Planting and Growing Seeds

August 13, 2012 9:36 pm Comments Off

Wow, we’re so far behind… where to begin? Probably best to start where we left off, which was the fall of last year. Our privacy fence had just been completed and we were ready to start planting along the fence.

Every spring and fall we make a trip to our favorite nursery in the metro Atlanta region – Growers Outlet in Loganville. It is about an hour each direction, but the prices are well worth it. We’ve heard people drive much farther.

We bought a number of plants to plant between the driveway and our new fence in the backyard – roses, canna lilies, rosemary, Mexican petunias, lots of bulbs for the spring, etc.

We also bought three apple trees. One gala from Pike Nusery and a Gala and a Pink Lady from Ison’s Nursery. This allowed us to keep planting well into the winter. (Unfortunatly, we haven’t had any apples this year. Hopefully they will start producing fruit next year.)

The tree from Pike Nursery:

And the two trees from Ison’s – these were their “instant orchard” variety:

As spring started to arrive a very generous neighbor gave us a ton of seeds to plant. These seeds came from Seed Savers Exchange. They have a great selection of hard-to-find seeds, and the germination rate was really high. We planted everything – vegetables, perennials, annuals, vines, etc.

This was our first year using grow lights. In the past we always just tried putting the seeds by a bright window, but the results were always disappointing. The grow lights did a fantastic job! We had seeds popping up in no time. The grow lights we used were OttLight 20 watt Plant growth Bulbs. Because they were compact flourescent they didn’t get hot, so this helped the soil retain the moisture.