Our Life Together

March Madness.

It is a bit of March Madness of a different sort at the Durbin household. Not a madness of basketball, but a madness of gardening. While everyone is geared up for the SEC tournament and looking forward to making their brackets, we’re running around trying to figure out the future of our backyard. A trip to this lovely seed center last weekend got us started. The biggest difference between this year and last is growing plants from seed. Last year we only moved in our home at the end of May. While we had pots of herbs going, we were able to only put in a few plants in the yard, plants already beyond the seedling stage. Thanks to tomato plants and a “cucumber” plant (that we later discovered was a weed…. man did we feel duped!) from our neighbor, a purchased zucchini plant (that produced nothing…) and a bell pepper plant (that gave us 1 pepper), we had a modest vegetable garden in 2009.

This year, we are foraying into the world of growing from seeds. But not wanting to put all our risky eggs in one basket, we decided to buy two vegetables to grow from seed, and two to get that were already started for us.

If you had put these two plants side-by-side, I would not know which was broccoli and which was brussel sprouts. They look nearly identical! For seed starting, we chose mini bell peppers and spinach, along with several culinary herbs: basil, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, spearmint, and thyme.

Next we gathered some worthy supplies to begin our seed endeavor.

We up-cyled plastic yogurt cups, sour cream and butter containers to hold my seeds. But I needed to prep them by inserting drainage holes. I carefully used a knife to make small Xs and a few holes in the center for this purpose.

Then I used the (sterilized, store-bought) soil and vermiculite to fill the cups and gave it a nice watering. I read many sites that indicated traditional watering cans produced forceful sprays of thick water that would, essentially, wash the seeds away. I improvised by making a fine watering container with a used sour cream cup and lid. I poked holes into the lid by using a nail. Then by squeezing the inverted lidded sour cream container, I achieved the fine water spray that I was aiming for. (I have a few reservations about this: it seems the fine mist of a water sprayer would do just as well. In addition, I’ve found that the container when squeezed sometimes leaks water out the sides that results in large, heavy droplets falling into our seed cups. Not the ideal sought after.)

Then it was just a matter of placing several seeds in each container, making labels, and covering the seeds with another thin layer of soil. I gave them a nice final watering, and put them under a humidifying dome.

The dome creates a greenhouse effect, which helps to spur sprouting. Once they sprout, the dome can be removed. Most of these plants take 4-8 weeks to be ready for transplant into our yard. It’s always a good idea to check for your region’s last frost date (Lexington is around April 13-15), before going forward with transplanting. Our goal is to have a raised bed built and ready the weekend after the last frost. So stay tuned as March Madness turns to an April Frenzy!