Starting My New Garden!

It has been quite a while since I posted anything on here.  Some of you may have thought that I gave up my blog. No, it's just been a very long winter.  Nothing much has happened to write about, and husband Harold and I came down with colds a few weeks ago.  We haven't had any colds for over 3 years, so this round of cold virus really made us feel down.   We are much better now, and Harold just has a lingering cough.
     I am a little behind in starting seeds for my 2020 garden, but today I got my "soil therapy"!  It was so nice to dig in dirt and plant seeds.  Surely spring can't be too far away, right?  About a month, I believe.  Anyway, some seeds need a long time to grow, and there are long germination times.   So today I started various kinds of flowers, herbs, several varieties of peppers, leeks and sweet onions.  In a few weeks I'll start tomatoes and other kinds of flowers.   Then a couple weeks later, I'll start cabbages and some rhubarb seeds I saved.   As soon as it warms up enough to get into my greenhouse I'll start cleaning up in there and planting spinach and various lettuces.   From now until early May, my living room will look like a plant nursery.  Tomorrow Harold is going to set up my sawhorses and boards and grow lights in the living room in front of the big bay window.   It's always fun to see how things have grown overnight.
     Sometime in April I begin hardening off plants by putting them outside in the sun for short times.  When they are well accustomed to being outdoors, I put all the plants and trays in the greenhouse, and then they really take off!  Everything grows so well in there.  In May I begin planting in the main gardens.
     Here is what I did today:

I begin by mixing Miracle Grow Potting Soil with moist peat soil, in a 50/50 mix.  The peat soil is quite coarse and has a lot of sticks and stones in it, but has a lot of nutrients, too.  Miracle Grow potting soil is cleaner and dryer but doesn't quite have all that plants need for the long growing time indoors.     This is always the fun part - getting my hands dirty with soil!

For small batches of seeds I use 6 hole inserts in the trays. Later on when the plants are growing, I usually transplant the young plants into larger pots.

For things like green peppers, hot peppers and leeks I use larger inserts.  Then I choose the best plants from the sections and transplant the plants into bigger pots.

For sweet onions I just put the seeds into a full tray with no inserts.  Onions don't need much drainage and they are happy growing close together in a tray.  When they are large enough to take the main garden, I separate all the plants right at the garden as I plant them.  I started one full tray of Walla Walla sweet onions, and one tray of Candy sweet onions.  These onions sell very well at our market booth.  For other types of onions I just buy sets at the farm supply center.  I usually end up growing several hundred onions.

This is what I pick out of the peat soil.  I don't want all these large pieces of bark, wood, rocks and slate in my potting plants.  Peat is OK for outside in a flower bed where the sun and rain can break down the large pieces of debris, but in trays of seedlings this is just too much debris for seedlings to grow. 

All this seed starting might seem like a lot of work to some folks, but to a gardening buff like me this is enjoyable and relaxing!  Gardening is indeed a lot of work, but the rewards are great.  There is nothing better than taking a basket or two out to the garden or greenhouse and picking fresh produce for the kitchen and cooking.  I know that what I grow is organic, chemical free, and I always buy non-GMO seeds.  There is nothing fresher than just picked lettuces, or veggies only a few minutes old for cooking up for a meal.   My husband always teases me about growing flowers, though.   He says "you can't eat flowers" or "you can't make a pie out of them".  But he changes his mind when he sees our honeybees on all the flowers, along with butterflies and hummingbirds.
   Now I can hardly wait to get into the greenhouse, or out into the garden!  We still have 2 feet of snow on the ground and below zero temps.  It seems like this has been an especially long winter, one of the hardest in a long time.  Perhaps it was because our fall was so cold and snowy and rainy.   It seems like winter has been going on forever.