Catch-Up: Seedlings and Monsters

I started my condo garden in late March. I started this blog yesterday, Earth Day. So, I'm catching you up on my past progress (and regress).

After I got the first set of strawberries settled, I decided to start a seedling garden in one of those multi-cell greenhouse kits. I used the Burpee ecofriendly seed starting 36-cell greenhouse kit because the 36-cell configuration seemed a good size (and later proved to be a perfect size for a bakers rack I later purchased to use as an indoor plant stand).

I also purchased some seeds. I chose:

• multi-colored sweet bell peppers (I had pepper failure last year, so this is a retry)
• English peas (this is the variety that you do not eat the pod
• Spring onions
• herbs: basil, dill, rosemary, dill and lavender.

Here's my original seed starting greenhouse from April 2, 2011: The germination sheet creates a sort of greenhouse effect keeping in warmth and moisture. I watered this mostly by misting with a spray bottle.

Basil came up first, then the peas followed by the spring onions. It took a longer time for the peppers and the lavender. The rosemary never came up.

Below, one of the English pea plants emerged with gusto:

Apart from the rosemary and slow moving lavender, this appeared to be working out well, so I tried another greenhouse kit planting green beans and spinach. The beans came up fast and furious. They looked like little monsters emerging from an egg:

Two spinach seedlings are in the background (click on the picture to enlarge), looking a little afraid. As it turned out the spinach was rightfully scared. The beans grow long, tough roots and they seemed to suck the water right out of the greenhouse kit and away from the spinach. Only two spinach plants germinated from this kit.

As the seedlings (my seedies, as I called them) grew, I started to replant them in little peat pots. The beauty of the peat pot is that it can be replanted directly into the larger container when the seedling is big enough. The problem with peat pots is that they dry out quickly. I learned the hard way with my English peas that you can go from wonderful to carnage quickly and had to do an emergency replanting one night.

Here are some of the seedies replanted in their peat pots:

English peas and spring onions moved out of the complex into their own places. 

I had planned to keep the seedies in their peat apartments until the weather broke good and I could replant them in their ultimate planters and put the outside. However, after admiring the English peas one night, I woke to near pea carnage. The little seedlings drooped to near death as the peat pots dried out. I had to go downtown for a hearing, so I watered them well in an attempt to keep them until I returned. When I got home that afternoon, I did an emergency replanting. I also noticed the beans were busting out of their seed starter cells so I replanted them along with the peas in a window box planter:

Everybody seems pretty happy now:

Yes, you are seeing a spring onion thrown in there.

However, I do wonder if the beans, with their long and sturdy roots are going to take needed water away from the peas. It's a problem for me because I don't have enough room on the balcony for so many individual planters. I've planned on grouping several different plants together as I did with the cranberries and blueberry bush.

What I learned:

1. Peat pots can dry out quickly.

2. You have to do some research to see which plants can happily share a container. I'm still not sure the beans are going to be good neighbors to the peas and the one spring onion.

3. You have to be ready to replant when the plants are ready, not when you are ready.

4. The Burpee website has a lot of helpful information on the seeds and plants.