Aero Flowers

These are some of the flowers that I started from seed in the aero garden.

The Asters are by far the prettiest, but these other little guys, the scabiosa, are really interesting.

When they first bud out they look like they are all done. No petals, just what looks like a center of a flower, shown here in the background. And then they fill in with the delicate little petals.

Front cover

This is the front cover to a mini album that I saw at the scrap store. It is only four pages, all of chipboard. I cut it with the zutter cutter. Petunia update: We actually have plants! I can't believe how long it took them to get going, but now seem to be expanding daily. My little experimental pods are struggling. Most of the asters are sprouted, but very slow. The scabiosa sprouted early and then it was like they had too much fertilizer or something and shot way up until the root was growing on top of the soil, then they died. There are a couple still growing though. You can definately see the advantage of using the regular aerogarden pods. I just have to weigh now whether it is more important to have 100% success, or save some $'s and have 40% success rate.

Petunia sprouts

Finally they look like little plants! It must be froggy's influence. There is also one little scabiosa sprout in my experimental section (not pictured).

No snow today but it was really cold this morning. Had to be out today quite a bit and thought my fingers were going to crack right off! But it's beautiful and sunny this afternoon.

Aerogarden Experiment

I took my little aster and scabiosa plants out of the aerogarden and planted in peat pots. When I went to buy the potting soil I also bought some Orchid Moss to use for my experiment... I'll talk about that later. But while I was reading on the Orchid Moss package it said that you can use orchid moss on tiny little starts when transplanting. So I took the little pods out of the aerogarden, wrapped them in orchid moss (that had been well soaked) and then packed Miracle Grow potting soil around them. They've been in there for a couple of days and doing well. Scabiosa

Asters

The Aerogarden Seed starter kit is resusable, however they want you to pay $19.99 to buy 45 more little pods to put in them. This kind of took the wind out of my sails for resusing, as it would take two packages to fill the tray even once. But then I thought about using moss as a plug in the bottom and building my own little starter pods.

So, that is what led me to the Orchid Moss. My first inclination was peat moss but I couldn't find a small enough package and then started reading about the Orchid Moss. I stuffed it into the hole (which is open ended) dry hoping that when it absorbs the water that it will expand and plug the hole sufficiently to hold the soil. The hole is just about as big around as my index finger so it made it easy to stuff. Then I added Ferry Morse Organic Seed Starter mix. I have used other seed starter mixes before and it didn't seem to absorb the water well, but this seems to be just fine. I planted the rest of the Asters and Scabiosa. Since I know how long it took to sprout before, I have a good reference point for the experiment. Even if it takes a couple days longer, it sure will beat spending $40 to start seeds.

You can also see my little petunia starts to the right. They are growing ever so slowly.

I hope to be doing some card making this weekend for the 2Peas Winterfest 2009 stamping challenge, so will be posting some cards later.

February out like a lion?

Or a cub anyway... This is certainly not what I expected to wake up to this morning. Though I shouldn't be surprised, the Northwest is notorious for February snowfall. One of our worst snowfalls on record was Valentines Day a few years ago. I remember it because I was suppose to drive to Tacoma for my neice's funeral and I absolutely panicked and stopped at the mall and got Dave to drive. Other than that, nothing much more to report. My petunia's are very.... I repeat..VERY slow growing. Now I know why I always bought plants for Plantation. At least here I only have to buy two flats for my little areas and not 120 like I did for Plantation, plus the alysum and snaps or whatever to complete the area. Do you think I over did it a little? Well, everybody liked it anyway.

I haven't done any card making this week, though I am anxious to get back to it. Clyle has been here and I always feel like I'm invading his space, even though he is very understanding about it. I did get my order of paper flowers from Oriental Trading. What a great deal! It was bulk pricing on all the little jars. I saved about $20 by buying all the colors. There are 60 monochromatic paper flowers in each one and some are polka dotted. Black flowers have been really hard to find (and expensive), so I was very happy to get them. The brown is actually more like a terra cotta color than brown, but the others are beautiful. the larger jar are printed flowers and have larger ones than the others. They are very pretty and when I get back to my room again I'll post some cards with them.

I've ordered a couple other times from Oriental Trading and some of their stuff is kind of cheesy, but they do have some cute stuff. I always wait until they have a special on shipping. I really hate paying shipping on anything, you know?

Petunia sprouts

All of the sprouts are sprouted now. The baby petunias are have all stuck their little heads up now. The plugs have a "dibble" in them where you put the seeds and they are not covered, so this is the first time I've been able to watch the entire process.

The tray which is styrofoam is reusable, but I started thinking the other day, that I would have to get some more plugs to start more seeds. I went to the website and a bag of plugs are $19.99. Ouch! That is for 75. There are 66 holes in the tray. If it wasn't for the fact that I just enjoy doing this and watching the little babies grow, I really don't think it would be worth the price. The starter tray was $29.99 which came with plugs for each hole and the nutrient tablets which you don't use for the first two weeks. You get nutrient tablets with the replacement plugs. The big problem is that this has been so popular that they can't keep them in stock and now the plugs are back ordered also. Here's the "whole family".

Sprout update

Little cracks in the petunia seeds are getting bigger and there is actually one little petunia sprouting! It's too small to photograph, but it's there! All of the asters and scabiosa are now sprouting. I wrongly labeled yesterday as day 5, but today is actually #5.

