Roof Garden Gal

Lights are installed! Zip ties came with the lights. I used 6 of the 8 2′ long strips I bought, which will be one per flat. Connected them all together and installed the timer that I’ll control on my phone. The top shelf will be two flats of basil because I couldn’t fit enough shelves on for the six flats and I didn’t want to have anything on the floor of the tub. It’s fine. The curtain still closes without touching anything. (Yay curved shower curtain rod!)

I got 5 bags of Espoma seed starting mix from Esbenshade’s Garden Center near Lancaster, PA. They had the best pricing, even with shipping. Arrived quickly. Looks like they have really good online reviews, too. At the volume I’ll need, I could have made my own, I suppose, but this will just be easier and cleaner. The flats of trays came from True Leaf Market. Pretty cool.

Just waiting for the solid drip trays to arrive today. Then I can get going! My goal is to have everything ready to go by Jan 17, but I’ll be at least a week earlier than that. Not sure if having an extra week is a good thing or not! Class is on April 3. Gotta think this through.

Seeds from Baker Creek. I’ll have one tray each of parlsey, dill, cilantro, basil, and purple basil. I started a few 3 year old packets about three weeks ago as something I could coo over while I waited for all of my supplies to arrive, and had a pretty good showing from the purple but meh from the Genovese. I’ll replant them into larger containers soon. But fresher seeds for this year should have better germination.

Here’s a little IG reel thingie. I’m not great a this, please bear with me!

Tags: garden class, herbs, seed starting, seedlings

I’m going to be teaching an indoor herb garden class in April. Folks will decorate their own pots, pick their herbs, and learn how to harvest and care for their plants indoors!

Here’s my math. Everyone will get to pick three plants. Assuming all 40 class slots fill up, that’s 120 in total. I’m starting one flat of parlsey, dill, cilantro, basil, and purple basil. Each flat here will have 36 cells, plus I’ll do one extra 6 cell of each as insurance to make sure I have enough for everyone. That’s potentially 216 babies to care for! After the class, I will donate some of the remaining seedlings to Plot Against Hunger gardeners.

I’ll be growing in my guest bathroom using this wire rack. For weeks I couldn’t figure out how to set up this whole system, as I never grown on this scale before. Duh. Wire racks! Then ones I already had were juuuuust a smidge too big for the bathtub. So, I bought a small rack and planned to keep two flats on each shelf width-wise. Then I realized I had a tall rack in a closet. I took that out and added one shelf from the new small rack and voilà! They’re 8″ apart now, so I’ll see what the final distance winds up being. I will probably need to adjust the distance to the lights a few times. I decided not to use the bottom shelf/tub floor for the sixth tray or to build a little holder thing for lights on top, so I’ll keep the two basils together on one shelf. I’ll zip tie lights to the underside of the shelves and connect all of the lights in a chain.

This week I’m expecting delivery of the lights, seeds, Espoma seed starting mix, sheets of 2.25″ cells, and the solid trays these mesh trays will sit in. I’m not going to use heat mats, as the room should get pretty warm if I close the curtain and door. Humidity should be ok without covers, but just in case, I can wrap the whole rack in some plastic I’m holding on to from another project. My goal is to have it all set up and running by Jan 17, which will give me about 11 weeks before my class.

I’ll update each step, maybe with a video or two.

Tags: garden class, herbs, seed starting, seedlings