Our Shopping Trips

Back in March, we shared about our 324 seedlings that we planted indoors.  We then shared an update in April and so now we are sharing our May (before planting in the ground) update!

These beautiful flowers and vegetables are growing and growing! We had to transfer them to new pots so that they had more room to grow.  We used old cottage cheese/yogurt containers (the big 32 oz. sizes) old flower pots and our own homemade biodegradable newspaper pots, all sitting on flats of cardboard from previous cans and food.

We do still have these 4 original seed starting trays that we haven’t transferred yet.  Three trays are the flowers and one in the top left is the broccoli, cauliflower and radish.  They will need to be transplanted soon, but they still seem to be okay!

Our tray of carrots, peppers and green onions are still in the original planting tray and I think they may be okay until we plant in the ground in a few weeks.

But as you can see, the rest have been moved to new pots.  It has been a lot of work to find and fit the fast growing ones into new pots and find space for them on the table.

This is the very top of the shelf with the roma tomatoes, green beans, peas (with the straw trellis!) and corn.  They are not under the light as it is the top shelf, which means we are rotating them since we are out of room under the light! But it all seems to be working!

So here’s a close-up of our newspaper pots. These are working very well and I wish I had known about them a few years ago to save money! I previously shared a different version of these, but ultimately decided to make the origami pots.  They are very simple and our 8 and 9 year old were helping out too!

I had a printed instructional on how to make them, but got frustrated as I couldn’t figure it out exactly.  So I headed to YouTube, just like we have suggested when you are wanting to learn something, and sure enough, found a video on it.  The video helped immensely and made it very easy!

Here’s the video on how to make them.  You can even start seedlings in these pots, not just transfer like we did!

Here in a few days, we will start hardening them off but placing them outside for a few hours at a time for them to acclimate to the outside temps and then we hope to plant them in the ground in a few weeks!

How is your garden going?

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A couple of weeks ago, we shared how we planted 324 seedlings.   Well, two weeks later, these little guys are now growing like weeds! We’ve had some that haven’t sprouted at all yet, but sometimes they take longer and sometimes they just never do.  It goes along with that thing that I just don’t have a green thumb, but I am trying really hard as I want to grow my own food.  This is my fourth year and I learn little tricks along the way.  Each year, the results do get better, but I still also lose some during every step of the process. Who knows, we still have well over a month to wait for them to sprout before they go outside anyway! Part of me wonders if there were a couple of little pots that didn’t get any seeds.  I was trying to manage a 6, 4, and 1.5 year old wanting to eagerly help by each placing seeds in each spot. It is very possible a few were missed But either way, I am thrilled with the results so far and hope these guys make it to the outdoors and then make it to harvest!

As a review, here’s what we planted:

• Organic non-hybrid yellow corn
• Cauliflower
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Lettuce Mixed greens and reds
• Broccoli
• Green Peppers
• Peas
• Radish
• Yellow Squash
• Green Beans
• Spaghetti Squash
• Beets
• Zucchini Squash
• Hot Pepper Mix
• Green Onions
• Cucumbers

Everything is looking good so far and most of the seeds have sprouted, except I haven’t seen the Green Bell Peppers yet.  Last time I grew these, they were slower and by the end of the season, I had very small, but still edible peppers. So they probably still need more time to sprout (hopefully).

Also, I decided to plant an entire tray of carrots as they did well for us last time and we use so many of them from eating raw, cooking and even fermenting, so we actually ended up with an extra tray for 360 total seedlings instead of the original 324!! I would love to have tons of carrots this year.  We have them all under our homemade seedling/greenhouse shelves (read the previous post HERE to find out more) with special greenhouse/aquarium lights.

I left our girls (9 and 8) in charge of all of the flowers.  I had given them 3 trays with 36 slots each for starting seedlings. They had many different flower seeds and so I can’t even begin to tell you what they are growing, just mixtures! You can’t see them as well in the picture, but they are growing well too (the 3 flower trays are in the back and the carrot tray is in the front).

