My Greenhouse 2-20-13

Asparagus babies

This last Wednesday I went out to the greenhouse to take a few pictures of the seedlings. Trying to document them for time of sowing and time it takes them to grow to transplant size. Since this is all new to me this year I am soon realizing that you cannot go by the days to harvest on the seed packets! It truly depends so much on soil temperature - I don't think I would have gotten so many of the asparagus babies to sprout unless I had put them on the heating mat. I got this heat mat on e-bay - it is really supposed to be for a chicken incubator but as a seedling mat it works just fine. It has a dial on the cord so you can go from lots of heat to a little. The one I got is 11" by 8' - and was a reasonable 59 bucks. I've seen much smaller heating mats go for a lot more in the catalogs. The asparagus babies are about ready to go to the ground floor where they'll cool off and grow on, so I can free up the space for more of my babies.

Cyclamen in greenhouse

This last night - Thursday - the power went off when I was in the greenhouse. I thought I blew another fuse, and called an electrician when it seemed I couldn't get the whole house back on line. But, thankfully, he called back and said there had been a lot of power outages reported in my area. So I sat and waited with candles, flashlights and a battery-operated radio. Finally went to bed around nine under lots of blankets as the house was around 60 degrees. Got up at  midnight to see what the power situation was and called Edison again. They said it would be on at midnight and Voila! it returned a few minutes after. Rushed out to the greenhouse to monitor the temperature and turn the heater back on. All was well, the greenhouse didn't freeze even though the outdoor temps were around 21F.

Don't know if I'll have any blooms to speak of for Easter. I'm trying to bloom the Gerbera and Cyclamen by at least then but it is only 4 weeks away. The plants are growing slowly, since I can't get the temperatures warm enough at night to make them happy. The greenhouse is staying around 45-50 at night on most nights.

Most of the babies are up on the seedling mats. They are slow. So tough with many perennials, as they germinate over a long period of time. Most of these flats look like they're empty, but if you look carefully, you'll see some small green sprouts.

Seedlings on Mat - 2-20-13