it begins!

It's early March. You know what that means! I finally get to plant things!

I decided to back everything up one week toward the safe side of the frost-date spectrum. We have been having some wacky weather lately, and I don't want to risk frost-bitten seedlings in April. Therefore, I got the eggplants started this afternoon.
It went a little something like this:

First, I assembled my supplies:

1 12-pack Jiffy greenhouse (because I'm only planting eggplants on this go-round, I reserved four peat pellets for later use)
1 3/4 c. warm water
1 pack seeds of your choice (mine are Black Beauty heirloom eggplants)

The directions that come with the greenhouse are super-simple. Those little discs are dehydrated peat moss surrounded by a very thin netting.

1. Add water. When you add water to the tray, they blow up kind of like grow sponge pills (please tell me I wasn't the only one who had those).
2. After three or four minutes, the discs are about 1.5 in. tall and ready to be planted.
3. Rip the netting back from the top of the disc, and muss up the peat a little bit.
4. Place your seeds (3-4 per disc). Don't worry too much about where they fall. The peat is uber-fertile and you'll find that seedlings will sprout up every which direction.
5. Cover the seeds back up with peat, and voilà! You are done.

The whole process takes less than 10 minutes. I usually save my extra seeds in a ziplock as insurance, but that's just me being a little crazy. I have had very good success rates with the Jiffy discs, so don't worry about saving every seed

The seeds in their cozy new home:

I also set up Kitten Defense: Version 1.0. It's low-tech, but I have to start somewhere.

As eager as I am to start watching these suckers grow, I am leaving Hank in charge of the seeds while I go home to California for my spring break. He has promised to keep an eye on them, and I have charged him with the responsibility of taking daily photographs if they start sprouting. As I recall, the eggplant seeds took a long time to sprout last year, so fingers crossed, I won't miss anything.

Hooray, spring!

(Apologies for the ridiculous formatting and general lack of excitement in this post. I'm working off an unwelcome head cold, and it's also way past my bedtime, which happens to be 11PM on Fridays. I'll be back in a week, and maybe I'll be able to get Hank to do a guest blog on WORM BOXES! Oooh, aaah)