Gardening Update 1: Need for Seeds

First gardening update: the seeds are bought and in the ground!

And by ground, I mean in individual garden soil pellets, positioned under heat lamps in my warm house cuz it's too freaking cold outside still to actually plant them in the ground!

As some of you may remember from this recent post- I am asking the question this summer "Can veggie gardening save you money??". As part of that, I decided to start seeds indoors prior to planting outside. There are a few good money saving reasons for this:

1. It saves me from having to purchase plants later at the garden store, which can get expensive. Seed packets are generally about $1-$2 and can grow 10+ plants while garden stores often charge $5-$10 for starter veggie plants.

2. It allows you to grow different varieties than are commonly sold. Last year I grew these fantastic mini-watermelons, that I grew from seeds. They took off in my yard, but I never would have found them at a Home Depot!

So far my grand total of costs has been $33, which includes seed purchases. I did have the grow lights left over from previous years so I repurposed those. Search on Amazon and you can find some reasonable set up for less than $50 depending on the size of the light that you are looking for. While it will have some cost for you at first if you use them year by year, it can be worth it. If you have a lot of windows, you may not need them, but the window placement in our house doesn't lend itself to good seedling growing so plants lights were the best solution.

So about a week or two after planting, here is how my seedlings are doing:

This tray is primarily tomato varieties- beefsteak, and vine tomatoes, but also has a little okra and cantaloupe thrown in. YUM.

Hope it's beginning to feel like spring wherever you are!!