The wife and kids had their respective spring breaks pretty early this year. For the life of me I can’t figure out why the school districts up here insist on having spring break in March! It’s too freaking cold to go anywhere except the Caribbean or Latin America… and who can afford that shiznit! In past years, the three of them have gone somewhere together but since the wife teaches in a different suburb than the one the girls attend their breaks didn’t line up. While the wife was on her break, we went to the high school where she teaches and started the seeds for this years garden.
I believe I’ve mentioned previously that my bride is a biology teacher. This comes in handy when I can’t figure something out in the garden or need general advice on a particular practice. Incidentally, most of the time she just shakes her head at me. Regardless, with her being a high school bio teacher is extremely beneficial when it comes to starting seeds. The high school has several of these massive three-tiered commercial sized grow light stands and there is usually enough room to squeeze in our stuff with the kids seeds. Plus, I provide the table top light stand and the large heat mat to handle the germination. The large grow light ‘carts’ handle the plants after they’ve germinated.
Here was the original plan:
By all accounts, the seeds germinated without issue. Everything was planted on March 31st. The wife sends me daily updates every morning or calls me via FaceTime to let me know/see what kind of progress has been made as she’s also been handling the transplanting with the students. Most everything was up within 7-10 days. The squash, zucchini, and eggplants took a full two weeks though. Here’s the germination list she sent me:
If I’m reading it right, I think we picked up a few plants along the way. That or some of the student plantings found their way into our family plot already. It doesn’t really matter because we always wind up with quite a few more than we planted because a decent number of the students forget to take home their plants. Whatever they forget we’ve been putting in the garden (if there is room) or we’ve been placing them in planters at the house. It’s pretty much a win-win for us.
Here are the images she sent me a day or two ago:
There is still quite a bit of room left in the stand right now but as the plants mature and get transplanted into larger cowpots, that space will disappear rapidly.