Spring is Coming!

A sure sign of spring in our house is when we lose a big chunk of our counter space for our seedlings and plant table. On Sunday we planted seeds for our vegetable garden and the kid's new flower garden.

First we gathered our supplies and made sure our table was protected:

So happy to be planting!

Then we mixed the potting soil with water to get it damp:

Ryan held the bowl while Paigey mixed

Then we filled our containers:

Ryan did awesome! He loved to help.

Working together to fill the tray

And put our seeds in:

Paigey loves to plant!

All the seeds sit in our plant stand. Pete's dad made it out of PVC pipe, and although you can't see it in the picture, a grow light hangs above the seedlings.

All ready to grow!

Although losing so much counter space for almost 3 months is frustrating, we all look forward to planting our seeds. It means spring is coming, even if it is still snowing outside!

This year we did things a little different. Normally I use old yogurt cups to put my seeds in, but on Pinterest I saw that people were using old toilet paper tubes for their seeds. When it's time to put the seedlings in the ground, you just put the whole thing in the hole and you're done! I tend to break a lot of roots when I remove the seedlings from the container which weakens the plants, so I'm hoping that I won't have that problem this year. It's also nice because I tend to over or under water, and I can see on the sides of the tubes if they need water or not. Each tube was cut in half, and I used paper towel tubes as well, which gave me 5 little planting containers. I didn't have enough tubes (we planted over 120 containers!), so the tomatoes all went into plastic containers.

Here's what we planted for our veggie garden:

Maskotka cherry tomatoes - These will actually go into pots on our deck. The kids are looking forward to having their own plant to take care of and eat from!

Cajun Belle peppers - Our favorite spicy pepper! I'm hoping I remember to wear gloves when I chop them to put in the freezer...the past two years I've forgotten, and have spent the next few days in extreme discomfort.

Agro tomatos - This is our first time planting paste tomatoes. We'd like to make our own sauce or ketchup, so we're hoping these grow well.

Fall Rainbow Blend Pumpkins - We tried these last year, but I over watered them and only two plants survived. These are awesome because it's a pack with four different kinds of pumpkin seeds in there: Cinderella (a nice round decorative pumpkin), pie pumpkins, jack o'lantern ones (great for carving), and   Casper pumpkins (they're white!).

Bell peppers - I have awful luck with peppers. I'm hoping these grow better than the ones I've been planting the past few years.

Cucumbers - These are supposed to be great for pickling (we love home made bread and butter pickles!) or for eating as cucumbers.

Malabar spinach - Oh man, this is the best spinach ever. Even our kids who weren't too fond of spinach now love it because of this plant! It grows on a vine, and looks gorgeous! We've had some bad luck when planting this, no matter how many seeds we plant, we only get like three plants. However, those three plants give so much spinach that when we harvest and freeze it, it lasts all winter. Our favorite garden plant EVER!

We'll also be planting green beans, snap peas, beets, swiss chard, lettuce, regular spinach, carrots, corn, onions and zucchini when we can get our beds prepped and ready.

Yesterday (Wednesday) our first seedlings popped through! Some of our flowers sprouted, as well as a cucumber and a tomato seed. More have popped through today!


Do you plant a garden? What things do you grow?