Head up, young person

Last week was a good week. I am finally feeling better after being knocked out by an intense sinus infection for a week and missing Easter with my family.

Last week I:
-planned a visit home to visit with family and friends, and to say goodbye to my high school, Nazareth Academy, which is closing after 139 years of educating young women. I will get a chance to reconnect with people I haven't seen in almost 20 years. Friends that I wish I had been closer to in high school that I will hopefully forge a better connection with now.
-worked out at the gym. Finally! I have been trying to stay on track with being active, but having that sinus issue put me right off of life, never mind working out.
-cleaned the top of the stove. Doesn't seem like much right? I took the top of the stove OFF and put it in the bathtub, and scrubbed it with all my might using cleanser with bleach and a scrubby sponge. There is still one spot that is a bit stained, but it had built up over time so hopefully now that I have the stove top 99% clean I can remove that stain over time.
-gotten a new kitchen counter set up and picked up the kitchen - BIG project
-cast on for Emmaline, a bulky knit short-sleeve top
-washed 5 loads of laundry. Yes, I live alone, but I hate doing laundry and it builds up, and I had a big pile of towels and rags that I had used to mop up the leaks in my apartment when we had the bad storms a few weeks back, and yes, I'm just getting to them now.
-started back on the whole eat healthy, live healthy thing. Counting calories, counting everything, really, because I don't have a sense anymore of what I eat or what it contains. It's back to basics while I relearn what my body actually needs. I use the tools at SparkPeople, but if anyone has suggestions of other free tracker and community sites, I'm listening.

To-DO this week: (yes, I know it's already Tuesday but I forgot to post this entry Sunday night, so I'm modifying it, alright?)
-repot seedlings
-plant more seeds - lettuce, sage, (first ones seem to have died) tomatoes, and a few other things.
-go to the gym. Yes, AGAIN.
-keep tracking
-go to bed by midnight most nights
-do some yoga
-maybe get around to putting my laundry away
-read The Little Stranger for my book group meeting on Sunday (352 pages to go)
-oh, and knit

Planting for Spring

Last year I planted seeds indoors on April 20th in a collection of toilet paper tubes, egg cartons, with no grow lights and not a lot of planning. It was a very wet and dark spring into summer, so my plants didn't have much of a chance anyway. My results, well, were leggy seedlings that didn't have much of a shot and died quickly.

This year I'm starting quite a bit earlier. Now. I've been holding off getting supplies until now so I wouldn't plant too early, but I can't wait any longer! The new supplies I bought for seed planting are:

Jiffy-Strips 10 - 50 little peat pots Jiffy plastic planting tray and lid Hoffman Seed Starter Mix - 10 quarts Burpee Vegetable Starter Garden seed mix Burpee Viola Helen Mount flower seeds

How to Plant Seeds

1. Place peat pots in the plastic tray.

2. Spray down the peat pots a bit so they're damp.

3. Fill pots with seed starter mix

4. Water thoroughly - I sprayed the seed mix from the top and sprayed all the sides of the pots as well.

5. Make markers for the seeds and place them in pots to lay out where to put the seeds. When making tags for seed labeling, make sure the tags will fit into the peat pots and you can put the lid on! I read a tip a while ago about using plastic knives for markers. I collected a bunch from the junk drawer at work, and wrote on them with a Sharpie, and went about putting them in the pots, and then I realized there's a lid...

 

6. Sprinkle the seeds in each pot on the seed started mix, being sure to read the packets to find out if you need to presoak or nick any seeds.

7. Lightly cover the seeds with a layer of the starter mix and spray again. I also poured some water into the tray. There are ridges in the bottom that will keep the pots from sitting in the water, but hopefully they won't dry out during the day.

8. Put the cover on tray, put in a warm place, and wait. I turned the lights on my seeds now to give them a little more warmth.

Slow growing garden

This year I decided to plant some seeds, buy a few small plants, and try my hand at fire escape gardening. We're now halfway into June, and how are my plants? Small. Spindly. Nonstarters. Yes, we've had a very cool and wet spring, and by now we should be into the thoroughly disgusting days of summer (read 85-95 degrees with 80-90% humidity, but no rain at all). Don't get me wrong. I LOVE spring, and cool days, and rain, so you would think I'm loving this weather, right? Wrong. I want my plants to GROW! I have planted so many seeds that have come to nothing. The seeds that have grown are still tiny little seedlings that probably shouldn't be outside in this cool weather.

So, I've been doing the dance of putting all the pots on the fire escape, then pulling them all in when I hear it's going to be cold and rainy. But then I forget to put them back outside.

I even brought my tomato plant inside for this week since it was still rainy and cool, and my plant seemed to be suffering.

Another problem is that the fire escape just doesn't get enough light. How am I supposed to know how much sun that spot gets? My mom said to watch that spot during a day I am home and see how many hours of light it gets. But what kind of light? This is all very confusing. 'Full sun' means what exactly? I had great light in the spring, until the tree leaves filled in. Now it's hard to tell how much sun is getting through.

Last Wednesday I bought 6 basil plants and 4 kale plants. Today I put them outside but they are still in the little plastic thing they came in. I'm worried they'll dry out today before i can put them in the planter, but they were suffering inside.

Busy as a Bee

I went on a trip to Rochester over Mother's Day weekend for a slew of events - graduation, baby shower, friend visits, family visits, and Mother's Day. One of the lovely things I did on Monther's Day was go to the Public Market with my mom for breakfast and plant shopping. We had some great empanadas made by Juan and Maria and then went looking for plants. During May the Rochester Public Market is open Sundays just for plant sales. Although it was cold, we stayed long enough for mom to pick up some irish moss, ostritch ferns, and some interesting begonias I can't remember the names of. Mom also bought some wildflower seeds, and I picked up some seeds for sage, spinach, and kale. I'm pretty sure all the vegetable seeds I've purchased are for dwarf varieties, so I shouldn't have a 2-foot wide kale plant appearing on my fire escape.

Tuesday night I split up some of the basil seedlings and planted sage seeds - only six this time - in a larger pot. I think my intiial round of seed planting was over zealous. I wasn't expecting anything to grow from my seeds, so in each egg carton cup I put at least 6 seeds. Whoops. No wonder my seedlings aren't getting any bigger. They probably don't have any room.

Growing Time

---Written April 20, 2009---

I've been thinking about growing a fire escape garden for the past few weeks, but for much longer than that I've been fixated on having more house plants and growing some herbs, and maybe even vegetables of my own.

On Sunday I finally started this project. A while ago (last summer?) I purchased a cute herb growing kit that came with an aluminum tub and seeds for thyme, lavendar, and oregano. A very fragrant mix. This kit has been sitting on top of my fridge since I bought it, and on Sunday I finally pulled it out and put everything together.

I made some quickie plant markers by cutting up a milk jug. I'd like to make some different markers that are a nicer shape, and decorate them with Sharpie markers with the Latin names written out. I'm sure Martha Stewart has some materials on her site - she always does.