Welcome back to the Plant Diaries!
As I mentioned in Part 1 of The Plant Diaries series, my family is gearing up to plant our raised beds again this Spring and I am attempting to document our adventures in gardening here on Substack.
My family turned to gardening during the COVID-19 lockdowns as a way to connect with nature, relieve stress, and get a bit of exercise in. Anyone who has ever spent time in a garden knows that it’s a full-body workout! I enjoy the fresh air and the fact that it forces me to get outdoors daily to tend to our plants. There are so many benefits to gardening but my favorite is that it allows us to slow down and connect as a family.
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Within a week of planting our seeds, we saw the first of the seedlings start to appear. We used this indoor seed starter tray with grow lights to get things started but some of the seedlings like the zucchini and snap peas quickly outgrew the trays. We moved them into plantable fiber pots and got some new grow lights to give them more room. The plants are getting about 13 hours of light on average — lights get turned on when we wake up and turned off before bed. My 2-year-old son got hands-on with this part! I love that he doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. He just wants to do whatever we’re doing at this stage. If you’re trying this at home indoors, just keep a vacuum handy!
Freeze Watch
We live in Zone 8a so we need to think about hardening off our seedlings and transplanting them outdoors this month. I’m currently monitoring the weather to see if we are going to have a mid-March freeze. Our mornings have had freezing lows but by the afternoon, we’re hitting the low 70s already. Right now, it’s looking like we are safe after this first full week of March.
Spring Plant List
An updated list of what we planted indoors is below. I struck through the seeds that sadly didn’t sprout. We are planning to purchase these as live plants from the store now.
Early Doll tomatoTomatilloSun Cherry tomatoes
Patio baby eggplant
Fooled you pepper (jalapeño)
King Arthur pepper (bell pepper)
Diva cucumber
Prizehead lettuce
Butter crunch lettuce
Zucchini
Summer squash
Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Thai basil
Basil
Still to plant:
Medusa pepper
Arugula
Chives
Plants to buy:
strawberries
marigold
Tomatoes
Tomatillo
March Gardening To-Do List
Our most pressing to-do item is to clear out our raised beds and decide how to fill them. I’m still toying around with the idea of adding some containers to it or even a galvanized tub to give it a bit of height and visual interest.
May I Recommend: Aerogarden
I mentioned to
that an Aerogarden is a great place to start with indoor gardening if you are limited on space or prone to a black thumb. We’ve had the Harvest Slim model for years and I like it for herbs. It’s convenient to keep on the kitchen counter and you don’t have to worry about underwatering them!What’s Next
I’m planning more posts related to gardening for the coming weeks including books to read, my Pinterest mood board, and updates on how things are growing. Let me know what questions you have and I’ll try to get together a Q&A by the end of our growing season!
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Happy growing!
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Omg that Aerogarden is so cute and I already know where I want to keep it. Okay just need to convince the husband to give me another chance 😂
This is such a fun read! Thank you for putting it together! We're going to get some flowers this weekend to plant and we have seeds that we need to get sprouting for the spring. My husband is taking the lead on our garden but we've been wanting one for well over a year now, especially some fresh herbs and veggies to help cut down on our grocery bill!