Now that many of them are starting to overtake their little cubby hole of soil, it is time to transfer them to these homemade newspaper biodegradable pots that will be planted right into the garden ground in May.

Homemade biodegradable newspaper pots from Organic Gardening

I hope to get these made and the bigger plants transferred in the next week or so! I will then keep you updated to the progress we are making!

Do you do plant a garden?  What thrifty gardening tips might you have?

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We thought it would be fun to share our garden plans this year with you and some things we do.

• First, we plant our own seedlings and between now and the next few weeks is perfect for pretty much any region in the US.  This saves us loads of money over buying the plants and ultimately, tons of money is saved by harvesting our own produce to eat fresh and to preserve to use throughout the year!

• Second, about 5 years ago, we made our own garden light table for a fraction of the cost of buying one.  If anyone is interested, we can share what we did.  We still use this table for the fifth year now and it probably will last for another 20 years! It just sits in our kitchen against an open wall! We all enjoy watching our baby plants sprout and grow!

• Third, we use cheap seedling pots that are organic and sustainable, then when they get big enough, we transfer them into homemade recycled newspaper pots that we learned from Organic Gardening (and it is on their site here) and then finally transplant right from these newspaper/biodegradable pots into the ground for the season!

• The next step that I want to learn and haven’t fully yet to make this an even more self-sustaining and frugal way to go is by learning to harvest my own seeds.  That is my goal this year. Otherwise, we get cheap seeds and this year we got a bunch of free ones (I will tell you later how).

So, the biggest expense was the soil and the pots.  As seedlings, I invest in very good quality soil and so this cost me about $10 this year.  I go with cheaper options for the other stages, including making my own compost.  But for the very beginning, I want them to have very good rich soil.

The second investment is the organic, biodegradable seed starting pots. These are actually quite affordable over many options you can find at Walmart and other garden stores.  I got each tray of 36 seedling pots for only $2 each.  Walmart has them now, but in the past, once they sell out, they don’t get any more for the season.  So you might want to check this option. And then for the cheap “greenhouse” effect, I just tie a Walmart sized grocery bag over the top.  There is a small air passage at the top where the knot is and so it works perfectly and then I am recycling my plastic bags and not paying money for expensive plastic or covers. When these seedlings are big enough, I just cut them apart and place in the newspaper pots. So I don’t have to fuss with pulling them apart, but they have a better chance of sustaining with less fussing!

Yesterday, we planted 324 seedlings for about 1,000 seeds! Our girls are in charge of flowers this year, so they actually planted 3 of the 36 seedling trays for 108 flower plants.  We will then transfer them into pots to place all over the front pathway.

Then my son and I planted the remaining 6 – 36 ct. seedlings for a total of 216 vegetable plants. Here’s the veggies we are planting:

• Organic non-hybrid yellow corn
• Cauliflower
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Lettuce Mixed greens and reds
• Broccoli
• Green Peppers
• Peas
• Radish
• Yellow Squash
• Green Beans
• Spaghetti Squash
• Beets
• Zucchini Squash
• Hot Pepper Mix
• Green Onions
• Cucumbers

In my experience the past several years, I usually lose about 1/3 of all plants.  I don’t know exactly why, but I don’t naturally have a green thumb (I really have to work at it!), our weather is testy, and our soil is clay-based in our town and terrible soil.  I think all of these factors contribute a little to make the total problem. So even though we’ve planted tons, we will lose some. I am really hoping that I have the opportunity to have an abundance of plants that I can give to friends and church members this year and then ultimately, have much produce to harvest, preserve and share!

The squashes, onions, and corn do very well, everything else is up and down for me each year.  I also am going to be buying regular tomato plants, strawberry plants and finally raspberry bushes this year a little later, although we won’t expect much from the fruit this year, I am finally going to do this!  After attempting to plant regular tomatoes and strawberries from seeds and failing, I will give into the plants on these We will hopefully have a lot to plant around mid-May to end of May.  We will keep you posted!

Do you do plant a garden?  Any tips for those of us trying and for harvesting seeds or any thing else that you do? What thrifty gardening tips might you have?

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