green pineapple poking thru & purple calabash growing taller

13 days after planting, the first green pineapple seedling is starting to emerge from the soil. it's the small white speck in the centre of the tray.

the purple calabash seedling is really growing well. over the past week since breaking ground, it has grown to just over an inch tall.

starting to scratch the itch...

last tuesday (15.12.09) i set up a small area of a spare bedroom for seed propagation. knowing that light was the most important factor of starting from seed, i needed to create a good setup that was expandable as the plants grow taller. i had an old shelf system leftover from a small inexpensive greenhouse from a few years ago that would be perfect. the shelves could be removed over time to make room for the growing plants. i then needed to set up a light source that was attached to a timer, so i could provide the seedlings with 12 hours of light per day.

i have about 14 different varieties of heirloom tomatoes seeds to choose from. having to pick 2 was very hard, so i passed the buck to my girlfriend to pick one and i'd pick the other. she chose green pineapple and i chose purple calabash.

obviously needing soil to grow the seeds in, i went with what i had leftover in the garage from last years garden....compost. sure compost may not be the best soil type to grow seedlings in, but i am trying to use it to my advantage. i am putting an old container below the seed tray to catch any excess water. actually, the old container will act as a reservoir that i hope will create a compost tea. as the upper soil in the seed tray dries, it will wick the compost tea up from the reservoir container. i have really no idea how well this will work.

today (21.12.09) when i came home from work, i noticed one of the seeds has broken thru the soil! only 6 days after planting, the seed is starting to reach for the lights. it's one of the purple calabash seeds, and i'm really excited about this variety. supposedly, it's a rare variety, so i hope i can save some seeds if all goes well this winter.

well, thru a week of waiting, i finally have something tangible to keep an eye on, i just hope more seeds follow the lead of the first. i want them all to do well but because of space, i may have to select one seedling from each variety and grow 2 plants....natural selection!

i shouldn't leave out my helpers; my girlfriend behind the camera, cooper the labrador and winston the bulldog...thanks guys!

when you get an itch, you have to scratch it

last spring, while walking thru the seed section of a local garden centre, one package of seeds intrigued me more than any other on the shelves... a variety pack of heirloom tomatoes. in this pack were some cherokee purple, green zebra, nebraska wedding, brandywine and a few other varieties. i had never grown tomatoes before, so i was thrilled by the challenge of growing my very own.

i bought all the things i needed to grow them; seed starting trays, soil, containers & fertilizer. i planted the entire package of seeds, maybe about 60 in all. i was really excited to watch the seedlings grow and mature into fruit bearing vines, but i was also worried about one major issue....timing. because i had not planned on growing tomatoes, i wasn't able to start the seeds 6-8 weeks before the last frost. living in a zone 3a, time was of the essence.

a few weeks into germination, only about a dozen seeds had sprouted. not to be discouraged, i made do with what i had and kept at it. about 6 weeks in, i transplanted the seedlings into 4" pots, where they continued to grow in the west facing window of a spare bedroom. it was soon time to take them outside to begin to harden them off. i lost half the plants to mis-managing the hardening.

now i'm down to 6 plants, out of the 60 or so seeds i started with. it was a little depressing, but i really only had 6 large containers to grow them in, so it kind of worked out ok. as summer went by, i noticed 2 of my plants never really took off. turns out there must have been some weed seeds in the package, because they were not tomato plants. now i'm down the 4 real plants.

the spring and early summer brought horrible weather, combined with a short growing season, i really didn't think i would get any fruit. turns out i was wrong, i did get some fruit on all 4 plants, but nothing ever ripened or grew to full size. this frustrated and motivated me all at the same time. i wanted to grow heirloom tomatoes so badly, i began to research all i could about them. it came to the point where i'm sure my girlfriend got tired of listening to me talk about tomatoes.

all in all, the summer growing season was short and unsuccessful, as far as tomatoes go. i learned that i really enjoyed getting my hands dirty and 'working the land' so to speak. so much so, i have decided to try growing heirloom tomatoes indoors this winter.

stay tuned for my experiment of growing tomatoes indoors.......