{"id":790,"date":"2011-02-06T17:23:27","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T22:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=790"},"modified":"2011-02-06T17:23:27","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T22:23:27","slug":"optimism-needs-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=790","title":{"rendered":"Optimism Needs Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 2010<\/span> –\u00a0 I planted 72 seeds today, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, bok choi.\u00a0 I planted them in an indoor, domed seed starting flat I bought at Ace Hardware for $5.99 yesterday.\u00a0 I planted seeds I bought last year.\u00a0 The whole experiment is pretty safe, at least fiscally.\u00a0 I’ve steeled myself for failure.\u00a0 I’m especially concerned about getting enough light for the seedlings when they hatch, uh, I mean germinate.\u00a0 (am I taking this too seriously?\u00a0 personally?\u00a0 too much invested?)<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Still, here in Virginia close to the Potomac, mild winter weather stays late and starts early.\u00a0 Thus my hopeful, early seed start.<\/p>\n

Still, today, Martin Luther King jr. Day, January 18, 2010 is sunny and in the 50s.\u00a0 A perfect day for gardening optimism.\u00a0 Besides, I was buoyed by a trip to the big garden where I harvested a real, live turnip.\u00a0 It’ll be part of the Tatties and Neeps we serve at Burns Night in a couple of weeks.\u00a0 This tiny harvest energized me.\u00a0 Plus for supper we ate garden green beans we froze in August, plus herbs I picked fresh while Anita cooked.\u00a0 Which brings me back to planting seeds.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Starting Seeds Take Two – GALS 2\/15 and 2\/19<\/p>\n

Well, being optimistic about planting seeds so early was very nice, but it didn’t work.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Not enough light.\u00a0 No light, really.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 What surprised me was how fast the seeds sprouted.\u00a0 I had no time to work out a light solution.\u00a0 The sprouts soon became gangly little whitish strings of baby plant.\u00a0 Enough messing around, I thought.\u00a0 I decided to do it right, which meant spending $75 on a 48 inch shoplight with special bulbs. (to be continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 2010 –\u00a0 I planted 72 seeds today, lettuce, cabbage, spinach, bok choi.\u00a0 I planted them in an indoor, domed seed starting flat I bought at Ace Hardware for $5.99 yesterday.\u00a0 I planted seeds I bought last year.\u00a0 The whole … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[70,71,76,77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":902,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions\/902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}