Day 5 sprouts

Now you can see the original sproutling and some new ones. The scabiosa is starting to sprout too. Still just cracks in the shell of the petunias, but it's still very early. My fear is though that I will get them all sprouted, transplanted and when I take them out that they will die. Guess I'll have to wait to find that out, hey?

Sprouts

Can you see it? The Asters are sprouting 4 days after planting. No sign of the Scabiosa (the big seeds on the right) but the petunia's are just starting to crack their shells a bit.

New Aerogarden project

So, I was trying to decide what to post about today, aerogarden or cardmaking, so decided to do two posts. I finally got my aerogarden seed kit. It came by FedEx camel! I wanted to document planting day (yesterday actually). First of all I about fainted when I went to the store and found out I had to pay $2.57 for 15 petunia seeds! I guess you can see it's been a while since I tried to start them from seed. The directions tell you to put 4 small seeds to a pod but I did just two of the petunias. I planted 3 packages of petunia Restera (purple) Tidal Wave, One pack of Aster Oceanstar and one Scabiosa Summer Berry Mix. I've never done Scabiosa before but they looked so pretty on the package I thought I'd give them a try for my yard. The petunias if successful will be for the entry. After they have sprouted sufficiently I will transplanted them into small pots and hope that they get enough light until I can start moving them outside during the day.

Aerogarden Update

We had to raise the light and I've already harvested the Basil (left) twice. It would be up to the top of the picture here if I hadn't. In fact, I can smell it as I write, I used it in some chicken soup that I'm making. The date is wrong, the month and day are mixed up. It is 4 days short of one month since I started these plants.

Herb Report

If you click on the label below it will show all the posts for aerogarden and you can see the progress better. Some of them are big enough now to use. I may still get rid of the cilantro and put a plug in the spot to give more room to the others that I will actually be using. I'm still waiting on my last order from aerogarden. They are back ordered on the seed starter kits, so hope I get them in time to actually start some seeds for this year. The date on the picture is wrong again. The month and day are mixed up. It is 4 days short of one month since I started these plants.

Garden Progress

The date on this picture is obviously wrong. Every time you open it up to get the disc out it looses it's date, and I didn't feel like changing it again. However, this picture was taken Sunday morning. It's doing well. You can see that the cilantro is kind of leggy and kind of laying over and I don't exactly know why. The dill did the same thing last week but has perked up now. I think it may be that I have not reset the timers for the light and have been manually turning it on and off and maybe it's getting too much light. I just need to get my manual out and read it again.

The Demise of the Tomato

Sadly, this is all that is left of my aerogarden tomato plants. It must be a record though. It was growing for 7 months and still producing. I cut off all these little babies and discarded the plants. There were many more tiny babies but I figured they weren't going to get any bigger. The root system was so prolific that it had smothered the filter in the aerogarden and blocked the pump from running. Usually aerogarden roots are like little white hairs, but this actually had a stem-like root in the center of each plant. I had removed one tomato plant several months ago because I didn't like the taste of the particular tomato. But onward and upward, my seed started kit is on order... back order, but I placed the order anyway.

I'm a few hours early for this post. The last picture was taken Monday morning the 12th, and this one is Sunday evening, but thought I might not have time tomorrow morning to do it. Can you see the growth? They've all grown quite a bit. The slow-poke parsley even has it's second leaf growth (the curly leaf). I tried to make an order yesterday and am very excited to get it, but it was backordered. "It" is a transplant kit to start your own seeds and then transplant them in the spring. I can't wait. There are 70 little pockets for seeds. You take the top part (where the little pods are sitting now) of the aerogarden off and it sits down over it. But guess it has to wait a bit.

Aerogarden

Have you ever seen an info-mercial about the aerogarden and wondered if it could possibly be as good as they say? Well, here's my blog-omercial. Last year we found two aerogardens at a garage sale, brand new still sealed in the box. They sell on the aerogarden website for I think $169, and now I've seen them at Costco and Sams Club for $129. Great price! We bargained with the seller at the garage sale and paid $100 for the two. What a deal. My first plantings were salad greens and herbs. The salad greens did great and we got a few salads out of it, but I don't think I'll do them again. The herbs did fantastic and I started learning how fun and tasty it is to cook with fresh herbs. I ended up transplanted some of the herbs and giving them to Alexis, I don't know how they are doing now. But we were getting ready to move and I didn't really want to move it with all the water and everything. I was going to send for some herb packets when I found two of them at Liquidation World in Renton (no they don't have any more). I planted these the day after Christmas. I thought it would be fun to blog the progress of them, so this is the beginning at day 18. In the back left to right is Parsley (the slowest to sprout), Mint, Purple Basil (yummy in roast chicken), Dill. Front left to right prolific Italian Basil, chives and Cilantro. I wasn't going to plant the cilantro because neither Dave or I care much for it, but didn't want to leave it empty.

This is the cherry tomatoes that I planted when we moved here in July. I really thought they would be done by now, but they just keep on going.

This one got so tall that it doesn't get any light from the aerogarden anymore, so we propped it up in the window. We do open the shade, it was dark when I took this picture.

I keep cutting off the dead stuff and it just keeps blooming and producing. Guess I won't be doing petunia's this year, unless I sacrifice the tomatoes..