Seedling Progress

I'm starting to see more progress in my veggie seedling project. Since we've had a sad lack of sunshine lately, I've been turning up the thermostat a few degrees each evening and placing my seed tray over one of the heat register vents in an effort to warm up the soil. Some of the gardening magazines I've read suggest putting your seedlings atop a heating pad, but that would mean I'd actually have to dig through a closet to find my heating pad. Anyway, just a few evenings over the heat register have yielded some surprising results. Since my last report, not only do I have almost all of my broccoli sprouted, but I now also have the squash, zucchini, and two varieties of tomatoes making their appearance. The tomatoes are those little "strings" of white that you can just barely make out in the center of the seedling tray. Squash is the first row on the far left and zucchini is in the second row from the right (next to broccoli).

I'm still waiting on the peppers, cucumbers and one variety of tomatoes, but I haven't given up hope yet and, if the weather forecasters are correct, we're going to have a reappearance of the sun by Sunday.

Some of my sprouts were large enough for transplanting (broccoli & zucchini).

I sent a note out to some folks at work asking them to save their milk cartons for me. This has worked out pretty good, but I think I may have to leave another collection box near the milk vending machine location as I've only collected about 10 cartons so far and I see that I'm going to need many more if all of my seedlings sprout.

Even though it's a crappy, windy, rainy evening (and more snow/rain mix predicted for tomorrow), I was happy to see another sign of spring show up just a few minutes ago.

Chipping Sparrow - first one seen in my backyard for 2008!