Optimism Needs Light

January 2010 –  I planted 72 seeds today, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, bok choi.  I planted them in an indoor, domed seed starting flat I bought at Ace Hardware for $5.99 yesterday.  I planted seeds I bought last year.  The whole experiment is pretty safe, at least fiscally.  I’ve steeled myself for failure.  I’m especially concerned about getting enough light for the seedlings when they hatch, uh, I mean germinate.  (am I taking this too seriously?  personally?  too much invested?)

I got the idea for such an early planting from the fact that my transplanted lettuce did quite well until the temperatures dipped to below zero.  Then, strong winds and bitter wind chills, blew my plastic row and flagging optimism’s cover clean off, exposing the lettuce to the frigid cold and my folly to all who cared to glance at the pathetic, frozen former lettuce transplants.  Still, here in Virginia close to the Potomac, mild winter weather stays late and starts early.  Thus my hopeful, early seed start.

Still, today, Martin Luther King jr. Day, January 18, 2010 is sunny and in the 50s.  A perfect day for gardening optimism.  Besides, I was buoyed by a trip to the big garden where I harvested a real, live turnip.  It’ll be part of the Tatties and Neeps we serve at Burns Night in a couple of weeks.  This tiny harvest energized me.  Plus for supper we ate garden green beans we froze in August, plus herbs I picked fresh while Anita cooked.  Which brings me back to planting seeds.  If I can grow and use fresh herbs in January, then at the end of Feb or early March, I’ll surely be able to set these seedlings out.

Starting Seeds Take Two – GALS 2/15 and 2/19

Well, being optimistic about planting seeds so early was very nice, but it didn’t work.  Why?  Not enough light.  No light, really.  I sort of knew that when I was planting the seeds, but I imagined some lame solution like putting the flat on the dining room table next to a west-facing window, ofr maybe on the stove top a couple feet below a little 12 inch fluorescent tube.  What surprised me was how fast the seeds sprouted.  I had no time to work out a light solution.  The sprouts soon became gangly little whitish strings of baby plant.  Enough messing around, I thought.  I decided to do it right, which meant spending $75 on a 48 inch shoplight with special bulbs. (to be continued)