and then passes on the rest of the seeds to another community garden in the area.  A big thank you to Zamzows!!!

Follow up on the Avocado Seed

Avocado Seed Split Open

What the heck?  Here is a picture of what the avocado seed is doing now.  Is it supposed to do this?  I mean, I was excited at first to see the cracks at the bottom, but I expected to see a sprout come out soon after.  Instead the cracks have gotten huge, but there is no sign at all of any sprout.  I am going to give it a little bit longer and see what happens, but I am already thinking I may have to start this experiment over with a new seed.

Seed Starts

I have started my seeds in spite of the late snow storm.  Usually I have found that I don't do well with starting seeds indoors.  They always seem to do the horrible "dampening off" thing.  (I found this pretty good article on dampening off on a website called Dave's Garden.  I plan to try the peroxide and water spray suggested there to try to prevent it.)  Or they get dumped on the floor by a well meaning toddler.  Or I neglect the watering and they dry up and die.  Things do better when put in the ground outside for me where God can take care of them when I don't.  Automatic sprinklers also help.  But I often try to start seeds anyway when I am impatient.  A few days ago I washed some pots out and filled them with seed starting mix.  Josh and I stuck some seeds in the pots and moistened them. 

Fast forward a few days and my tomatoes are up!!!  I love it!!!  Josh is so excited.  Here you can see them poking up their tiny, green starter leaves on their thin, little stems.  I have added a little Miracle Grow potting soil to their pots and will continue to do so as they grow.  A good friend who does well with starting seeds offered me the advice to start with a little seed mix in the pot and then add potting soil as the plants get bigger.  She said that the seed mix doesn't have enough nutrients generally to sustain a larger plant very well.  I hope it works.  We planted several seeds in each pot and plan to thin to just one per pot as we see which is the strongest looking plant.       

Nothing else has come up yet, but I will keep you posted.  Oh, and just because...Elise wanted me to take her picture too. :)

Growing Big Plants From Seeds

I have a couple of things I want to try and so I am going to post pictures as I go.  Avocado and Italian Plum seeds.  Will they grow, will they die?  Stay tuned and find out.  (BTW I am not very skilled at growing anything indoors.  I always forget to water.)  We shall see.  I am following a Pinterest link that took me to this site to grow an avocado from a seed.  Here are the initial pics.   

Growing Avocados from Seeds

Those are the avocado pictures.  The Italian plum was a seed saved from a really good organic plum from a friend last summer.  It wasn't especially interesting to see and I just stuck it in a pot with some Miracle Grow potting soil from Costco (that's the Moisture Control one since I suck at watering) so I didn't take any pics of that one.  The kids are excited about both though.  Pinterest is about my favorite thing right now.  Such a good way to keep track of all the good stuff on the net!  Thank you Pinterest!

Snow again...

Stupid groundhog...