taking advantage of the light

seeing my box of seeds just sitting on the shelf made me anxious to get them in the ground, and seeing the empty space under my grow light was depressing. knowing i will have a space crunch once the tomato plants more mature, i have been hesitant to plant anything else....until today. i've decided to take advantage of the growing light now and deal with the plants at a later date. worst case scenario, i give them away to somebody who will look after them and grow them out. best case scenario, i find a way to grow them all in this small 10'x10' spare bedroom.

i didn't get too adventurous on varieties i was going to experiment with. i stuck to beans and peas. i guess i thought they might do well because they are cool weather plants, and being indoors might serve them well. i've chosen to try; purple fava bean, cherokee cornfield (bean), triumpho violetta (bean), edamame soybean and carlin soup pea. here is a picture of the set-up now.

while i was sowing the new beans and peas, i decided it was about time to transplant my tomatoes. the roots for the 'purple calabash' were starting to show at the bottom of the old tray, so transplanting will give them more room to grow. the better the roots, the better the plant. i planted the seedlings deeper than they were in the starter tray. the little hairs on the stem will turn to roots once they are planted deeper. i planted them so the soil level was above it's primary leaf set, but below it's first true leaves. below are pictures of the 'green pineapple' and 'purple calabash', respectively, after the transplant.

thanks for following my experiment and please check out the 'renegade phoenix' blog i have linked on the right side of the page...it may just change the way you look at life.