Thursday, February 3, 2011

Greenhouse Planting Time!

We finally got hte greenhouse ready enough to start planting. the weather is perfect too, bright sunny days with lots of warmth to heat things up inside and last through the night.  All of our seeds are either heirloom or at least open pollinated. We have completely stopped using hybrids, becasue its not "natural" in that hybrids do nto reproduce properly. That violates the principles of Little Sprouts Farm. Plus, since they dont reproduce properly, you have to buy seed every year. We'd much rather just use our own seeds each year as a sustainable model.

Here's a few pics of what we have going on:

This is the soil warming station.
We bring the bagged potting soil from outside and empty it into these extra large black pots to allow it to slowly come up to temperature before planting.

This shelf is filled with brocolli and cauliflour, each plant in its own pot. The seedlings are already about 3 to 4 inches tall.

In the foreground wide trays are radishes, lettuce, basil, and cilantro.
the background shows some tomatoes on the left far back in sprouting bins, and a flat of spinach just starting.

The two large pots in on the left are Hunter's and Kaelyn's potatoes. they started these as a school project in a glass of water before transplanting here. In the back are sprouting bins with eggplant, sweet peppers, cucumber and zuchini.


These shelves have pots filled with soil and awaiting seeds or plants. They serve to increase the mass to attract and hold heat, plus heating hte soil for planting later.

The large trash cans are filled with fresh water and goldfish. The water is what we use for watering, and also helps to add mass to store heat overnight. The goldfish are there to keep the kids entertained and to provide some natural fertilizer in the water.

This lovely mound.. is our resident gopher mound. Right after we set hte greenhouse here, someone moved into the basement, or they MADE a basement. Soon I will have to evict the residents and fix the flooring!


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