Starting Seeds

Last year we bought a Burpee XL Ultimate Growing System and it worked very well.
http://www.burpee.com/seed-starting/grow-kits/xl-ultimate-growing-system-prod002628.html

However, it used those expanding peat moss biscuits that were enclosed in a mesh, which I didn't care for.  The watering system though was fabulous.  We could go up to 7 days without watering and we had excellent plants; by far my best seedlings ever.  The cover doesn't exactly fit the tray and is fragile.  I cracked it trying to get it down on the one corner, but it still works well.

This year I decided to use the peat pots with the self watering mat and tray.  We are also trying Jiffy Natural & Organic Seed Starting Mix.  In the past I have used my own compost, but this year it's under 2 feet of snow and frozen solid.

Our seed starting setup

We've grown our vegetables from seed for years now with several different setups but all basically the same.  Hanging above the bench is a $20 shop light from Home Depot with daylight T-8 bulbs.  Then it's one or two flats of cells and a little plastic dome that goes over them (the dome seems to be very important until the plants get pretty big).  Under the trays is a heating pad.  The cells I like to use are the larger ones where you get 36 cells per tray.  With these Jiffy Strips, we get 50 cells per tray.

I will review the starting mix and the Jiffy Strips in the upcoming weeks.

New Garden Design

After gardening with a square foot garden made of 2x6 for several years, and complaining about things each year, I've decided to try use a different approach going forward.

I want to keep with the intensive planting that Square Foot Gardening introduced me to, but improve upon a couple of things.  First is to build my beds about knee high, so roughly 2 feet high.  The hope is to save our backs a little, make mowing easier, and provide more nutrient rich soil to the vegetables. 

With a bed this high, we are planning on using landscaping timbers stacked up and connected with long nails.  We'll see how that goes.  Otherwise we'll connect them with 1/2 in bores and rebar.  But with beds this high and using landscaping ties, we are also planning on making our beds 20 feet long.  This will actually make the foot print of our garden smaller.  Right now we have 4 feet between each box on each side.  So with this set up, we will only need 2 long beds to get the same space as our 9 beds AND our four 1x4 beds!!

Another advantage that going from 13 beds to 2 beds is that an automated irrigation system becomes a lot more manageable and cheaper.  Even without an automated system, watering will definitely be easier.  Our final improvement with the beds is to put hardware netting on the bottom of them to keep the moles out of the beds.  We've lost too many crops to moles/voles over the years.

Our spacing between our beds will allow us to mow in-between the beds.  So maintenance between the beds will now consist of one pass with the lawn mower.

We will continue planting in our intensive, "square foot" way, but will have to think more carefully about where we plant things.  We will also have to get a lot more soil into the beds.

So as I get my seeds started this weekend, I'll be spending plenty of time thinking about the logistics of where things will be planted, how much space they take, etc.