Like if your starting seeds with an average germination of 7 days, it’s a pretty darned safe bet that in 10 days you’ll need a good way to get them into the light.  And if you’re planting jumbo sucker seeds like squash, you’re probably going to need to move them into their first pot inside of another 7 days.

So first I’ve run around like a madwoman to dig out and set up my little portable greenhouse-type-shelter-thing so my seeds could get some light only to discover that those little 3 inch pots were not to be found anywhere in my garage.  I can’t believe it, for the last 10 years I could have sworn they were practically breeding in the garage I couldn’t even find one.  So now I have a bunch of baby plants starting their life in the bottom half of small plastic coke bottles ( I was appalled at how many I found in my son’s room – gotta talk with that boy!)

On the plus side I found a viable organic fertilizer for my hydroponic vegetables and a good planter I can convert for my cut-and-come-again salad greens.   And if anyone asks about my coke bottle pots I’m going to take the high road and claim it’s a green initiative- actually they make pretty good pots – that stuff is good for something after all. And by the way, these lovely little hot peppers have been planted in coir.

But calendar challenged also explains the 75 tree seedlings that arrived before the garden to hold them exists.  I can’t cut gardens out of the sod any more- well not unless I’m planning to spend the better part of my summer in traction.  So I booked the young strong backs of a few members of the next in line in some gene pools I’ve been hanging around for a couple of weeks- but that won’t happen til next week and the trees got here last week.

The neighbours think I’m wacko since I put 75 tree seedlings into my two front door planters -I had to do something.  Just please don’t let them still be there in a month.

Today, I took the first step in setting up my project for the summer and I’m very excited about it. You see, I’ve loved gardening all my life and lately I’ve been really interested in things like small space, urban and container gardens, vegetable gardens, the whole idea of eating as much locally grown food as possible and what are the best ways to make that happen. I put myself in the shoes of someone working outside the home, maybe travelling a lot and maybe living in a condo or simply having only a tiny amount of ground or just a deck to work with.

So, here are the questions my summer project is going to solve:

1. Can I make it easy enough for busy, inexperienced gardeners to successfully grow vegetables in containers on decks, patios and postage stamp yards?

2. What vegetables will give them the best bang for the buck – so to speak?

3. Can they maximize the yield and minimize the work at the same time?

4. How does hydroponics play a role?

5. How can I make it affordable?

I am intrigued at the role that outdoor hydroponic systems can play to solve this problem and when I first started looking into it couldn’t understand why they aren’t used more widely. Now I understand all too well – the currently available systems are too expensive for broad adoption – unless of course your aiming for a far more lucrative cash crop than tomatoes and as far as hydroponics goes right now it’s WAY TOO COMPLICATED.

I want to fix that and that, is the project. I have some tomato seedlings on the way (I hadn’t really thought of my grand plan when I first ordered them) and today I started acorn squash, two types of hot peppers and pickling cucumbers. I have half the seeds started in jiffy pots and the other half in rockwool. I’m going to grow them side by side and compare the results.