I love seeing all of your pictures of your farm babies lately.  Farmgirl Chit-Chat has been filled with cute pictures of new critters on your homesteads.  This is our second full year here and much is happening ’round here; we have projects going no matter which way you turn. Although goats and chickens are on the roadmap, they won’t be joining us quite yet. My farm babies come by the way of dirt, seeds and end up green. 🙂

Last year was the first try at tilling up some land and planting some veggies.  We ended up with 8 areas planted and 16,000 square feet of garden.  I am really obsessed with it! We played a bit with keeping things through the winter as a test and that worked pretty darn good!  We just ate salad this weekend from our garden plot that was our test bed. We will expand on that next fall/winter.

BUT for next steps in the gardening journey, I decided to start my own plants.  One, I thought it would save money (those little tomato and pepper plants get pricey!) and two, I just thought it would be fun! So with temps in the 50’s, a little sunshine, stuff from Johnny’s, High Mowing Seeds and Mike the Average  Gardener it was time to get planting.

 

 

 

 

 

First I needed a table and heat mats. Our pole barn is dry but it gets chilly.  With snow still forecasted and germination needing 75 – 85 degrees, that needed to be solved first.  Hubby made me two great tables from a couple of slab doors and scrap wood.  The legs are in an upside down U shape and simply come off with a wing nut type bolt.  Great for storage and the budget.

 

 

 

I got planting medium from Johnny’s and started filling my trays. Trays were saved from years past when I got starters elsewhere.  This year they will incubate my own little seedling babies. 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see the blue sticking out from under the trays in the above picture.  That is heating mat. We are hooking them all up to our thermostat that can control four of them.

 

Filling up the trays with soil and seeds was so much fun.  I even brought some papers out on our soil here at the house that was from a homework assignment at school.  It was fun to get my soil geek on while planting my babies.  I just did not want the day to end!

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, 80+ tomato plants, 12 basil and a little spinach was planted.  This Saturday, peppers are on the agenda! I keep checking my babies and a couple are sprouting up.  I am so proud of the little guys.  I will take some pictures of them to share. This is just another experiment to see what works here!  I am in hopes that I will have a lot of babies unleashing from the soil soon!

What are your planting?

Happy Unleashing!

FGU