Seedlings!

I planted! Woo!

It took me a long time to choose my veggies for my EarthBox. Cucumbers? No, I don’t want to stake anything. Beans? Same problem. Cabbage? No, the one-to-one ratio of seedling-to-harvest doesn’t seem worth it. Hmmm.

I went to my local garden shop, where I’d bought my EarthBox refill kit, and poked around. Potting mix was way too expensive,  but the prices on the seedlings seemed good. I looked at different plants, I took mental notes, I tried to make decisions, I gave up and went to the grocery store. Directly behind the grocery store is an Ace Hardware, with their new Garden Center, so I stopped in to see if they had more options. They didn’t, but there was a sale on organic potting mix… if I could just figure out which sign on the shelves went with which bag…

“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, can you tell me if this price is for the small bag or the large bag of potting mix?”
“I think it’s for the large bag. Yeah.”
“Wow, that’s a really good price.”
“Yeah… I’ll be honest with you. See how those bags are taped up? The mice love it. They get into the bags and start eating it. Don’t use it for indoor plants. You don’t want to invite trouble.”

I’m using it outdoors, so I picked out two bags and the gal rang them up… and they weren’t on sale. That price was for the little bag. But she was nice and gave me the big bags at the sale price anyway. Whee! Thank you, nice lady at Ace! I picked up a strawberry plant while I was there. One plant for my EarthBox down, how many to go?

I went back to the local garden shop. I made decisions. Tomatoes, artichokes, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, all to add to that pot of strawberries that I’d bought at Ace. And some petunias for the pot of lilies that became a pot of dirt over the winter. Ooooh, and radish seeds for my window box!

I spent hours yesterday, scooping and stirring and mixing and watering all kinds of dirt and dolomite and generally treating these seedling with care and affection. I followed the EarthBox directions to the letter, taking no shortcuts and not rushing through the process. I got it all full with dirt and fertilizer in exactly the right places using precisely the recommended method. I gently fit the proprietary EarthBox cover over the top, careful not to rip or tear the fragile membrane. I cut the necessary flaps for my seedlings, I planted them, I watered them, I closed the flaps back up.

Like a concerned mother, I peeked outside a few times during the afternoon and evening, to check on my little babies. The artichoke is going through a bit of transplant shock, but I think it will be okay. Hooray!

Today, as I left the house to meet a friend for some offsite wifi action, I looked over at the EarthBox to see how it was doing. To my horror, I saw two new holes chewed in the cover. Directly over the line of fertilizer, I expect to see a sick squirrel in the area soon. I have one spare cover, but I’m hesitant to swap it out and wind up with holes in the new cover in due time. I’m pretty sure I have a roll of black duct tape in my hardware stash, so I may try to use that as a stopgap repair.