An early Spring! For me, anyways!

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that the USDA changed their hardiness zone map for the first time since 1990. I am now in zone 7a instead of 6b. This means I am in a "warmer" zone, and *should* be able to plant stuff outside earlier. If we have typical weather. But I don't think Oklahoma has the same kind of weather from year to year. At least it hasn't since we have lived here.

After I found out about my supposedly earlier planting dates, I went ahead and planted some tomatoes and peppers. I now have about 10 tomato seedlings. The pepper seeds were a couple of years old, and so far they haven't sprouted, so I am guessing I need to go buy some new seeds.

I planted four different varieties of tomatos: San Marzano,  Jet Star hybrid, and I couldn't resist trying to grow different colors of tomatoes, so I planted a couple of heirloom varieties: Black Krim and Cherokee Purple. Just because I thought it would be interesting to try purple and black tomatoes.

Today, I was able to pot up my tomatoes for the first time. Tomato plants will grow roots on any part of the stem that is under the soil. So I have read that if you pot them up a few times, each time planting it deeper in the pot,  it will grow a larger and stronger root system, which makes for a stronger  plant. I am going to try that this year. I also think I initially had the lights too far away from them, because they seemed "leggy" so when I potted them up this morning, I planted them almost to the leaves.

Today I also planted several herbs (seeds), some lettuce, spinach, and broccoli seeds,  yellow onions, red onions, and white onions. I planted the onions from seed, because I never seem to have much luck planting sets. I am really hoping I didn't wait too long to get those going though. We will find out eventually! I also will plant some green onions, but I might just wait and plant those directly in the ground when it is warm enough outside for me to go clean up the bed (this is the bed a stray cat has been using for a litter box, so I plan to remove the top several inches of soil and replace it, because that is just gross).  I do already have some green onions growing and some red onions growing that I planted in the fall (the red are from sets, the green are from seeds). I guess they will be ready around late spring?

This year, I decided to try using the jiffy pellets for planting seeds. This was the first time I have used the pellets instead of filling pots with seed starting mix/soil and the pellets were easier and less messy. I found it easiest to fill a dish with warm water and then soak the pellets in there instead of pouring water over them, because it seems to take quite a bit of water to get them to expand. They remind me of those little foam animals in the caps that I used to get as a kid, you know the ones you put in a bowl of water, and they "grow?" Once the pellets expanded to full size, I found it easy to use a toothpick to carefully move some of the dirt aside, drop a seed, and cover the seed back up. No mess!




We found a small greenhouse on sale at Atwood's and Jake helped me put it together.
I won't be able to put it outside with anything in it until it warms up, ALOT. But I am glad I have it in the house now, because it gives me a temporary place to put my plants.

 This year for my birthday, Brian gave me        "an early spring." He built me a seed starting station/ miniature greenhouse type thing in the garage. It is complete with weather stripping, a plexi-glass door, an adjustable grow light shelf, and a heat lamp.

The piece of furniture he used was actually part of his bachelor pad entertainment center in Orlando. When we moved into our house, he painted it white, and we used it for a computer desk, then we moved it into the garage and we used it as a potting bench/storage area for gardening supplies. Now it is a potting bench/greenhouse!

Brian also put the lights on a timer... so I can set the lights to turn on for 18 hours per day, then turn off! This is great, because I am sure I would be forgetting to do that!

He actually just completed it yesterday. It has been bitterly cold here this weekend (for a Florida girl, anyways), too, and we just got our first snow of the season today. I have not moved any plants out there yet, because I want to let it get a little warmer in there. We might need to add another heat lamp. I am waiting for it to get up to 65 degrees inside the greenhouse. When I checked it this morning it was up to 56. It is supposed to warm up this week though, and when that happens, the temp in the greenhouse should be warm enough. If it doesn't reach 65 in the next day or two, I am going to try putting hot water bottles in there. I don' think it will come to that, though.

In the meantime, I still have all my seedlings in the house on that greenhouse we bought:

So we have been busy with garden stuff even though it is still technically winter, but it is hard to find time to write and post pictures with a 2 year old and 6 month old. :-)