Dreaming big...getting ready to start seeds indoors

We are getting excited about starting our first garden in our new home.  The garden bed has been resting while we've been leafing through seed catalogs and dreaming of what we'd like to grow.  We found that it is just as important to not browse seed catalogs while hungry as it is to not grocery shop while hungry! 

We have tried twice to start seeds indoors and both times it didn't go well.  But we really like peppers and we use tomato products year round and would really like to be able to grow our own peppers and tomatoes and be able to grow some interesting and heirloom varieties.  So, we are going to try it again. 

I ordered some seed starting equipment.  We needed to have trays to start our little seedlings in and we splurged and bought a heat mat so that we could have better germination rates.  We figured we need all the help we can get and wanted to guard against discouragement with failed seeds since we really need to make this work.

We spent quite a bit of time browsing seed catalogs and finally narrowed it down to our final selections from two different online seed producers.  We bought seeds from Baker Creek.

 We have purchased from them in the past and were happy with them.  They sent us a catalog for this year (I love looking through their catalog!) and we all enjoyed reading through it and had decided to try several new seeds from them.  In particular, we got some seed for Dragon's Eggs and Dragon's Tongue as well as some mangle beets for the cows and several delicious sounding varieties of peppers and carrots and tomatoes.

 We also chose to purchase some seeds from Victory Seeds.  We haven't purchased from them before.  They have some yummy sounding varieties we are excited to try as well.  Their seed packages aren't as colorful and pretty, though.

We picked up some herb seeds at Wal-Mart with which to try winter sowing and also several packets of pea seeds with which to help build up the poor, rocky soil at one end of our garden.

 We will have to make it an ongoing project to pick out the rocks and expect it to take a few years, but the peas will help in building up the soil so we got cheapo seeds from Wal-Mart.  For our other veggie seeds we spent the money to get good ones.  We figure if we're going to go to all the work that it will take to put in and manage a garden, then, we should buy good seed.

We ended up with a lot of seeds!  We're going to be awful busy!

Molly loves me for teaching her industriousness and good work ethics and for freeing her from the tyrany of an entitlement mindset and the torturous prospect of the boredom of nothing to do over her summer. 

We bought a very useful shelving rack called a Gorilla Rack.
Jacob had fun monkeying around while helping Dad to set it up.  Never a dull moment!

It is a heavy duty steel shelving system that will also double for holding our canned goods after the harvest. Hey, if you're gonna dream, you might as well dream big!

Trying out the 800 lb. weight limit per shelf...

We found some shop lights on Craig's List and bought new bulbs for them and the hardware to wire them as well as some dowel rods to hang them from and a multi-plug outlet and some dirt. 

Can't forget the dirt!  I'm going to use Miracle Gro Potting Mix.

I also got some other things for our project.  Plastic cups for transplanting up into a larger container, popsicle sticks for labeling, an automatic timer for the lights, and a trowel.

And gardening gloves for everyone!!

The kids are sooo excited to have real work gloves!!

And, of course, playing boats in the shipping boxes!

Now we are ready to get started.  I'll have to come back and do another post about how I did it.  I want to make sure to take the time to take pictures of each step and journal what I did so that I don't forget.  It may all end up being a very detailed account of how NOT to start seeds indoors, but at least I will have a written record of what to avoid for next time!