Preparing to Transplant

The Plant Diaries Pt. 2

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.

Starting Seeds Indoors

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.

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 tomato

• Tomatillo

• Sun 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

Sri Juneja

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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