On Saturday morning I woke up at 6:15AM after a not-so-good night. I had to get fires going first as it was cold in the house. I got my post up and then started on the kitchen. I got the dishes done and then started on all the living room stuff that needed cleaned and put away. That took me about 3 hours. I finally had all the counters cleaned off so we’d have room for seed starting.
I got the seeds out and found the bag of all the new seeds I’d ordered for this year. They all needed biology added to the packet and then filed under the appropriate date for starting. I sorted them by type (herb, veg, flowers) and then alphabetically. I put the biology in the herbs first, keeping them in order. Then I filed them in the correct starting date bags for herbs.
I repeated the process with the flowers and vegs, keeping aside the ones for this first starting.
Once I had all my seeds for this starting, I pulled out the starting notes for each one. I wrote on the front the seed variety, the company it came from, the date on the packet, and whether they were organic seed.
In the notes, I wrote the size of pot, how many holes per pot, how many seeds per hole for age of seed, depth of hole, and type of dome cover. Finally I wrote what window the tray would go in. This would guide my intern when she was doing the actual planting, etc.
Next I made out enough markers for each seed type and laid them out ready to put in the pots.
Then I made a list of how many of each size pot I needed, and other materials to be brought up from the cellar. Then I went down and collected them at the foot of the stairs. My intern would bring them up.
Then I laid out the trays and when she arrived at 11:30AM she brought the stuff up and we finished setting up. She had never done seed starting before so I had to pay attention and teach her.
It took us just over an hour and a half to do the 8 trays. This is what we started:
Mesclun 20 lg pots
Onions 72 sm pots
Arnica 9 sm pots
Heliotrope 12 sm pots
Verbascum 6 sm pots
Columbines 6 small pots
Total: 125 (not including the columbines that went to the fridge for stratification)
These are the columbines. They were covered with plastic wrap and will sit in the fridge for 2 weeks until the next seed starting.
So we filled the 2 shelves in the dining window. The green is the cat grass I grew for the inspector.
One tray, with arnica and heliotrope, went onto the back porch. I have to leave the door open out there from now on.
My #2 intern took these of the inspector.
He’s obviously enthusiastic about this.
The last thing we did was put the shoe on the fairy. It didn’t fit as tightly as we wanted it to. I’m not sure the join is strong enough to hold it there. But we will see… Next for the repair, we need to find some sort of epoxy or filler for inside these areas to reinforce them, before we put the leg back on.
I was exhausted by the time she left at 1:30PM. I sat and watch movies all afternoon.
My intern reappeared late afternoon. She had noticed the old family photos I had of her family and had some new ones to replace them. The top is the entire family now, and the bottom, all the “offspring”.
I got the fires going well as the temperature is to drop into the low teens in the night. It’s to be sunny but cold, only 20’sF, during the day on Sunday and drop even lower Sunday night into the single digits.
I don’t know what, if anything I am going to do on Sunday. It’s been a very hard week. But the bills need paid…sigh…