Seeds, Seedlings and My Inner Martha Stewart

Sometimes I dream of living in a warmer climate where I can garden all year round. Especially during a cold spring like this one! My lettuce is the only thing out so far and only in a container at that! It is looking very small and pathetic at this point but to give it some credit it has survived snow and several frosts so I am sure it will be much lusher in a couple of weeks.

Inspiration container lettuce...ahhhh...ooooo!

My actual container lettuce...boo..cry.

I am hopeful that the weather will warm up soon. In the meantime, I have been hard at work getting all my seeds started indoors. I was lucky enough to have been asked to be a "Seed Tester" by Sage Garden Herbs in Winnipeg, Manitoba. They have an amazing online seed catalogue( at www.herbs.mb.ca ) which I could spend hours of time perusing and shopping online. This year I will be growing Red Planet Salad Mix, Mizuna a kind of Japanese green, Arugula Romaine, Mache, Galilee Spinach and Orach a kind of heirloom spinach. Yes, I love having lots of greeens and they grow so well here so why not? Last year I didn't grow any tomatoes because of the amount of space they took up but I missed their tomatoey goodness at the end of the summer. This year I am growing some beautiful heirloom varities such as Earlianna, Cheeseman, Yellowpear and Rose.Also being the wild and crazy gal that I am, I am going to grow zucchini  cucumbers, pumpkins and squash. Now being my garden space is tiny, where am I going to fit these climbers? Well with the help of my hub unit's construction skills we are going vertical this year.

An old swing set converted into a trellis.

Great trellis for limited space.

 The great thing about gardening is that you learn so much every year. Last year, I spent way too much money on seed starting kits and garden label sticks etc. This year I decided to harness my inner Martha Stewart and come up with creative and inexpensive do-it-yourself projects. Some worked well, while others....not so much. So let's go over the good, the bad and the ugly. First thing was to organize my massive seed collection. This project was genius. I took an old photo album from the 80's, which you can still get at the dollar stores, and slipped the seed packets into the pockets. It worked perfectly!

The next project was a cool idea and fun for kids but in reality didn't work really well. I started some of my seeds in old eggshells.

Now it looks really cute but the carton got very soggy. The seedlings needed to be transferred soon after they sprouted as the eggshells provided very little space. So I will pass on this idea for next year. But what did work very well was what I transferred these seedlings into...milk cartons. Milk cartons are very deep and provided lots of room for the growing seedlings. Just get friends to donate some cartons and voila!

Milk carton grow op.

Going to finish up with one more great idea. Using clothes pins as garden markers. So easy and cheap! Why didn't I think of it sooner.

So hopefully these ideas will inspire the inner Martha in you and hopefully in a couple of weeks the planting will begin. Honestly, that can't come too soon as my seedlings are taking over my house :)