The amount of seedlings you can start with 24 square feet is impressive. This is a quick count of everything I grew under lights this year before I start planting all the vegetables and flowers this weekend.
The hard work of weeding the garden, adding compost and forming the unframed beds is done. All that's left to do is to actually plant the plants.
Once that's done I'll repeat the weeding, compost and bed neatening with some pest control thrown in until October at which point I'll lose my grip on the shovels and wander aimlessly away from the garden because I'm sick of it all.
But for now, I'm still in that optimistic, everything is going to grow beautifully, easily and it'll be no problem at all phase.
This is just a list based on numbers, if you'd like to know about which varieties of everything I grow you can find that information in this post.
Everything here was grown in my basement on:
2, 4 tier shelving units with
16, 3' long LED shop lights and
An automatic capillary mat watering system
Table of Contents
Started Seedlings
The Vegetables
The Flowers
- Beets - 100
- Broccoli - 15
- Cauliflower - 8
- Hot Peppers - 7
- Kale - 4
- Lettuce - 15
- Luffah - 18
- Onions - 100
- Shallots - 30
- Sweet Peppers - 5
- Sweet Potatoes - 7
- Swiss Chard - 50 (??? why???)
- Tomatoes - 18
TOTAL: 377 VEGETABLE PLANTS
- Amaranth - 20
- Celosia - 50
- Coleus - 10
- Cosmos - 20
- Dahlia - 40
- Hariy Balls - 4
- Lace Flower - 3
- Mignonette - 10
- Nasturtium - 5
- Petunia - 10
- Scabiosa - 5
- Sweet Peas - 24
- Zinnia - 35
TOTAL: 236 FLOWER PLANTS
I grew 613 plants in 24 linear feet.
All my seedlings have now been taken from under the lights and gradually put outside to harden off, which is a process of acclimatizing them to the much rougher conditions they'll have to get used to out in the wild.
An incredibly hot sun, falling rain and wind are all things your plants have never experienced before and they need to be introduced slowly to those elements.
In the photos above you can see some of my tomato seedlings looking strong and healthy, but if you look at the last photo you can see where one portion of the tomato leaf got hit by strong sun before it was properly hardened off.
That portion of leaf is dried, crispy and dead. That one little part of leaf must have been sticking out from the shade on day 1 and it got scalded.
If I'd just put the plants outside in the full sun from day one, the whole plant could have become dried and crispy just like the leaf.
If you grew plants but haven't put them outside yet, learn about how to properly harden your plants off in about a week here.
Growing these started in March and generally took an hour of work (seeding, repotting, watering & health checks) a night. That's about 75 hours (or 2 work weeks) to get over 600 seedlings grown and ready to plant.
Street value? Probably about $2,000.
Before you oooooo, ahhhhh or roll your eyes over all my healthy lifestyle choices you should know that planting day is usually followed by a compulsary McDonalds night as I explained a couple of years ago.
Wish me luck, good weather and a cooperative intestinal journey this weekend.
WOW! Just WOW!
Don't be too impressed. I killed 10 of them before being able to plant. ~ karen!
Hi Karen Wondering what do you do to prep your garden soil eg. compost, manure, Do you add any chemical fertilizer? What do you like to do for pest control? thank you
Good luck, Karen! I copied your shelves and lighting and fans and my seedlings grew beautifully, too. They went out last week and they're all thriving so far. Fingers crossed for a great season!
Yours is truly a labour of love. I would add that as a gardener you are outstanding in your field.
LOL